*** life raft - Jesse Moore & Raschel Manzykis page 2 ***

Sea ChangeComments about Life's Social Aspects

Two unrecruited explorers stare at the sky and -- having nothing better to do -- decide that one of them is a philosopher and the other, a psychologist.

"Quiet, the man'scomin'!" It's hackneyed to say Lissa hissed, but that's exactly what her voice did. "This is some fineshit you got us inta!"

"I had to do somet'ing! We's flat, and this is the only way we coulda et tonight. I had ta'get somet'ing from somebody, and if you gonta take the risk, maybe's well get the big score than the small, don'cha know." Pulls her farther back under the stairs behind the dumpster. Soft, putrid smelling gunk under his shoes, he slipped, but didn't think about it anymore. Too many other things more important right at this minute.

"But a liquor store, Joseph, aliquor store ! My ole lady ain'tnever" - gathering steam now, not volume- "gonta live this down! I'll never hear the end of this 'less she just stops flappin' gum at me altogether!"

"Shuddup. You gonna give away our hidey place, now. We's outta here in less'n 'n hour, and then nobody finds out. No video, no witness, no clues, no trail except you and me, and neither's a rat, is we? No baby, then we get sirloin, get a clean flop, and me for a haircut and a job. I can hammer 'n' cut, that's thekeyfor me. No more'f this. No more." "You mean it this time, Joey, honey? You'reout?" Her voice quavered. She really didn't know if she wanted to hear the answer or not, and didn't really know which answer to want, didn't really know how to feel aboutanyanswer. This was a hole they were in; when you're in a hole and the sides are crumbling, even an uncertain sky means air is coming in.

He sits slumped in his chair no more than two feet away from me on this warm Sunday morning. We sit, with two completely different agendas and different expressions, on old pool chairs, next to a white, peeling round table. We are alone. We are together for the first time in two years. I search his sullen face for a familiar memory. But I am looking for a short, skinny, blond haired, hyperactive thirteen year old boy. I am looking for the annoying little kid who would never leave me alone. I am looking for the kid I would force to dance with me in my room so that I could practice. I am looking for someone I knew long ago.

I am looking for my brother.

But you know, I accelerate my search for him and come up empty handed; once again I soon become disheartened. The eyes that stare back at me from two feet away belong to a young man I do not know. A young, angry man. I don't recognize him. His blond hair is long and his green eyes are glassy. He is stoned. I know it and he confirms it. I came to see him today to try again with him. To try and be brother and sister despite all the arguments and hard times we have endured over the past ten years. I have sat through countless conversations with him on the phone while he yelled at me and blamed my father and me for all his problems. He has said the most incredibly hateful things to me. He has called me when he was suicidal. He has called me when he was high. He has called me when he was just OK. But mostly, he doesn't call me at all.

"'Out', don't talk about 'Out' to me, with my two strikes already. I don' wanna hear no 'Out'. I'm stayin' 'In' this game if we get through this, and no doubt about it. Better me say 'When' than 'If'."

She'd heard words like this from him before; then she had coaxed it out of him with hugs, food, sex. So she hardly dared believe his statements this time. She'd gotten good at typing while Joey was up, and when he was up again she'd saved some money. Joey blew it with her in Vegas his first week out. And she'd welcomed him home from drink, from grass, from whores; held him to sleep each time. She wanted him to go home, be home, with her and babies and car pools and bills and PTA's and a routine so many of us disdain. She'd be Di and he'd be her king if only he'd stop the cards and fast hustle and pay attention to his talent for good hard sweat in the sun.

She'd heard words like this from him before and wanted to hear them and now he'd said them of his own free will and in a pitch stinking alley with reflections of red flashing lights three blocks away and a circling helicopter thankfully on the other side of the robbery, and with the sharp acid of Joey's nervous body odor in her nostrils . . . as much as saying "I love you, darling Lissa, sweet of mine, I have a plan for our life together." So the dream of her heart materialized in her left hand along with a crumbled clump of bills and the word "In" from Joey that was more of a proposal and commitment than anything she'd wheedled out of him in seven years. Her dream wasright hereand she held it firm. Yeah real. Virtually mine. Virtually. Just a little longer.

"Ok, Hon. You jus' lead me outta this hole and we be away for a new life as you say it. I'm for you . . . Joey, baby, please ditch that gun, now, honey, or we may make a mistake that will do it in for us."

"Cain't, girl. Too easy to trace it, and my fingerprints' all over it anyways. I gotta hang onto it until we can make it deep and wet. I'd pull out the bullets, but no guns good without bullets, and a gun's more dangerous to the one's holdin'it empty than loaded."

"Ok, baby, but put it outtasight, no sense makin' trouble if someone sees it."

"Yeah."

Over the last ten years, we have become increasingly distant from each other. Not by my choice. He pushes me away with determination and embraces his pot. He drowns his tears with alcohol. And he tries to replace the memory of our mother with any mind altering substance he can find. Only, the thing is, that never seems to work. He becomes more angry. More sad. More despondent. He loses sight of tomorrow. And the black hole he calls his life becomes darker and deeper.

This is when I want to walk away. Only I become paralyzed with fear :What will happen to him today? Tonight? Two weeks from now? Will he continue to sink into the hole? Will he O.D. on something? Will he take his own life? Who knows? Certainly, not I. I fear, and I stay. I am afraid to leave. The uncertainty of his actions reminds me of our mother. She was always drinking. I was always scared. How do you help someone when you can't even predict where they will be the next morning? Will they be straight? Doubtful. Will they have passed out? Yeah, probably. I don't know what is the right thing to do for him. I do know that nothing can happen to him if I stay. I will protect him. I'm his big sister, after all.

