They decided to skip the last lesson and search around the city for cigarettes to buy. First they had to come up with the money to buy them with though.
Hope suggested they go and ask her mom under the pretense of buying something for the educational purposes, knowing well that Sandra standing by her side would be enough proof for her mother that the request was a genuine one.
***
As they breezed down through the heavy noon heat, images of their first such trip surfaced into Hope’s overheated mind:
-Let’s go to my mother, she could give me some money. - Hope said when Sandra asked her to make a donation to the class cigarette fund on her first day of school here.
The cigarette charity fund was organized to help all those with nicotine addiction cope with lack of cash, for keeping their urge satisfied and preventing them from ruining the existence of every non-smoker around them.
If they were forced to endure abstinence crisis in the clas, smokers would usually turn into destructive nervous animals and schooldays would become absolutely unbearable.
- And where is your mother? -Sandra asked, definitely not expecting the answer to that one that she got.
-In prison.
Oh, how she froze stiff and horrified, but, cultured as she was, said or asked nothing further. They walked chatting lightly, and Hope managed to swiftly lead the two of them into the street that the city’s main prison was situated on in all of its architectural horror.
Sandra suddenly became really afraid of this strange refugee girl that the war had, like so many others, landed in her class.
Sitting behind the same desk, to be more precise.
Hope climbed the stairs to the rear entrance of the horrendous design with confidence of someone who has done this a million times.
She rang the bell and proclaimed into the gaping mouth of the intercom the now legendary sentence that 'hope was here looking for her mother asking for money to buy books for school'.
Desperate, and knowing all too well how it was too late to back off and run away now, Sandra stood silent, as the automated door opened to let them through. An uniformed guard unlocked another door made of solid bars, with one of those big and heavy, cartoonish looking keys that hung loosely from the large ring on his belt.
They waited in the ugly dilapidated reception room for a couple of minutes, when a door opened and a fine dressed woman emerged through it, with a couple of banknotes in her hand and a smile that said she knew this routine well, and she knew that it was a scam, but went along with it nevertheless.
It wasn’t until they were back on the street corner standing in front of a small shop, hungrily grabbing every possible milligram of nicotine they could inhale, that Hope burst out into laughter and informed her still petrified friend that her mother actually was employed in the accounting department of the prison administration and was only working there, and not a prisoner.
Sandra refused to speak to her for a full week after that, and would, time and again, state her un-descending anger whenever she would retell this anecdote, if asked to explain where in the world the two of them meet.
In the prison.
Hope found the truth of this answer painful but ironically accurate. The society they lived in had all the trademarks of a proper prison civilization.
As they entered the building, she grinned at the realization that fate was unjust even when punishment was concerned.
Those poor souls inside were enduring a sentence twice and even more, because on the day they were to walk out of this institutional dungeon, into their hard earned freedom, they were merely stepping into another prison outside that was all around them, minus the bars.
***
Hope’s mother followed through the ritual of her daughter extracting money from her in every little detail. This time though, there was a little more.
- I have to stay longer today to finish the salary report. Your father is down in the refugee camp and you must go there after lunch and take him two extra rounds for his gun from the bedroom drawer and the change of clothes from the top shelf of his closet.
-Give me some more money then, I’ll have to buy the ticket for the bus , Hope answered frowning at the sickening reality of the world in which a person required additional ammo as much as he needed a change of clothes.
A mother and a daughter kissed for the audience and said goodbye.
***
They were standing at the intersection where their routes home would part, having divided the four cigarettes between them and smoked the odd one, out of the total of five that they bought. Yes, nowadays fags were bought one by one.
-So what happens now? Sandra sort of pretended that she had just remembered to ask.
-What happens now with what?
- What happens now with that guitar-player- man of yours?
Hope looked down into the distant traffic before answering.
-He actually sings and plays the guitar.
-They all do.
Not like this one.
***
He was the centaur of our times, making his way through the world where traffic lights grew instead of trees and streets were the rivers and nations were the hunting tribes.
His voice was him and his guitar was him and his voice and his guitar were one absolute unity of spirit and creativity that had indeed touched the skies.
And looked definitely cool in the process .
***
It was one of legendary occurrences throughout the history of r’n’r, that vein attempt made by the lead singer of a band to do something with his hands while performing in order to look better and more cool onstage, that had inspired so many horrible images and sounds of trying to master the two instruments, trying to joggle the strings and the vocal chords at the same time.
She had read some article about a guitar player from a band who was telling how they would actually try to hide the guitars from their singer to prevent him from trying to play one.
Most of those attempting to do this double exposure of their talent thing, even if they were a singer as good as that Irish one was and as passionate about their singing as he was in that black and white film of theirs, ended up looking or sounding kind of not right.
But not this one. He played and sang and created a force that was the unique unity of those two things, that he then used as the tool for carving himself and his world inside the souls of those who listened.
And when he sang his voice and played his guitar… through the doorway of image of him joined as one with his instrument last night she leaked into the forgotten woods where a mythical creature, descending from the children of the Titans, half-human and half horse, stood as it said its praises to the rising sun.
There was no way of telling the two conjoined components of the monstrously beautiful body apart, the human from the animal one, no way of separating the instinct from the intellect.
This creature, creation of divine love and a drunken sin of gods , haunted the fields with beauty that made the Earth underneath cry in adoration.
***
Sirens of a string of police cars flying past them made her painfully aware that she was no longer the river but a mere solid piece of carbonated eighty something percent of water again.
