Aida Noriega-Toledo

Interrupted Memories (unGrammar)

Nelson Braddock had just recently seen Kansas circles fallen asleep and woken to hills with black specks This is what, he started thinking before the stewardess managed to distract him to ask, Water? The land turned to white ash with only a few remaining specks, like the anthills Nelson used to destroy and check on an hour later. Yea, Nelson thought, this is…Again a woman interrupted him. Will you be using your earphones, young man? A flat plateau on top of an elevated hill appeared covered in white. Beneath and beyond the black ant specks took over. It’s like…No, not a voice interrupted but a cry. BUUAAAA followed by the infant’s mother’s voice. Shshshshsh honey bun everything’s alright now More white, more majestic and fluffy in a twisting continuous line That’s like the houses in…Turbulence A border separates the hills and highlands and the circles appear again Circles with squares Then a big blot of gray-green then white fluff then who knows Before he falls asleep he thinks Looks like no doesn’t remind me of anything

                                    Nostalgia blooms  (unGrammar)

the day you leave
summer flowers will bloom
heat will filter through the cold you love so
and leaves will be envy green

el dia que te vayas
my hair will shine as never before
under the 3:45 p.m. sun
my skin will turn soft from the air’s moisture

once you leave
my footsteps will synchronize
only with themselves
and maybe your memory

y cuando te vayas niño
we will no longer be
the I you knew
and the you I knew

ever see each other again
ni dios lo sabe

because once you are gone,
 niño de ojos rasgados
piel perla y rosados labios
mi nostalgia estará a flor de piel 

                                                                                                        
The Revival of Edgar Allan Poe

I was never quite fond of the after life. Everyone thought I was obsessed with it, that my reason for living was writing stories of death. They said I was a madman, who drank himself to death. At my funeral, several said I died of love, and then there were the select few who simply shook their heads while making that awful clucking noise with their tongues, much like John Allan. Now, years later, scientists claim I was bitten by a mad dog and died of rabies. Frankly I could care less, but, since this last hypothesis led to the excavating of my former being, and, you see, at the moment of the excavation, I was enjoying a nice 158 year nap, and moment of peace, you might say, from this “tormented life”, as scholars usually frolic around saying about the unfortunate series of events called my life.

If anyone knows me, (and very few do), they know that I simply despise being roused from a slumber because, when awake, I cannot be without activity. Unfortunately, the activities which I love involve a body. It is for that reason that I began looking for a body. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I went out and murdered someone in some gory fashion, but once again I prove my hypothesis, you do not know me at all. I wouldn’t say I murdered him completely. How could I have used the body if it were not alive? Really now, do think reasonably. No, I only took out his soul, you see. The soul weighs 21 grams, and all I did was replace someone else’s 21 grams with mine. Now, you must be wondering how I did that. So as to not leave you with your own imagination, seeing as I cannot trust anyone’s imagination in regard to me, I shall tell you how I permanently borrowed Edgar Martinez’s body.

I must say at first, that we, the deceased, always wonder what it would be like to have been someone different from our original persona. And honestly, I, having been awoken, decided to explore my options. First, I traveled the world. I went all over. I thought Europe would satisfy me, but it was quite bland to tell the pure truth. Although, my stay in Spain did instigate me to consider a Spanish speaking person as a candidate. From there I returned to the United States, having been told, or rather having tuned into a conversation, about the foreigners in the country, and their bilingual qualities. It seemed that the best place to go would be New York, it being closer by. So off I went, and indeed I found a variety of Spanish speakers, who spoke English as well. After all, I did not yet know if my transition into the other’s brain would instantly program me to speak Spanish or not. While I was  in New York, and was walking down the Bronx on a wonderfully gloomy night, when I happened to fall upon a twenty-year-old boy named Edgar Martinez. At sight of him, I knew he was the best candidate. His hair was long and black, his clothes were as black as his hair, and although his complexion was dark, his eyes were hazel-gray, much like mine. I followed him home and was about to take upon him when I realized I did not know how. So off I went to plot out my plan and plan out my plot.

