• TABLE OF CONTENT
    • the dreaming machine – issue number 16
    • the dreaming machine – issue number 15
    • the dreaming machine – issue number 14
    • the dreaming machine – issue number 13
    • the dreaming machine – issue number 12
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 11
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 10
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 9
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 8
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 7
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 6
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 5
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 4
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 3
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 2
    • The dreaming machine – issue number 1
  • THE DREAMING MACHINE
    • The dreaming machine n 16
    • The dreaming machine n 15
    • The dreaming machine n 14
    • The dreaming machine n 13
    • The dreaming machine n 12
    • The dreaming machine n 11
    • The dreaming machine n 10
    • The dreaming machine n 9
    • The dreaming machine n 8
    • The dreaming machine n 7
    • The dreaming machine n 6
    • The dreaming machine n 5
    • The dreaming machine n 4
    • The dreaming machine n 3
    • The dreaming machine n 2
    • The dreaming machine n 1
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The Dreaming Machine
  • Home
  • Poetry
    The God of Submission Loves Gentle Calves and Other Poems –  Yuliya Musakovska

    The God of Submission Loves Gentle Calves and Other Poems – Yuliya Musakovska

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    Hence, the walruses will keep our memories – Poems from Ikaro Valderrama’s Tengri: The Book of Mysteries

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    “When Crimea Was Not a Grief”: Six Poems by Lyudmyla Khersonska, from 21st Century Ukraine

    Of Hunger and Tents: Poems from Gaza by Yousef el-Qedra

    Of Hunger and Tents: Poems from Gaza by Yousef el-Qedra

    Ratko Lalić’s painting, a little Noah’s ark –  Božidar Stanišić  

    The region suddenly turned into a deciduous forest. Poems by Paulami Sengupta

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    A False Dimension: regarding the empty walls – Aritra Sanyal

  • Fiction
    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    The Importance of Being Imperfect – Haroonuzzaman

    THE STATE – Hamim Faruque

    THE STATE – Hamim Faruque

    Tempus Fugit (in D Minor) – Michele Carenini

    Tempus Fugit (in D Minor) – Michele Carenini

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    A Mirage of a Dream – Kazi Rafi

    Prologue to “Maya and the World of the Spirits” – Gaius Tsaamo

    Prologue to “Maya and the World of the Spirits” – Gaius Tsaamo

    RETRIBUTION – Mojaffor Hossain

    RETRIBUTION – Mojaffor Hossain

    A Nation’s Reckoning on a Rickshaw: Photogallery from Bangladesh in turmoil – Melina and Pina Piccolo

    Between Two Lives – Mojaffor Hossain

    A Nation’s Reckoning on a Rickshaw: Photogallery from Bangladesh in turmoil – Melina and Pina Piccolo

    The Amatory Rainy Night – Kazi Rafi

    Chapter 1 of “Come What May”, a detective story set in Gaza, by Ahmed Masoud

    Come What May, chpt. 11 – Ahmed Masoud

  • Non Fiction
    I AM STILL HERE: It’s not a movie, it’s a hymn to democracy – Loretta Emiri

    I AM STILL HERE: It’s not a movie, it’s a hymn to democracy – Loretta Emiri

    Requiem for a Mattanza – Gia Marie Amella

    Requiem for a Mattanza – Gia Marie Amella

    In Defense of T.C. Boyle: Satire in the Era of Psychological Realism – Clark Bouwman

    In Defense of T.C. Boyle: Satire in the Era of Psychological Realism – Clark Bouwman

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    That is the Face – Appadurai Muttulingam

    Langston Hughes: Shakespeare in Harlem – Barry David Horwitz

    Langston Hughes: Shakespeare in Harlem – Barry David Horwitz

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Understanding the Quintessential Divinity: Binding the Two Geographies – Haroonuzzaman

  • Interviews & reviews
    Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as  Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

    Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

    from The Creative Process: The Future of activism.  Bayo Akomolafe interviewed by Mia Funk and Natalie McCarthy

    from The Creative Process: The Future of activism. Bayo Akomolafe interviewed by Mia Funk and Natalie McCarthy

    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    from The Creative Process: A Life in Writing with T.C. Boyle, interviewed by Mia Funk & Cary Trott

    from The Creative Process: A Life in Writing with T.C. Boyle, interviewed by Mia Funk & Cary Trott

