"Cada Cabeza es un Mundo"

It is said that every head is a world. Each person knows only how he or she views the world around them and nothing of the views of the next person. It is only in literature that we can explore the varying view points of people as individuals. It is in literature that we be free to think outside ourselves and see the world through the eyes of another. With literature gain a better understanding of our own thoughts, our own dreams, and our own fears. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, we march with a boy through his jarring shift into the responsibilities of adulthood. In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, we watch a man’s viewpoint change. In “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, we see a mother wishing that her daughter would know that she’s not helpless, hinting that the mother had felt the same.

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the main character of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, is madly in love with a girl named Martha. Jimmy is so in love with her that he would pretend that she loved him too, even though he knew that she really didn’t.

Mr. O’Brien further displays the depth to which the character Jimmy takes his self-delusion, writing, “He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into his daydreams…” (O’Brien, 421) This level of distraction is dangerous in any setting, but even more so in the situation Jimmy Cross finds himself, in the Vietnam War. Amid the lists of things the soldiers had to carry, O’Brien takes the briefest of moments to foreshadow Jimmy’s realization with the following two sentences:

O’Brien has Jimmy’s shift, the realization of the danger his self-made distraction, come from the death of one of the men under his command, Ted Lavender. “Lieutenant Cross felt the pain,” O’Brien wrote of Jimmy’s budding insight, and it heralded the guilt that finally carries Jimmy to his transformation. (O’Brien, 419)

Jimmy’s transformation takes him away from the child-like actions of waste and daydream toward the consequence-minded responsibility of an adult. O’Brien lets us look into the affects of Jimmy’s child-like attitude by showing us the waster of the unit as a whole as he writes, “Purely for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow their Claymores and grenades, no matter, because by nightfall the resupply choppers would arrive with more of the same…” (O’Brien, 424) There’s a marked lack of weight associated with this action. The soldiers didn’t have the maturity to carry on despite the weight of things pressing down on them. It was with the death of Ted Lavender that Jimmy sees that “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.” (O’Brien, 425)

Even as one character in my readings grows from child to adult, another is maturing in a different way. In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, we watch a man’s viewpoint of the world and his relation to it changes. The narrator in “Cathedral” begins the story blind, in a sense, to the grand scale and beauty of the world around hi. His eyes function, as any other person’s would, but he is wrapped up in his own small view of the world, so much so that he seems blind to everything else.

“He was no one I knew,” wrote Raymond Carver in the voice of the narrator of the story when the narrator’s wife told him of their so-to-be houseguest. (Carver, 90) It’s clear from this sentence that the narrator is uncomfortable outside his own well-defined and known world. Even when the narrator and his wife sat down to listen to one of the tapes from Robert, the blind man, the narrator was shocked to hear his own name coming from Robert’s voice on the tape. It clearly disturbed him to have a blind man whom he’d never met speak about him. When the narrator and his wife get interrupted and never manage to get back to the tape, the narrator seems uneasily relieved, in Carver’s passage, “I’d heard all I wanted to. Now this same blind man was coming to sleep in my house.” (Carver, 92) This sentiment carries on through the dinner conversation, as the narrator “waited in vain to hear [his] name on [his] sweet wife’s lips..” (Carver, 95)

The narrator’s turning point comes to him in small skips throughout their evening, as he makes small admissions to himself. “I remembered having read somewhere that the blind didn’t smoke because, …they couldn’t see the smoke they exhaled. I thought I knew that much about blind people.” (Carver, 94) “I watched with admiration as he used his knife and fork on the meat.” (Carver, 95) The narrator feels further rapport with Robert when stay up to watch TV together. On TV is a late night show about cathedrals. At first, the narrator is silent, watching the show without comment, but the way Robert is sitting unnerves him. Robert sat with his head turned to point his right ear to the TV, which angled his face toward the narrator. Compelled, the narrator finally spoke up, trying to describe what he was seeing, what a cathedral looked like.