-Nevermind.
Hope suggested they go and ask her mom under the pretense of buying something for the educational purposes, knowing well that Sandra standing by her side would be enough proof for her mother that the request was a genuine one.
***
As they breezed down through the heavy noon heat, images of their first such trip surfaced into Hope’s overheated mind:
-Let’s go to my mother, she could give me some money. - Hope said when Sandra asked her to make a donation to the class cigarette fund on her first day of school here.
The cigarette charity fund was organized to help all those with nicotine addiction cope with lack of cash, for keeping their urge satisfied and preventing them from ruining the existence of every non-smoker around them.
If they were forced to endure abstinence crisis in the clas, smokers would usually turn into destructive nervous animals and schooldays would become absolutely unbearable.
- And where is your mother? -Sandra asked, definitely not expecting the answer to that one that she got.
-In prison.
Oh, how she froze stiff and horrified, but, cultured as she was, said or asked nothing further. They walked chatting lightly, and Hope managed to swiftly lead the two of them into the street that the city’s main prison was situated on in all of its architectural horror.
Sandra suddenly became really afraid of this strange refugee girl that the war had, like so many others, landed in her class.
Sitting behind the same desk, to be more precise.
Hope climbed the stairs to the rear entrance of the horrendous design with confidence of someone who has done this a million times.
She rang the bell and proclaimed into the gaping mouth of the intercom the now legendary sentence that 'hope was here looking for her mother asking for money to buy books for school'.
Desperate, and knowing all too well how it was too late to back off and run away now, Sandra stood silent, as the automated door opened to let them through. An uniformed guard unlocked another door made of solid bars, with one of those big and heavy, cartoonish looking keys that hung loosely from the large ring on his belt.
They waited in the ugly dilapidated reception room for a couple of minutes, when a door opened and a fine dressed woman emerged through it, with a couple of banknotes in her hand and a smile that said she knew this routine well, and she knew that it was a scam, but went along with it nevertheless.
It wasn’t until they were back on the street corner standing in front of a small shop, hungrily grabbing every possible milligram of nicotine they could inhale, that Hope burst out into laughter and informed her still petrified friend that her mother actually was employed in the accounting department of the prison administration and was only working there, and not a prisoner.
Sandra refused to speak to her for a full week after that, and would, time and again, state her un-descending anger whenever she would retell this anecdote, if asked to explain where in the world the two of them meet.
In the prison.
Hope found the truth of this answer painful but ironically accurate. The society they lived in had all the trademarks of a proper prison civilization.
As they entered the building, she grinned at the realization that fate was unjust even when punishment was concerned.
Those poor souls inside were enduring a sentence twice and even more, because on the day they were to walk out of this institutional dungeon, into their hard earned freedom, they were merely stepping into another prison outside that was all around them, minus the bars.
***
Hope’s mother followed through the ritual of her daughter extracting money from her in every little detail. This time though, there was a little more.
- I have to stay longer today to finish the salary report. Your father is down in the refugee camp and you must go there after lunch and take him two extra rounds for his gun from the bedroom drawer and the change of clothes from the top shelf of his closet.
-Give me some more money then, I’ll have to buy the ticket for the bus , Hope answered frowning at the sickening reality of the world in which a person required additional ammo as much as he needed a change of clothes.
A mother and a daughter kissed for the audience and said goodbye.
***
They were standing at the intersection where their routes home would part, having divided the four cigarettes between them and smoked the odd one, out of the total of five that they bought. Yes, nowadays fags were bought one by one.
-So what happens now? Sandra sort of pretended that she had just remembered to ask.
-What happens now with what?
- What happens now with that guitar-player- man of yours?
Hope looked down into the distant traffic before answering.
-He actually sings and plays the guitar.
-They all do.
Not like this one.
***
He was the centaur of our times, making his way through the world where traffic lights grew instead of trees and streets were the rivers and nations were the hunting tribes.
His voice was him and his guitar was him and his voice and his guitar were one absolute unity of spirit and creativity that had indeed touched the skies.
And looked definitely cool in the process .
***
It was one of legendary occurrences throughout the history of r’n’r, that vein attempt made by the lead singer of a band to do something with his hands while performing in order to look better and more cool onstage, that had inspired so many horrible images and sounds of trying to master the two instruments, trying to joggle the strings and the vocal chords at the same time.
She had read some article about a guitar player from a band who was telling how they would actually try to hide the guitars from their singer to prevent him from trying to play one.
Most of those attempting to do this double exposure of their talent thing, even if they were a singer as good as that Irish one was and as passionate about their singing as he was in that black and white film of theirs, ended up looking or sounding kind of not right.
But not this one. He played and sang and created a force that was the unique unity of those two things, that he then used as the tool for carving himself and his world inside the souls of those who listened.
And when he sang his voice and played his guitar… through the doorway of image of him joined as one with his instrument last night she leaked into the forgotten woods where a mythical creature, descending from the children of the Titans, half-human and half horse, stood as it said its praises to the rising sun.
There was no way of telling the two conjoined components of the monstrously beautiful body apart, the human from the animal one, no way of separating the instinct from the intellect.
This creature, creation of divine love and a drunken sin of gods , haunted the fields with beauty that made the Earth underneath cry in adoration.
***
Sirens of a string of police cars flying past them made her painfully aware that she was no longer the river but a mere solid piece of carbonated eighty something percent of water again.
-Nevermind.
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