There's a story about funiculars. I don't know what it is.
We all pick something in life to relate to. For me, I guess it's funiculars.
1
Once, I saw a funicular in grand-pop's scrapbook. In the photograph he was alone in a tramcar. He looked like he was going to fall asleep but he wanted to grab something from the air first. I couldn't see what was in his other hand but it was weighing him down. He wanted to be weighed down, he was grasping for something heavier. His hands were like funiculars themselves.
2
When I was eleven, I wrote a poem. It went: my heart is down.
3
I read a newspaper story about two lovers that got on different funicular cars. The writers of the newspaper article thought that they wanted to look at one another from a distance; test their affection in some way. Apparently something went wrong, the cable snapped, one car went up and the other went down. They could have been testing their ambivalence. I thought that they might have been farther from one another even before they died at different altitudes. If so, ambivalence won.
4
I don't know my new sister as well as I did my old one.
My old sister bought a kimono once when we went perusing through thrift stores looking for souvenirs for things we never experienced ourselves. The next time I saw her she was somebody else. She said that she felt more like herself. I couldn't understand it.
My sister is almost all geisha now. I think back on the years of seeing my sister for something she was not. It's like I knew someone that never existed. I wonder if you can yearn for something but not really know what it is.
I hear that when people are in funiculars they feel suspended. Like between places. I don't know if that makes much sense. But if it does, that's my sister's story. She just happened to be able to choose her place.
5
I don't want much out of life. I just want to die knowing that's OK.
6
Today, mother came by and dropped off groceries. She told me father's favorite foods were oranges and ice. As she said this- pulling apart from me- the bag fell and four oranges rolled along the floor. I told mother that I was okay by myself. I needed to distance myself from the family in order to know what was exactly myself and not someone else.
We looked at the oranges getting away. And then we looked at the spaces separating them from each other. I imagined a string that you could pull on and they'd all come together. That string didn't exist, but my mother did and she put them back in the bag. Funicular cars are like that, attached to each other.
7
The next line was: my heart is a downer. It should have been: my whole history drags me down.
8
Letter I wrote to a dead person:
Hello ______,
I know you are underground. But I wish I could bring you back up again.
9
I showed it to my sister and she said it screamed father issues. Like she didn't have them either. Maybe geishas don't have fathers. That's probably why they never look imperfect.
10
Funiculars were also used for royalty. They were a way for people and things to get to and from where the lord or count was. Imagine someone living in a place where no one else could get without funiculars. In a way, royals are people that don't want to feel like people anymore. I suppose the poor are the same; they just do the opposite thing. They live where anyone can get to but nobody wants to go.
10 continued
My family is moving through the limbos.
10 continued again
I want to be the brakesman.
11
In my life, whatever happens is never talked about. That's the way of things. It's like all those people that get stuck in a funicular car and try and call for help. Sometimes nobody can hear them, but other times there's no real way to reach them. They have to wait and see what happens. It's like nothing can change their fate.
12
Effete is me.
13
Noon
One day I'd like to go in a funicular tram myself. I want to see if it'll be like that Egyptian myth where they weigh your heart against a feather. I already know my heart weighs more than a feather. I think I've known it for a long time. Maybe I'll get to the funicular system and the cable cars will be perfectly balanced indefinitely. Maybe I'll never be able to get on them. Maybe I won't have a story to tell.