The narrator’s epiphany is not the blinding touch of insight of Jimmy in O’Brien’s story, but rather in Carver’s ”Cathedral”, the narrator’s understand comes in the form of the hours long drawn session with Robert. Robert suggested that they draw a cathedral when he heard the frustration that was implied in the word choice of Carver’s text as the narrator gives up trying to describe a cathedral. At Robert’s suggestion and prodding, the narrator moves off to collect the needed materials and they sit together to draw. Robert holds the narrator’s hand, verbally leading him through the drawing. When the drawing is done, the narrator is left with a sense of being a part of something more than himself, and his elation can be felt in Carver’s words “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.” (Carver, 101)

The final story, Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” shows a mother wishing that her daughter would know that she’s not helpless which hints that the mother had felt the same at some point in her life. “I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron,” the mother, our story’s narrator, states at the start of the tale to an unseen audience. (Olsen, 467) She’s talking to someone, by the tone, but she’s always talking to herself as the story continues and she wonders if she’s being asked about her daughter “…because I am her mother [and] I have a key…” (Olsen, 467) However, the mother admits that she can’t see into her daughter’s life since “There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me.” (Olsen, 467)

Unlike the other two stories, where we get to walk through the journey of self discovery, the mother in “I Stand Here Ironing” has already had hers and the journey is one of sadly recalling how long it took to learn what was learned. We get to see all those decisions made by an indecisive young mother, from feedings to daycare to hospitalization. We can feel the heartache in the choices she has to make at the time, and see what she sees in her daughter’s expressions and actions that were born from the lack of warmth and love she had given to her other children later in life. In the end, the mother wanted her audience, this mysterious unseen figure to “…help [my daughter] to know – help make it so there is cause for her to know – that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.” The mother, with this admission, felt helpless and crushed under all the choices she had made that didn’t allow her to spend as much time with her daughter as her daughter may have needed when she was younger.

The jarring shift that we see as Jimmy Cross in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” had to me, and just like the first lieutenant, I can give a specific date for mine: January 8, 2008. It was about 8 o’clock at night, after the c-section, and I’m lying in the recovery room, waiting:

I hadn’t realized that shift was so dramatic until a full year after that moment, when I was rereading some of my journal entries, of which the above is one, and writing a year in review sort of thing for a letter to my family living across the state and in other countries.

Years later, as I take time from homework to work on scholarship essays, I find myself constantly returning to my life as a mother. My viewpoint of the world has changed. I think, even three years ago, before my daughter was born, I was very concerned with myself. I was blind to the importance of thinking outside myself and my immediate surroundings. Like the narrator in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” it took being lead by the hand to see clearly. For the narrator in “Cathedral”, it was a blind man. For me, it was my child.

My child now means more to me than anything else. Weekly, I find myself sitting next to my husband and starting a discussion about how we should work things out to our daughter’s benefit. We discuss schools and books and movies and all sorts of things. I know that at times, I feel helpless, wishing I had known more or known better. The only thing I can do is make the best for my daughter as she grows. I am so very like the mother in “I Stand Here Ironing”, only I am blessed that I can read the story, feel what she felt, and learn to make better choices, hoping before my daughter is impacted negatively.

"Finals"

Notebooks thunder shut

Backpacks shuffle and hide

The professor arrives

Behind him, the door tolls for me

Graduation's pall-bearer approaches

Carefree days slosh about I nmy memory

j.cuervo pours another round of shots

while procrastination laughs out loud

a fat man screams failure in my head

and a little boy steals my dreams

the test page blank before me

blame points with her finger,

and I'm pointing at my reflection.

DZ-2KCZ

Distant Vietnam;

2 Kilometers of Communist Zephyrs.

Distorted Valor;

2 Kills by the Country's Zealot.

Disabled Vet;

2 Kisses and a Cubic Zirconium.

Delicious Vegetables;

2 Kitchens with Cooked Zucchini.

Dear Vitality;

2 Kids at the County Zoo.

Disabled Vet;

2 Kettles of Chamomile Zen.

Double Vision;

2 Kegs then Crash Zoom.

Dynasty Vanquished;

2 Kilns with Cremated Zombies.

"Q-Tip"

I can hear a scrapping sound as the drawer in the bathroom opens, and light pours into the drawer I’m in. My rest is jarred by a hand dipping into the clear plastic box I lay in with my relatives. I cling to a cousin, our white cotton tips intertwined for an eternal heartbeat. I feel myself stretching. Then with a jolt, I’m suddenly free. End over fluff-covered end, I fall. I bounce against the edge of the box and tumble onto the bottom of the drawer. With a heavy thud, a blue tube of deodorant lands beside me. A cloud of baby power and pears bellows out from the blue tube. Vibrations rattle through me as the drawer is slammed shut and darkness blankets everything around me. In the blackness, white letters glow.

