Crane Wish

Imagine the darkened interior of a bar. A table littered with beer mugs at varying stages of emptiness, little snack dishes and cell phones. And strewn across this table scores of origami cranes of every size, color and shape. Yes, shape.

Beka, as our school's "art" teacher (she's an art history major...) was assigned an origami class. She spent her break at work today being taught how to make cranes by a student, and spent the evening teaching the rest of us. Our first attempts are clumsy, deformed creatures, but together we generated enough to give out to the "art" classes after the try (and fail) to make their own. These are 4 year-olds we're talking about here. 4 year olds who don't understand a lick of English.

Apparently if you make 100 cranes you get a wish. I only made 4. Well on my way, huh? I named them too. There was Ruby, my poor, flattened first attempt; then Jude, Cornucopia and Bebe. We were the coolest table in there. We added to that coolness by watching Final Fantasy cut scenes on Hyo Jin's DS, and arguing about what the FF7 theme actually is (Heather found the 'theme' on her ipod and had me listen to it. It was the Requiem for a Dream piece - that really recognizable one they use in movie previews all the time. She refused to accept this fact).

Today at random points throughout the day fractions os a familiar tune popped into my head. Finally I started humming it out loud to see if I could carry it through until I recognized it. Turned out, it was that Youtube Nom Nom song that Evan and I used to dance to. And by dance I mean jumping up and down while spinning through the room.

The way this information cleared in my brain was slow and bizarre. First I recognized the full tune, and recognized that I recognized it, but before I could put a name on it I remembered the jumping dance that went with it. I remembered jumping, and I had the vague, nudging notion that when I jumped to it, I didn't jump alone. But I couldn't remember who was jumping with me. The fact that it was Evan trickled down to me from far, far away. In my mind's eye I could see him jumping too, but through a fog. It was like I was trying to remember a dream that had never been all there to begin with. The memory was sharp; I could see the 1st floor of the condo around me, see my computer playing that stupid little video. I could feel the floor, linoleum and carpet. I could even hear the hollow sound that floor made that had me constantly afraid I would jump a hole right through it. But Evan was blurry, and never came into focus.

If I could have my crane wish...I don't know what it would be. The days have started to blend, like the first pastels of a much larger picture. The weeks are picking up speed just a little, but in return they're starting to pile on top of each other as I begin to count months instead. I'm getting used to the schedule, the diet, the area. The day I arrived here I stepped from bright sun into a dark room (or vice versa, if you prefer to see it that way) and it's taken 2 months for my eyes to start adjusting.

If I could have my crane wish it might be to be able to skip to the third or fourth month for every one of my future lives. Wouldn't everything go just swimmingly then.