Creeping back, back into the dark alley, Joey moves the .38 under his belt above his butt, the safety back on. It had done him well during the holdup; did what it was supposed to do, gave him control, made him the intimidator, and it was an especially lucky gun because the counterman did not fancy himself a hero. Everyone was lucky because of his lucky gun. He'd be luckier when that gun was in the bay, and he'd put it there from the half day boat out of Redondo tomorrow morning.

"Steak and grouper tomorrow night, baby, and me for a job on Thursday. If I show up with a few tools, I'll get hired off the street in the morning and have a paycheck in a week."

Elation, fear - she was on the emotional high road, now. This was new. Joey was tired of the old way. He was moving on, and this what she'd always wanted. But this was his time, his threshold, not hers. She was taken by surprise, and in a dark alley at 11:30 p.m. hiding from the cops, this was some hellofa time to makestrategic decisions . . .

"Damn, he back! Why? He already come through here! Back to the dumpster!" They were in the dark, but exposed if the bouncing beam of the flashlight hit them. It originated high off the cracked pavement, angled down, sweeping the pavement from one wall to the other as the officer held it against his temple.

Joey closed on the dumpster, crouching down - away from the man when the light hit his shoes "Stand! Freeze! Police!" As the light worked its way to his head, Lissa grabbed for Joey, her hand hitting the butt of the gun above his own butt. Reflexively, her fingers closed around the grip, and her own momentum yanked the lucky gun out of his belt. Light shifting from Joey to Lissa to Joey caught the gun in mid sweep "Drop it! Goddam! Drop it, Girl!"

Yes. She should drop it, and "Yes, sir," she should say it, 'but you, Sir, it's only you between me and my dreams I hold here in my hand . . .' She swept her gaze from the money, to the gun and back like a high beam flashlight and wondered which to hand over. So she held both of them out to the officer . . .

"Don't! Shit!" With that the man straddle-jumped left and jerked off two from his automatic, one of which slammed into her chest, hammering her to the bricks behind her, the gun clattering, Joey screaming, dropping to her on the reddening pavement, and that was the last she ever knew.

Again he is looking at me with resentful eyes. "You can't help me. Don't you see? This life. Everything is shit. I have nothing. I have no one." And it goes on like this as I begin to notice the incessant blinking of my eyes as I attempt to hold back the incredible sadness I am feeling. As he describes this to me, my 27 year old brother begins to cry. I wish like hell the tears could cleanse his mind and help me reach this distant, polluted soul sitting across from me. He rubs his eyes and looks at me again, as if a tiny part of him is begging me to rescue him. I feel my insides drop and my heart ache. I can hardly take it. It hurts so much to see him cry. I don't think I've ever seen him cry, except when he was a kid. I want to take his hand, check him into a detox, get him counseling, fix a room up for him in my house and take care of him. Hello? Reality. He won't even consider it.

Sometimes we talk like two people who grew up sharing a bathroom and fighting over who has to wash the dishes and who has to dry. This is what makes me stay. I see my brother in conversations like this. Unfortunately, there is only an iota of that brother left in the man sitting across from me today. He is so far gone he doesn't even want to try and get himself back, he tells me. But this particle is what makes me hold on. This is what makes me continue to call him despite the fact that he hangs up on me. This is what makes me send him Christmas and birthday presents every year despite the fact that he disdains everything I ever give him. This is what makes me suffer through the storm of tears I shed every single time I either talk to him or see him.

I tell him that I love him. Today, finally, he tells me that he loves me too, he thinks. I want to tell him that every time I make a wish I wish for him to be healthy and happy. I want to tell him that I would give anything in the world to help him become happy. I want to tell him this but I don't. Not now. I can't overload him. We've spent a long hour together. Things went pretty well. He talked about getting his life together. But I am not stupid. I know that even though he said he is going to try and get sober, he will probably get stoned again soon. And then we will go through this all over again.

I will not do for him what he must do for himself, although I so desperately want to. But I will always love him. And I will never walk away.

Continental DriftViews on the Way the World Moves

Life Plan

There is an infinite number of places to be that are not here. Some of them I can walk to; some require another mode of transport. Some are physically beyond me; some exist only in my mind.

I evaluate my "here" and my "not here."
I compare the evaluations.
I estimate the effort involved to remain here and then to create a different here for me.
I analyze the benefits of the evaluations against the detriments of the evaluations.
I rank the evaluations based on benefit-to-cost ratio.
I rerank the alternatives based on effort.
I conjure the situations attendant with each plausible "here".
I forecast the outcomes and the emotions of the alternative situations.
I project my state of mind based on each outcome.
I hypothesize the desirability of the alternative states of mind of each outcome.
I decide if benefit/costs of the most desirable alternatives are worth the relative estimated effort.
I think about the preparation required for each effort versus the state of mind achieved by the accomplishment.
I mentally review all the benefits, costs, effort, evaluations, alternatives, emotions, states of mind, preparations, and hypotheses.
I forget which estimates and analysis go with which set of benefits and detriments.
I lose track of which states of mind go with which alternative scenarios.
I mix up the emotions and the outcomes; I needed a spreadsheet after all.
I do what I feel like doing at the time.

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