    Living as a painter: Shaun McDowell in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Living as a painter: Shaun McDowell in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

  • Out of bounds
    • All
    • Fiction
    • Intersections
    • Interviews and reviews
    • Non fiction
    • Poetry
    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Area Sacra at Torre di Largo Argentina —or, Calpurnia’s Dream – Laura Hinton

    from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

    from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    From The Stony Guests, Part IV: SIRAN BAKIRCI and SAIT B. KARAKAYA – Neil P. Doherty

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Chaos Theory – Michele Carenini

    Of People and Puppets, Kingdoms of Silence, Trauma and Storytelling: Review of “Azad, the rabbit and the wolf – Pina Piccolo

    Of People and Puppets, Kingdoms of Silence, Trauma and Storytelling: Review of “Azad, the rabbit and the wolf – Pina Piccolo

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Poetry is also born from Gesture – Ikaro Valderrama on Gestos de la Poesia, transnational poetry, multimedia and the energy of the Andes

    Poetry is also born from Gesture – Ikaro Valderrama on Gestos de la Poesia, transnational poetry, multimedia and the energy of the Andes

    A loneliness like an endless steppe – Poems from Maria Luisa Vezzali’s collection Home Ghost

    A loneliness like an endless steppe – Poems from Maria Luisa Vezzali’s collection Home Ghost

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Once the veil of artifice falls away: Poems by Haroonuzzaman

  • News
    Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live

    Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live

    PER/FORMATIVE CITIES

    PER/FORMATIVE CITIES

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5:  Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5: Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

  • Home
  • Poetry
    The God of Submission Loves Gentle Calves and Other Poems –  Yuliya Musakovska

    The God of Submission Loves Gentle Calves and Other Poems – Yuliya Musakovska

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    Hence, the walruses will keep our memories – Poems from Ikaro Valderrama’s Tengri: The Book of Mysteries

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    “When Crimea Was Not a Grief”: Six Poems by Lyudmyla Khersonska, from 21st Century Ukraine

    Of Hunger and Tents: Poems from Gaza by Yousef el-Qedra

    Of Hunger and Tents: Poems from Gaza by Yousef el-Qedra

    Ratko Lalić’s painting, a little Noah’s ark –  Božidar Stanišić  

    The region suddenly turned into a deciduous forest. Poems by Paulami Sengupta

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    A False Dimension: regarding the empty walls – Aritra Sanyal

  • Fiction
    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    The Importance of Being Imperfect – Haroonuzzaman

    THE STATE – Hamim Faruque

    THE STATE – Hamim Faruque

    Tempus Fugit (in D Minor) – Michele Carenini

    Tempus Fugit (in D Minor) – Michele Carenini

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    A Mirage of a Dream – Kazi Rafi

    Prologue to “Maya and the World of the Spirits” – Gaius Tsaamo

    Prologue to “Maya and the World of the Spirits” – Gaius Tsaamo

    RETRIBUTION – Mojaffor Hossain

    RETRIBUTION – Mojaffor Hossain

    A Nation’s Reckoning on a Rickshaw: Photogallery from Bangladesh in turmoil – Melina and Pina Piccolo

    Between Two Lives – Mojaffor Hossain

    A Nation’s Reckoning on a Rickshaw: Photogallery from Bangladesh in turmoil – Melina and Pina Piccolo

    The Amatory Rainy Night – Kazi Rafi

    Chapter 1 of “Come What May”, a detective story set in Gaza, by Ahmed Masoud

    Come What May, chpt. 11 – Ahmed Masoud

  • Non Fiction
    I AM STILL HERE: It’s not a movie, it’s a hymn to democracy – Loretta Emiri

    I AM STILL HERE: It’s not a movie, it’s a hymn to democracy – Loretta Emiri

    Requiem for a Mattanza – Gia Marie Amella

    Requiem for a Mattanza – Gia Marie Amella

    In Defense of T.C. Boyle: Satire in the Era of Psychological Realism – Clark Bouwman

    In Defense of T.C. Boyle: Satire in the Era of Psychological Realism – Clark Bouwman

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    That is the Face – Appadurai Muttulingam