The first step was to observe the detachment of a soul from the body. I went to a hospital for that. My arrival coincided with the arrival of an ailing boy shot sixteen times. It took close to two minutes for his soul to float out from his body. I instantly went over to him and expressed my grievances upon his death. I then asked him if he could possibly attempt diving back in just as an experiment. Well, he did, but he bounced back. Right then, another soul came from the next room and told the pair of us that this process could really only work if the body was in between life and death, or else sleep. This soul, named Marvin, also instructed me in the art of possessing a body. He said a body could not live without a mind; however, there were times when the body preferred not to live and rejected the mind for making it do harmful things, such as drinking alcohol in large amounts (If only I’d known). We spoke of other things, but it does not come to any consequence, so let me just say that we parted amiably and I went off to carry out the plan.

What kind of intellectual would I be if I did not first study the subject? I arrived at Edgar’s room at four o’clock in the morning. He was lying on his bed, reciting one of my poems coincidentally. I believe it was “The Raven.” His voice carried off so nicely,  and at the end of the poem he even translated it into Spanish. I have yet to find a voice which does not carry off nicely when reciting “The Raven,” in whatever language,; but somehow there are those who find remarkable ways of slaughtering it. One mongrel even attempted to adapt it to a strange new rhythm called Rap. Fortunately, Edgar kept true to the poem’s essence. It was then that I was convinced it had to be him and no one else. I really felt horrible for the next thing I did, but in order for his body to reject him I really did have to force him into “incorrect” behavior. I did everything I could including constantly yelling whenever he fell asleep (poor boy slept two hours on average every night for the next two months), murmuring thoughts of alcoholism, and making things disappear or changing their location from the one where he left them.  I began with small and insignificant items such as a salt shaker here and there, then promoted myself up to the milk carton (apparently, when the carton remains outside of the cold long enough it begins to drown an apartment the size of Edgar’s with a horrible stench. Not that I could smell it, but I could tell from Edgar’s new tradition of wearing nose plugs). I changed the location of the carton often so as to not give him a chance of tracing the smell. In addition, I sometimes let him oversleep by reciting a few soothing verses so he would not have time for eating and would be required to run (and sometimes trip) to his early class. As for his education, twenty page essays bizarrely disappeared from the lighted box he kept in his room.

 During the first two weeks he complained of head, stomach, and chest aches, and of insomnia. He saw a doctor, who gave him these new inventions called sleeping pills, but I hid them, and when he went to the pharmacist to purchase another bottle, they refused under the suspicion of drug abuse. This was about the time when he considered the possibility that something  supernatural was interceding with his life, and so brought the topic up at the Sunday lunch table with his family (a day I overly enjoyed since it gave me the opportunity to practice my Spanish). His younger siblings usually spoke Spanglish and his parents always struggled to force them into strictly Spanish, but the three little girls would only go through this strife when it came to their Abuelita. They had no choice since,  Abuelita could not speak English (or rather did not want to speak it), despite her twelve-year stay in New York. I suppose that is the reason why Abuelita was my favorite, and it killed me so to take away her oldest grandson. That day was likely to be the loneliest day of Edgar’s life. His siblings and cousins laughed while his mother was near to tears, and his father wore a stern face, much like the one he wore when Edgar decided to drop out of the military and instead major in Literature. Edgar was told to leave and to come back only when he had gone to a psychiatrist. 

Of course, I am human, (well, sort of) and I do feel guilt and remorse, but I also know my rights. I was not given fair chance when I was alive, and it is my right in this universe to take my fair chance, so I took it. Besides, Edgar was already three-fourths of the way there. The next month was his last.

Isolated from his family and friends, tired, and expelled due to failing grades, I was the only company Edgar had. He, or rather we, spent the day on the couch, eating chips, the only food source he could afford. Economically, we would have to leave the apartment (previously paid for by the full scholarship from Columbia) by the last Friday of the month. Just as I’d planned, I took over his body on Thursday. It was night, and as a farewell to his apartment, Edgar decided to sleep on the balcony, to look at the stars. This night I let him sleep with a slight overdose of sleeping pills. If there is something I always remember from my own death, it is that your soul detaches itself before the body actually dies. At the time at which Edgar’s floated off, I slipped in.

It is a strange feeling, incarnation is. Nothing is truly new, just enhanced. I remembered the feeling of sweat on the tips of my fingers,  just as I remembered how my  muscles always  creaked upon my awakening every morning while I was still myself,; but all of this came all of a sudden and seemed to slap me awake. Eyelids flickering open, I awoke looking at the stars in the sky, which was framed by the four adjoining apartment building walls. The milk stench I had caused filtrated through my nostrils and, breathing in this odor vigorously, I came to life.