Secret. Asian Pear & Baby Powder.

“Hello,” I call to the deodorant before me. It doesn’t answer.

Hours pass and the vibration of the drawer bring a bright light that wakes me. I see the deodorant being lifted away from me, and I call out.

“Goodbye, Asian Pear! Goodbye!” Again, it doesn’t answer. Maybe I’m just not loud enough. Hopefully, Asian Pear comes back and we can continue our conversation.

“What were we talking about,” I wonder, slightly pensive. I spot some toothpaste, and rock with joy.

“You’ll talk to me, won’t you, Colgate,” I pipe up cheerfully. The deodorant thuds next to me again, no doubt keeping Colgate from answering. Asian’s not very sweet; despite her delicate perfume. The drawer closes and snuffs out any further questions.

It repeats, the drawer scrapping open, various neighbors leaving without a word, returning the same way, and the drawer slamming shut. Each time, I try and try to get someone’s attention. Each time, I call out to Asian, to Colgate, even to the hundreds of cousins of mine still lying peaceful and ignorant in their clear plastic box. I wonder when they’ll realize that every day there remain fewer and fewer of them. I wordlessly watch their numbers dwindle, fascinated by their disappearance, curious about where they go when they leave the drawer. Perhaps those left in the box think that I too went to the Light, and that they don’t realize that I fell instead, that I’m lying here watching them disappear while I age and collect dust.

Asian leaves one day, as does Colgate, and do not return. The oddity pulls me from the relentlessly repetitive feel of my life. They had never left together before. A bright pink box blocks my view of the q-tip box. “Baby Safe Cotton Swabs,” I read silently. As the drawer rolls shut I about jump for joy.

“Baby Safe! Hi! Welcome to the Drawer! How are you,” I bubble out into the darkness. Silence is my only reply. Maybe Baby’s too scared to answer. It is very dark in the drawer at night. Mayhap I’ll just wait until the day returns, with a scrape and a bump. Unless, Asian got to Baby. Asian told Baby not to talk to me. Yes, that’s exactly what happened. Asian and Colgate are waiting just outside, telling new arrivals that I am not worth speaking to. Damn that Asian Pear! For all her sweetness, she sure is a stinky bit of deodorant.

Again I find myself unable to make sense of the days and nights, and as Baby’s silence continues, I find myself once more fascinated by the dwindling numbers of q-tips in the pink box before me. I’m only grateful for the change between day and night, light and darkness. For with it comes the vibration of the drawer that shakes off a bit of the dust that gathers on me, even if the errant strands of hair and cat fur make me unhappy.

Baby’s turn to leave comes soon enough, as glitter power brushes and little girl hair ties replace the pink box from before. No sooner do I work up the courage to say hello than the glitter and hair bows leave. Nail polish, lipstick, and perfume take their place. I sigh, and give up, just as long-nailed fingers collect me carefully and hoist me into the light.

“Ew, Mom! This q-tip’s gross,” I hear. The first words not my own that I’ve ever heard.

“Well, if you cleaned out your bathroom drawers more often…”

“Hey! It wasn’t me with the q-tips! This must’ve been one of yours.”

My heart sinks as I feel myself falling, end over dust-covered frizzy end.

"Secret Agent Man"

Jose walked into class and took the nearest empty chair. It sat front and center. He slid his navy blue backpack off his shoulder, settled into the desk, and adjusted his dark blue denim jacket, fingers brushing the Falcons pin on the right lapel. The backpack dropped into a lump at his feet, unremarkable save for the button that read “Have an exit strategy” in bold red print. The overhead light reflected off the lenses of his square framed silver and red glasses. To his right, by the large windows that overlooked the quad, a fellow student had brought her daughter to class. He ran his hand over his short black hair as the class waited for the professor. It would have curled, if it were long enough. The professor walked in, set his briefcase on the desk, and opened it.

“Jose,” the professor said, “It’s time for you to die.”

From the open briefcase the professor drew a large Tommy gun and leveled it at Jose. Desks and chairs scratched the tile floor as his classmates ducked for cover. Jose threw himself from his desk, delicate hands grabbing his backpack. All around him, the class pulled guns from their purses and bags. Jose was surrounded.

He rushed the nearest classmate, the mother, throwing his navy backpack in front of him. Shocked, she caught the backpack with both hands. Jose leapt at her and planted a kick in his backpack. The force sent the backpack into her chest, and she reeled backwards. Jose landed nimbly on his brown and blue tennis shoes, dropping to a crouch just as another student fired a sawed-off shotgun in his direction. The blast sent a half dozen other students and the professor flailing backwards.