    Langston Hughes: Shakespeare in Harlem – Barry David Horwitz

    Langston Hughes: Shakespeare in Harlem – Barry David Horwitz

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Understanding the Quintessential Divinity: Binding the Two Geographies – Haroonuzzaman

  • Interviews & reviews
    Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as  Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

    Michelle Reale’s Volta: An Italian-American Reckoning With Race. Necessary turnabouts as Columbus Day returns amidst Sinners’ vampires – Pina Piccolo

    from The Creative Process: The Future of activism.  Bayo Akomolafe interviewed by Mia Funk and Natalie McCarthy

    from The Creative Process: The Future of activism. Bayo Akomolafe interviewed by Mia Funk and Natalie McCarthy

    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    The Spanish Steps, Revisited: A Temporary Exhibition – A conversation with Sheila Pepe

    from The Creative Process: A Life in Writing with T.C. Boyle, interviewed by Mia Funk & Cary Trott

    from The Creative Process: A Life in Writing with T.C. Boyle, interviewed by Mia Funk & Cary Trott

    Living as a painter: Shaun McDowell in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Living as a painter: Shaun McDowell in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

    Calixto Robles and Ancestral Spirits in the Mission – A Conversation on Art, Society and Social Action

  • Out of bounds
    • All
    • Fiction
    • Intersections
    • Interviews and reviews
    • Non fiction
    • Poetry
    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Area Sacra at Torre di Largo Argentina —or, Calpurnia’s Dream – Laura Hinton

    from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

    from The Creative Process: TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE, interviewed by Mia Funk and Melannie Munoz

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    From The Stony Guests, Part IV: SIRAN BAKIRCI and SAIT B. KARAKAYA – Neil P. Doherty

    Eva Bovenzi: The inner world. The artist in conversation with curator Camilla Boemio

    Chaos Theory – Michele Carenini

    Of People and Puppets, Kingdoms of Silence, Trauma and Storytelling: Review of “Azad, the rabbit and the wolf – Pina Piccolo

    Of People and Puppets, Kingdoms of Silence, Trauma and Storytelling: Review of “Azad, the rabbit and the wolf – Pina Piccolo

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Poetry is also born from Gesture – Ikaro Valderrama on Gestos de la Poesia, transnational poetry, multimedia and the energy of the Andes

    Poetry is also born from Gesture – Ikaro Valderrama on Gestos de la Poesia, transnational poetry, multimedia and the energy of the Andes

    A loneliness like an endless steppe – Poems from Maria Luisa Vezzali’s collection Home Ghost

    A loneliness like an endless steppe – Poems from Maria Luisa Vezzali’s collection Home Ghost

    The Creeping of the Spirit of the Times and Other Poems – Pina Piccolo

    Once the veil of artifice falls away: Poems by Haroonuzzaman

  • News
    Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live

    Memorial Reading Marathon for Julio Monteiro Martins, Dec. 27, zoom live

    PER/FORMATIVE CITIES

    PER/FORMATIVE CITIES

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5:  Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5: Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

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Home Fiction

Everything – Mia Funk

December 6, 2018
in Fiction, The dreaming machine n 3
Everything – Mia Funk
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We’re all seated in the school gymnasium screaming for some reason. The teacher says this is called the Theatre of the Oppressed, and that’s why we are yelling and learning how to assert ourselves. We are stamping in place, and the guy next to me gets down on all fours and has to pretend to be my dog, while I pretend to walk him. Which is fun, I’ve never had a dog before. He looks up at me longingly and drools, gives me those big bashful eyes like dogs give, I guess, when they are trying to tell you something. Like they have to go to the bathroom. I don’t know, I’ve never had a pet before. This is all new to me.

I’d come to the evening acting class because the newspaper said it was free, not because I thought it would be run by a bunch of lunatics. Figures it would be run by a bunch of lunatics. Only lunatics give away anything for free. I wanted to practice my monologue from Nuts–which my other acting teacher says is too old for me–on a captive audience. Maybe we’ll have time after the break, Lauren says. After it’s my turn to play the dog. That’s what you think, I’m not playing a dog for anyone.

