Sunday, December 4, 2011

Lost: Something. REWARD!!


craigslist, 11/05/2011
Lost & found

A curious ask: assistance requested for identification/location of unknown item of great subjective value. Substantial financial incentive!

Bigger than a bread box, smaller than your dad. (Estimated.)

Formerly inhabiting the northwest corner of the front bedroom of my house, second floor. (Probably.)

I admit it: This is a shot in the dark. A prayer. A thing of the last ditch sorts. This is a Hail Mary pass. A desperate hurl where the good virgin intercedes in the direction &/or velocity of a pigskin’s path across a Sunday morning sports field.

But I’m out of other options & now there’s nowhere else to turn to.

In my bedroom. Week ago Thursday. I walked in & I just knew. I felt it. The absence was palpable.

There – between the black lacquered shelf where my fiction books go & the box for my acoustic guitar – there was… Nothing!

Just an empty corner. Only a tile floor. Just a place where something belonged, where a something sat when everything in the world was sitting right where each something belonged.

I admit it: I panicked. I spun around & I looked & then I looked some more & I panicked. I tried filling the space. First, a pair of dumbbells. Next, a djembe drum. I even moved my old worn recliner from its place over by the window into that confounded corner in hopes that it might… well, you know…. make sense.

None of it was right. Nothing belonged there. Nothing was the something I was missing.

& I felt… I remembered… I knew I had spent untold hours sitting there, in front of that missing something, staring & thinking & feeling. I’d loved that something & now it was gone!

So I closed my eyes. In my mind, I pictured my room. Got a feel for it. Pictured it like it was before. Before the something went missing. I pictured my desk & I pictured my book shelves & I pictured the giant rack of compact discs. But every time I tried – nonchalantly, of course, casually spinning around in my mental room of old to catch the something unawares – to picture that awful & infamous corner, everything kind of went all fuzzy.

The now-missing something would not show itself.

I wondered whether it had been green in color. Did you wind it up with a crank? Did it require feeding?

I admit it: I cried. Crumbled down entirely. After all of the time & all of the effort & all of the love I’d shown for… for… well, for whatever it had been… to find it just gone like this!

Was it a something I could hold in my hands? Did it feel heat and cold? Would I have required help to carry it? Was it edible?

Then my daughter walked in & she saw that I was crying. My daughter wrapped her arms around me, kneeling there in front of my now-empty corner.

I sniffled. I asked my daughter, “What was in this corner? What is it that’s supposed to be here?”

& my daughter, she kept hugging me. She said, “There’s nothing in that corner, Kay-Kay. It’s empty.” But kids always have such a hard time with notions of present tense and past.

After that, I flipped through old photo albums. I read my old diaries. Something this important… I mean, surely I would have documented it somewhere, wouldn’t I?

I cried in my sleep. Thursday night & then Friday night & then so on & so on. I woke up howling over the loss of a something I could not even remember.

In my dreams at night, I was that beloved something, sitting in its proper corner, looking outward. I was the something that looked out & saw Katy before it. (Katy is me when I’m not something else in my dreams.)

In my dreams, I saw Katy on her knees, staring, & there was love & there was fear & there was unadulterated AWE in Katy’s eyes.

But now… Now a week has passed & I am awake again & I still mourn for that missing something. I still do not know what that something was (is?) but I know it meant (means?) everything to me. It gave my life direction & meaning & purpose & now it is gone.

But somebody out there has to know. Somebody out in the interwebs has seen my room or has heard me talk about this thing that I value more than anything else in the world.

Somebody knows, because in this world, things do not retroactively cease to exist.

$$$$$$ I will pay you to bring my something back to me, NO QUESTIONS ASKED! $$$$$

I will give you everything that I have.  Hell, I will pay you just to tell me what it was!                                                                                         

Any day of the week. Any time, day or night. I can arrange for a meet-up or pay for shipping & handling or wire you money on the spur of the moment. Alternatively, we can barter. Exchange good or services. Find something mutually beneficial for us both for this information &/or item or items.

Call 832-؏؋ڲ-1499 & ask for Katy.

This is a serious offer.

(If the missing something is a something that can read & it is reading this, my offer still stands. Please come home!)

20 comments:

  1. Whatever it is, I hope you find it. Myself? I've lost so much I don't even look for anything anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In my bedroom there is a huge cupboard that I refer to as the Black Hole because often things that have gone missing will turn up in it.