Jose grabbed a nearby desk, flung it at the student wielding the shotgun, the rolled toward the student with his backpack just as the gunfire from the others started.

In one smooth motion, Jose spun his classmate around and used her as a shield from the gunfire. As her body convulsed before him, he pulled out two pistols of his own from the backpack in her hands. Gore splattered across the front of his denim jacket and the light blue workman’s shirt he wore. He kicked his classmate’s bullet-riddled corpse at the remaining five students. As they flinched back, Jose ran two steps then dropped to the floor. He slid across the tile, khaki work pants tearing at a knee. Each offending classmate received two bullets. The first bullet, Jose fired into a kneecap. The second, as the knee disappeared in a fine red mist, into the head as each student fell in turn. Knee, head; it was a combination Jose had spent years perfecting at the agency. Jose stood smoothly at the end of his slide, surveying the carnage. He smiled his silly little smile as all went silent.

In the silence, Jose held his smoking pistols aloft and in unison, gave them a shake. Emptied magazines dropped from them, and clattered on the floor at his feet. A soft whimper echoed from under the professor’s desk.

His head snapped toward the sound while his hands clicked fresh magazines into his pistols. He moved over carefully, pistols leveled and trigger fingers at the ready. He spun around the corner of the desk. The little girl, his classmate’s daughter, sat curled up around herself, hugging her teddy bear. She turned large frightened eyes on him. He paused.

“Are you ok,” Jose murmured softly. His thin lips and small mouth hardly moved.

With a sob, the girl threw herself into his legs, hugging him for comfort. Jose brought one pistol up to a shoulder and tucked the other pistol into his belt.

“Come on. I’ll get you out of here,” he said, and turned to lead the way toward the door. The sound of a single round being chambered stopped him cold.

Behind him, a deafening bang sent shivers up his spine. The noise snapped his chin up from his chest. A line of drool snaked down the stubble on his chin, and he blinked his eyes several times. Forcing his eyes to focus, he looked behind him with his heart in his throat. His classmate’s daughter sheepishly collected the book she had dropped. The professor walked in, set his briefcase on the desk, and opened it.

"Remorse"

The combatants flocked to the shade. In a swirl of colored skirts, I fetched them drinks from a large ice chest.
“Role-play court is being called. Those with pre-assigned roles need to get to their areas so that we can begin,” Rick heralded. His chest puffed with self-importance.
The dozen or so youngster, all dressed in costume, left the shade and made their way toward other benches and trees nearby. Alone in my make-believe tavern, I saw my friend David sitting under a bench not far away. He wore black shredded garb and sat tethered by his wrists, looking dejected.
I collected a water bottle from the ice, and hid my foam fighting dagger under my cloak. I strode toward the bench. Will stood in my way holding a foam sword and shield. He glared at me.
“What do you want,” he growled, lips hardly moving. I pulled a water bottle from beneath my cloak.
“Wine for the prisoner,” I stated, flicking a glance at David.
Irritated, he huffed, “Whatever.”
“Everything ok,” I asked David in a hushed voice as I knelt at his side.
“Fine. In character,” he replied curtly, though a smile played on his face. Then he dipped his chin, settled himself more fully into his persona, and looked up. Pain and discomfort marred his normally handsome face.
“Catry,” he questioned; he tightened his throat to make his words dry and labored.
“Davin,” I replied. My hands twisted the cap open without supervision.
“What happened? Who’s done this? What’s going on? Why are you in jail? You can’t have done anything wrong! You’re a squire,” I demanded, worried. All the while, I fed him water.
“It’ll be okay. With people like you in the realm, the land will survive until the One True King returns,” he replied. I wanted to ask more, but three others were approaching.
“What are you doing,” Caen sneered with malice. The guards he brought with him joined Will, and the four boys approached.
“A prisoner has the right to a drink,” I snipped, chin lifting indignantly at the intruders.
“I have a right to a drink,” Caen leered. His beady green eyes fixed on my low neckline. Repulsed, I pushed my way past, muttering about dead bodies.
I made my way to a cement table under an oak tree. Thersis sat on his throne, look beautifully macabre with black arcane swirls painted around his green-blue eyes. He smiled darkly as I approached. I curtseyed and dropped my gaze to the ground. I lifted the bottle of water; my offering to the throne.
“Wine, your Highness,” I asked?
He took the gift then patted the bench at his feet. I curtseyed again then sat on the crushed velvet cloth that turned the cement table into a kingly throne. He drank. I waited.
Three guards hauled Davin in. Two held one arm each. The third prodded him in the back with a foam-tipped spear. Caen led the procession, chin held high. They stopped before the throne.
“He still refuses to speak, Highness,” Caen announced.
Thersis pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, and then nodded. The four struck Davin with their foam weapons. Davin remained silent.
“Tell me where the artifact is and the pain will end,” Thersis promised over the dull thuds. I covered by mouth with a hand.
“It is not yours,” Davin rasped between blows. “It is an artifact of the One True King and upon his retu-“
“Silence,” the word tore from Thersis’s throat. The throne suddenly seemed too big for his slender frame.
“Caen, cut the truth from him. Let the gathered know that this is the price for treason in my kingdom,” Thersis hissed. The gathered crowd gasped in shocked that summer afternoon at Bill Schupp Park.
Center stage, Caen McNeel and the three guardsmen hastened to pin Davin to the ground.
“Hold him,” Caen shrieked.
From behind me, a young man stepped forward. He had arms bigger around than Thersis’s middle. He moved quietly into the fray, unconcerned that Caen had been sent sprawling by the prisoner. Dalan, the mercenary, reached out his hands, and set them upon Davin’s shoulders.
Davin’s knees buckled. The two dropped to the hard-packed dirt. Davin on his back, arms pinned beneath him. Dalan knelt at his side, hands on Davin’s chest. Caen crawled toward the two, grinning fiendishly. He spat down at Davin. Davin thrashed beneath Dalan’s grip. Thersis laughed. I watched remorse flicker across the mercenary’s face.