Lauren doesn’t like backtalk and now she’s addressing the rest of the class, giving me a complete blank. Must have offended her belief that acting is a higher calling, not just something that I can step into like a new pair of shoes and discard when I’m tired of it. Can’t tell her that I take it more seriously than that because she’s already made up her mind about me. To her I’m just this little know-it-all bitch, less than her somehow because I guess I’m pretty and she’s…don’t like to say these things cause I don’t think I’m all that, but some people are and some people aren’t and others would be practically invisible if they didn’t smear lipstick on their mouth. Which she does. Lipstick. Purple with shiny specks in it. Got a nick of it on her teeth when she was down on the ground showing us how to pretend to be a dog.

“The first lesson in acting. You have to submit yourselves. To something you might not be comfortable with. You’ve got to accept that you don’t know everything.” She talks slowly as if we’re all idiots or maybe she’s hard of hearing, and it takes a while for her to hear her own voice reverberating in her head. “Look,” she says, pointing to my dog, “that’s good acting. He’s so good he’s only short of peeing.”

Then she falls to the floor and rolls over and begins growling at my feet. Is this her weird way of putting me in my place? Am about to pat her on the head when my partner nudges me to follow cue. I guess she wants us all to drag our asses along the ground.

The rest of the group swallow her words as if they were divine. They are older, though, so I thought they’d be more immune to bullshit, but maybe they’re just desperate. It’s hard to watch them all crawling around on their knees as though this were some quick route to fame. De Niro––that’s my dog. She seemed surprised when I started calling him De Niro, but for me it’s a mark of respect. He’s so good lying on his back, indicating with his paws that I should rub his belly. My partner’s really into it, his tongue is out and he’s panting hard. I think it’s all he wants to be, and I look down at him: free or not free, it’s still humiliating.

When I tell Lauren that I can’t play dog (I pretend I’ve hurt my back), she says, “One day you’ll wish you had. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

How do I tell her that I already spend most of my time crawling around on the ground? The point of coming here was to find a way to crawl my way out of it, but you cannot tell this to people whose only experience of reality is through books and the plays they see. And sipping wine on the terrace during intermission talking about what it all meant.

Crawling on the floor with a fake dog collar around my neck is a form of middle class degradation that one day I hope my children will be ironic and fortunate enough to be able to endure, but is not my cup of tea.

Because I don’t want to play a dog, she says I can imagine I’m a chimpanzee behind bars, which is better by me. In fact, the zoo situation is preferable, at least they look after you. Funny cause when I was twelve and having “trouble adjusting”, I was sent to the principal. He told me there was a baby gorilla in a cage inside my belly and it was up to me to keep it under control. Now I move around my cage on all fours, imagining I’m a blue-butted baboon like I saw that last time my parents took me to the zoo, flashing everyone in the room. Get an eyeful of this purple haze.

“What are you doing?” Lauren asks me.

“I’m a baboon.”

“No, you are not. You’re a chimpanzee. This is not an improv class.” She walks off, and I hear her mutter something about respect and boundaries.

So I do as she says, trying to assume the pose of a chimpanzee, but in my mind I’m still thinking baboon.

This goes on for two hours, and it’s exhausting pretending to be an animal, not being able to talk, but only point and laugh and breathe with our mouths open. Our gym/rehearsal space smells of basketballs. By day it belongs to an elementary school, but in the evening it doubles as a community center offering afterschool care, classes in cooking, yoga and bizarre Brazilian acting techniques.

When the exercise is over, she asks us what we noticed when we were down there scrambling around the ground like our animal brethren. And several people shout things out, I think mainly because they’re happy to be able to talk again. They talk about getting in deep touch with their Feelings, Primal Emotions, and their Realization that we’re only animals after all. That kind of stuff. And I ask when we’ll get a chance to do our monologues, and Lauren, who has been trying to ignore me, finally can’t anymore. She says I can do mine if the rest of the class wants to hear it, which they say they do, and I can tell––despite her being such a good actress––she is really pissed.

I don’t know why I’m drawn to any scene that takes place in a courtroom, but Mrs. Drake didn’t want me to do it––and after I’d spent so long rehearsing in private, learning how to fall. There is a right way, and there is a wrong. Drake pounded that into my head. There is a right way and a wrong. To fall. Do it wrong and you’ll break something. I practiced for two weeks until I got it right.

