scrytch: barak

by Darren Bauler

it's an israeli word. it's kinda like character, though it holds more of a japanese flavour than american. when something has been worn/used/done so many times it obtains a certain feeling, becomes a locus for memory, a way of crystallizing nostalgia and dream into something you could hold in your hand. barak.

("hi, my name is _______. it's good to finally meet you. you are, y'know, kinda quiet sometimes.")

in the attic of my parent's house is a dictionary i was given on my seventh birthday. on the inside flap i wrote my name and age. when i turned eight, i wrote my name in age in as well, directly beneath the first. i don't know why i did it, it was never a plan, i just opened it up and wrote in it. i've done this every year. it's amazing how much something like a name can bring back; when i was twelve and tried to write my name in a pseudo-venice beach graffiti style, when i was sixteen and wrote it with no capitol letters, when i was twenty-one and tried to write it like an adult. it's still there. i haven't done it yet this year; i visited my folks this past weekend, i shoulda gotten it, but i didn't. i don't know why.

("why don't you ever look at people? and why are you so quiet? i mean, i don't wanna make you uncomfortable or nothin', i just wanna know, s'all.")

when i was ten i was wandering around my neighborhood, trying to find adventure, or some way to eat up one of the last small days of summer vacation. in the ditch near a cornfield, i saw something. it was a toy motorcycle with a plastic figure sitting on it. i picked it up and hid it under my shirt (very subtle, indeed) and ran the whole way home to play with my treasure. i broke and subsequently lost the motorcycle, but i still have the figure; he's currently hanging from a nail next to my closet.

("what are you thinking about? no. no, i don't buy that, you're not thinking about nothing. just tell me. how can you not know what you were thinking about? why don't you want to tell me?")

when i turned 16 my parents gave me a hand-me-down car. '84 buick skylark. i drove that car into the ground; over cornfields and through mud, mowed down mailboxes and spun donuts in church parking lots, tried (and failed) to drive to iowa city. i basically killed it a couple years back, shot clean through; every time i tried to drive it the car shuddered and stalled. but i still miss that fucked-up car, sometimes.

("jesus, you never talk to me, and when you do it's like you're not even there. you never touch me, except maybe to give me a hug once in a while, and you are not an erotic hugger. christ, it's like you don't even like me, sometimes.")

pencils. shoestring. plastic spacemen. index cards. photographs. newspaper clippings. coasters. bottles of sand. glass eyes. scrapbooks.

("do you love me?")

my grandmother used to place five glasses of water around her bed before she went to sleep. in the morning, she would pour the water into a large mason jar, seal it and write the date on a piece of masking tape she stuck to the lid. she was convinced when she drank this water, later, she would remember that night's dreams. in the basement, in a hallway behind my grandfather's workshop, past where he kept boxes of dried walnuts, behind old bicycle wheels and metal signs of products gone missing, there was a room where she kept the bottles, vast and terrifying.

("why don't you love me?")

barak.