"The Princess and the Dragon"

by Claudia Carranza

The princess woke up in her bed. She stretched out of her purple blankets and her purple pillows. The sun was bright and happy and its light danced through the window, passed her purple curtains, and onto the purple carpet on her bedroom floor.

The princess flung her purple night gown into the laundry basket. She put on a pretty dress. It was sparkly and had little purple flowers on the sleeves. She always felt pretty when she wore her purple flower dress.

She sat down at her vanity. In the mirror, her reflection smiled back at her. She picked up her hair brush and brushed her brown curly hair. Then, she stood up and went to the balcony, to watch the clouds making shapes in the bright blue sky.

The clouds always made pretty shapes. Today, the clouds were making bunny shapes, and turtle shapes, and train shapes, and worm shapes. Then, the clouds made a dragon shape! The shape was dark blue, and had a shiny silver belly.

Oh no! It wasn’t a cloud! It was a real dragon! The big blue dragon swooped down toward the balcony.

"Oh no," the princess cried out.

She turned and ran back into her bedroom. The dragon landed on the purple balcony and roared. The princess ran out of her room and down the stairs into the pink and purple ballroom. The dragon followed, knocking over the bed with his tail. In the ballroom, the princess found a floor lamp. She picked it up and turned to face her foe, brandishing the lamp like a wizard's staff.

The dragon charged. The princess swung her lamp. The dragon ducked to one side and lashed out with his tail. The princess blocked with her lamp and bonked the dragon on the head. The dragon sat back on his haunches and cried big dragon teardrops.

"Ow, Princess! Ow! My head," sobbed the dragon.

"Oh, I'm sorry dragon," said the princess with remorse, lowering her lamp and approaching to give the dragon a kiss on his head to make the hurt go away.

Just as she drew near, the dragon turned his great head toward her, opened his mouth, and ate her.

“Daddy,” Ahlaura cried out, laughing. Daddy’s hand held the soft blue dragon toy and the princess doll at the same time. His big hand hid the princess against the stuffed dragon's side. He made the dragon and the princess doll whoosh around the purple plastic castle.

Ahlaura jumped up and down. Daddy fell to his back as he tried to keep the dragon swopping and whooshing. Then, Ahlaura wiggled her fingers on Daddy’s tummy, making him laugh and drop the soft dragon toy and the princess doll.

“Alright, you two,” said Mommy from the doorway, smiling. “It’s time for dinner. Clean up and wash hands, please.”

“Okay,” said Ahlaura, picking up her princess doll. “Come on, Daddy. Let’s clean up and eat dinner.”