And when I finally learned how to fall the right way, I was so proud and showed Drake, saying I wanted to perform it for the school talent show. But she said I couldn’t, that it just wasn’t a good idea, and I didn’t understand why she wasn’t allowing me. I knew my lines by heart. “Ellen,” she says gently, because she’s actually one of the nicer teachers, “don’t you understand, that character…she’s a prostitute.”

And I don’t know why I didn’t understand until then. I’d found the scene in a book of monologues that didn’t explain the whole story. I just liked the words––put me on the goddam stand, don’t whip me with your goddam rules. While you’re playing with your rules, the meter is running out on my goddamn life.

But now Lauren says I have five minutes, and I’m so happy that I’m finally getting a chance to play my part, but my voice is low so I’m kind of crap. I’m not sure, I just know I don’t do it as well as I thought I could. Can see their attention drifting, so instead of playing it as I usually do, dry-eyed, I decide to cry. Make a big production of it and they start paying attention again––

Can’t you get that I understand you want to help, and I don’t want your help? I know the price of your help. These words catch me right in the throat, they’re what start me crying: I know I’m supposed to be a good little girl for my mother and father. Like I wrote them myself, and it’s like I’m not even acting anymore, just a girl, alone onstage, talking: So don’t judge me…I knew what I was doing every goddam minute. And I am responsible…I go down on my knees, I’m responsible. If I play the part you want me to play, if I play sick for you, I won’t be responsible…I won’t play that part…I won’t be nuts for you.

I don’t even have to think about the fall, when the line comes my ankle slips and I give way. At the end everyone claps, but I’m not sure if it’s for me or because I’m the youngest one there, the only one in high school. Can they tell this? Can they see my age? Most men can’t tell, they say, they had no idea. I look twenty or twenty two, they say. Because I speak well, in complete sentences? Or is it the shadows already under my eyes?

For some reason the class ends with everyone falling asleep on the floor in a circle, like a yoga session. I wake up, and the guy who’s been my dog partner does too. Lauren’s not let us talk this whole time, and it’s weird to see him as a person again and not a dog. He’s kind of cute, I think, older, but not too much. And I like older because at least they aren’t so full of themselves, trying to put you down as a mode of flirtation cause it makes them feel like men.

I want so much to be a woman, I think. Now. If I could just do it now, get it out of the way while they’re all sleeping around us. The older actress next to me with long grey hair to her waist and Lauren, on my left, lying in a corpse pose. I get up quietly and, as though we had the same mind, he follows me to the hallway just behind the gymnasium. There’s a drinking fountain set into the wall which has kindergarten drawings on craft paper taped at eye-level. Crayon suns and cars and badly drawn children with hands like spiders and heads too big for their bodies.

He comes up behind and asks me what I’m thinking and I say that, “I think once I must have made drawings like that, but none of them survive.”

And he says I’m lucky, that his mother still keeps all that stuff and it’s embarrassing.

I tell him my family moved around a lot, which is what I always say even though it’s not exactly true. And he asks where my mother is, and I say that my mother is picking me up after class and I realize that he’s very close to me now and although I had not thought of him that way when I was walking him around the block and letting him pee on my pretend fire hydrant, now his face is handsomer than I saw before when it had just seemed cute. He has little curls, the kind I used to wish I had, but have since grown out of wanting. Dad would have called him girly. That’s okay, I like girly-looking. Makes a change from manly jerks pretending they don’t give a shit about anything. He has large eyes, watchful ones and they are roaming all over me. I turn away from him, back to the children’s drawings which all look so gross and adorable.

“Look at that one,” I say, pointing to what I think is the most imaginative one of all, of a giant blue monster swallowing a house.

“Wonder what his home life was like,” he says. “I liked your monologue.”

I’m not good at taking compliments. It all sounds like criticism.

“Oh,” I say, “I’ll get better.” Trying to get the attention off me, I point at another drawing more real than the others. “You see this one?” It’s of a family in a crayon station wagon who took a turn too fast and ploughed right into the back of an ice cream truck and died.

He says I’m the one with the imagination. “You see all that in that? All I see is two cars.”

“Well, it’s there…if you look closely.” Can’t remember anything else about that day, except us kids were in the back screaming and Mom turned around for just a second and…I go quiet and he takes my hand.