    I will have a look for you - the something might well be there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @A Lunatic Pope: Sure... It's easy for a lunatic pope to say that. After all, you have all of those lunatic cardinals and bishops to do your searching for you.
    Besides, anything you're missing is probably somewhere in the basement of your lunatic Vatican.

    @dirtycowgirl: Haha... Tell me what you find!
    Shortly before I disappeared into the Houston streets, I cleaned out a closet in my room. I found SIX pairs of scissors. Apparently, every time I can't find a pair, I go out and buy some new ones.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 'Tis the ghost of a shade, O Katy - the sublimation of an unknown desire. Thou must make a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Goddess of the High Himalaya, barefoot over broken rock, and submit thyself to Her will, before thou track'st it down.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Have you checked your purse? When my wife loses something, it's almost always in her purse. And if you don't own a purse, buy one, then look inside. You'll probably find it there anyway. I don't question the magical properties of a spacious purse.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Bill the Butcher: Some sort of existential longing to fill a hole in myself, huh?
    The thing is, as I was writing this one, i thought it was sort of spine-tingle material.
    Then I read it and realized that it reads exactly like all my other ones. No matter what i try tow rite, it still comes out sounding like ME.
    Which means I have to go FARTHER and try new things. What's the worst that can happen? It's still going to come off like all my other entries...

    @A Beer for the Shower: Wait... Do lesbians carry purses?
    Have you seen the movie, "Wrist Cutters"? You should!
    Anyway, in that movie, they are in a special afterlife for people who have committed suicide.
    The main characters are driving around in a car that has a black hole under the passenger seat.
    They lose a lot of cigarette lighters and maps into it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. So, if you smoke you are more likely to commit suicide....or after you ill yourself you begin smoking? I can can see where you would need a habit if you are just driving around in the after-life.
    Btw....it was an old bag with a bunch of junk that you intended on sifting through one day. Someone just got tired of it being there and threw it away.

    Ps... You're welcome. No reward needed.

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Anonymous: Once you're dead, what have you got to lose by smoking?
    More accurately, I suppose, people who smoke just have a clearer awareness of the inevitability of death.
    Maybe smoking is like... a skull as a dining room table centerpiece.
    Damn. I might have to pick up the habit again!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I could fill your void with a well used tuba, a trombone or a baritone. If you don't want low brass I have some other options. Although if my tuba disappeared from my office, it would be noticed.

    ReplyDelete
  10. @Brent: I am trying to picture a tuba or trombone in that corner.
    It just doesn't seem right. I don't think it was a tuba.
    Speaking of which, is the tuba vital to your job functions?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Katy - The tuba is not vital to any job function, although it would be cool to oom pa my way into the office. Since my retirement as a wanna be musician, it is mostly decoration.

    ReplyDelete
  12. @Brent: I need to have a blog where people tell me what sorts of instruments they can play. It is always surprising to me to see what sorts of instruments folks play...
    If I could play the tuba, I'd want to learn to play "Effervescing Elephant" by Syd Barrett and "Excuse Me" by Peter Gabriel.
    I don't think I'd want to play professionally, though. That would take all of the fun out of it.

    ReplyDelete
  13. It was my life-size model of zombie-hunter Barbie's purple-camo bazooka. I'm disappointed you lost it, Katy.

    ReplyDelete
  14. @Mr Grumpy: That might be the problem!
    The zombie-hunting screams "Katy!"
    The Barbie part of it... little feminine for me.
    The cognitive dissonance of it all. That purple-camo bazooka was doomed from the start.
    (Pssst! I'm posting my Top Ten Albums of 2011 tomorrow!)

    ReplyDelete
  15. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Maybe it was a door leading to a parallel universe and it evaporated. Those things can be a bit touchy this time of year. Maybe I am reading too much Steven King?

    ReplyDelete
  17. @5464: I'm getting some really good suggestions in these comments!
    I mean, even if it WASN'T a ghost of a shade, a tuba, a muse, a sex toy, or a door leading to a parallel universe, I think I'd like to have all of them. In that corner, specifically...

    @Brent: This whole thing is YOUR fault, actually. Your comment last week about surreal writing has launched me into a series of bizarre scenario blogs from whence there is no escape.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I am so pleased to be an inspiration! I actually love the idea of something missing but you don't know what, or when, and only kindasorta know where.

    ReplyDelete
  19. just found your lovely blog :) i like-y what i see!

    ReplyDelete

Hey you! Why not leave a comment to tell me what you think of what I wrote?