 

All the other classrooms have been locked, but one is left open, and we find a place on the floor of Room 103, beneath Mrs. Chandler’s blackboard. Must be third or fourth grade because the class is learning cursive. Letters are large and spaced out and so carefully drawn. A long time since I thought about that, how long it took to learn the alphabet. I’m hoping what he is going to teach me I can learn much quicker.

And he is kissing and touching me, and I am over him like before, but without a leash, and his tongue is back in his head and his eyes are opened, looking at me confused and moist like he wants to tell me something.

I think I know what he wants to tell me, his eyes studying me now. But it’s not what I think. He pushes me back off him and sees that I’m much younger than I told him and can’t do this, he says, even as he is kissing me. Even as I am pushing my breasts into his open palms and the pleasure of this touching, pink against white like petals and the waves of movement we are caught up in until it breaks and recedes like a flood.

And I tell him he doesn’t have to worry. That no one is coming to pick me up. That I have no mother and no father. That I will be walking home alone where I sleep in the basement of my school.

And he looks at me like he doesn’t believe me, but he does because if I was acting I would be crying and I’m not. It’s just a fact of life and I’m getting on with mine, alone. Stop your whining, my last foster mother said and so I did, walked right out of there.

That would be an interesting backstory if I was an actress who needed to find some reason to make me cry. But it never makes me cry. When I want that I don’t think of all the things I have, I think of the things I never had. That does it. The tears, they call that acting. Other people, it’s just their life. I remember the first time I thought––maybe this is something I could do. I hide my feelings all the time, that’s a given. I mean you’d want to be stupid to share them with everyone, but acting, up there, you’re trying so hard to remember the words that you forget, you know, just for a second to hide all those things you’re supposed to keep hidden. It comes out, when you’re searching for a word, your face betrays you. It’s like a trance state, I feel, when you’re doing it right. First time I came up to the front of class and all these things I kept to myself in a few minutes unravelled, and it had nothing to do with the role I was playing, I was being Cordelia, a queen, all these things I always wanted to be, but my words, my face, gave it away, that underneath I was this sham thing holding onto to my dignity, and at the end of my little soliloquy I thought I’d messed up, missed lines, but I hadn’t cause when I came out of it they were all clapping like for the first time I’d done something good. What in real life they turn away from, pretend not to notice, on stage earns you applause.

He doesn’t know what to say to this, and I see that thing in his face that is the worst thing to see in another person’s eyes, that look that they are feeling sorry for you. And I can see he can hardly fathom how I live, the idea of going through life without a mother, and what he says next he means I guess. Or I don’t know.

He says, one day I’ll be a great actress. The rest of them back there, they’re just faking it, but to me it means everything.

 

 

 

Mia Funk is an artist, writer, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process  traveling exhibition and international educational initiative. Her portraits of writers and artists appear in many public collections, including the U.S. Library of Congress, Dublin Writers Museum, Office of Public Works, American Writers Museum (forthcoming), and other museums and culture centers.
As a writer and interviewer, she contributes to various national publications. She served on the National Advisory Council of the American Writers Museum 2016-17. Funk has received many awards and honors, including the Prix de Peinture from the Salon d’Automne de Paris and has exhibited at the Grand Palais, Paris. She was commissioned by the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival to paint their 30th-anniversary commemorative painting of over 20 jazz legends. Her paintings of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud won the Thames & Hudson Pictureworks Prize, were nominated for Aesthtica Magazine’s Art Prize, and were exhibited in Brussels for Bacon’s centenary, in Paris at the American University, as well as international arts festivals in Europe.
The Creative Process is honored to welcome The Dreaming Machine to our network of international literary journals publishing our interviews. Creative works by Dreaming Machine writers also joins contributors from over fifty countries featured in the projection elements of our traveling exhibition.
The Creative Process exhibition is being held at leading universities, culture centers, libraries, and museums around the world. If you or your organization would like more information on participating in The Creative Process, contact mia@creativeprocess.info

 

 

Cover image:  Original artwork by Mia Funk

Tags: actingfeelingsidentityloveMia Funkorphanperformancepowerreal lifeshort storystageTheater of the Oppressedtragedy
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