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As I parked my car by the university’s stadium, I looked at University of Houston sign on the marquee and realized college had become a notion of pride, hope, and perhaps, destiny. It feels like yesterday that I got up from the puddle under the pews of St. Vincent de Paul homeless shelter, in line for food, I thought—donning a backpack, book in hand. Those days of the past never seem so far away, always haunting my peripheral view. Many of my setbacks were due to so many things out of my control, and yet, The Moirai were still so relentless that they kept my string always tethered to the single point in time that destroyed my life, my work, my relationships, and quite possibly, my future. Isn’t it enough I’ve lost the will to hope? I knew at any moment I could end up destitute on the streets again, so I dedicated every moment of the present on being the best I could be. Unfortunately, dedication simply isn’t enough. Stepping out of my car, I made sure not to forget my bookbag, and the twelve-hundred line poem, a reading due for class that day. Oh, I can’t forget the cherries… You got accepted into the literature program. Your path is defined, and you will see it through until the end. There is no more room for failures. You’ve already lost too much time. After a series of broken promises—unfulfilled life hopes, I decided to fulfill newly made promises for my future. You see, I once dared to believe there was so much hope to live for, and lost every last ounce of faith when I failed. But, after getting back up from an unsatisfying past, I decided I would immerse myself in worlds of the great writers. I wanted to lose myself in their imagined realities, in hopes of learning some of their stylistic techniques to emulate, in hopes of growing as a person, in hopes of growing out of what my life had become—a puddle, the stagnation I was drowning in. Midsummer of 2018, June, or perhaps, July—if my mind serves me correctly—I decided to pursue my newfound career goals with steadfast conviction. I thought about these newfound promises to myself that I’d keep, as I traversed over the wet gravel of the campus parking lot, over the Metro Rail tracks, over the speedbumps of my life, toward the graying, art-deco English Department building in the distance. The day was ordinary—late-morning sun, sheathed by sheer violet fog and unbearable humidity—just like any other in Houston, I suppose. I spent most of the night prior deciphering encoded language of Shakespeare. En route to class, I held up Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, shielding my face from the fading sunlight, reading as much as I could, with hopes to continue academic excellence for my future, leaving the demons of my past behind. Much of the foreplay, as I read between Venus and Adonis, stirred the cauldron of memories containing a particularly vile woman I knew from my childhood—memories which haunted my dreams. I took out a plump cherry from its sandwich bag. As I sucked on the nectar before spitting out the pit, I pondered this demon from my past. I thought about her and grew tense as I licked my lips and sucked on the next cherry. And the next. Until there was nothing left but the pit of my soul. ***** I recited Venus and Adonis aloud along the paved path by the campus streaming fountains. Hearing it aloud helped me make sense of it, I reasoned. This was one of the most confusing poems I’ve ever read, Shakespeare or not. Why would anyone write something so confusing? Was it his intent to confuse us, to have us so lost that we are immersed into his world? Still, I continued, not paying much attention to the world around me, what cars may run me over, the kinds of people I may literally walk into. I was only concerned with finishing the poem before class. With a bookbag over my shoulder, I walked beside my lone reflection, beside a long puddle that outstretched between the sidewalk and the campus greenhouse, a botanical nursery. The idea of multiverses and the different lives of the many realities we possibly exist in, donned on me for a momentary lapse in time as I watched my reflection tread past. Past the sky and shifting leaves of the trees above, rippling through the reflection on the puddle below, I noticed a woman with crimson-painted lips in a white-lace dress and black veil. She held a tufted parasol over her shoulder in the greenhouse. As she sniffed the crimson roses, her cold, gray eyes darted through the thorny rose bush at me. Like Alice, curiosity took ahold of me. I strayed from the sidewalk to the side of the greenhouse, tempted by the rose and its thorns. I crept closer to the glass of the green house, and realized that, through the veil, it was Hesper—my babysitter, thousands of moons ago. ***** “He now obeys, and now no more resisteth / While she takes all she can, not all she listeth.” – Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis
Nightmarish vignettes of my youth shifted in and out of my reality, on an infinite loop: The nape of her neck—an arousing sweet scent of roses. Stiletto nails, long blonde hair, caresse blushing cheeks. Crimson lips, sweet like cherries. Smeared crimson kisses on my neck—innocence lost. “Come inside…” she mouthed through the glass, “No one will see us. I won’t tell. It’s bedtime.” She winked and began mouthing the lyrics to a lullaby in iambic trimeter, one she often sung to me, like a dove coos for its mate. Her whispers crescendoed until I see and hear her haunting voice that lulled me—like smoke in vibrant colors, compelling me to stray from my path even closer to her cage. Hesper kept her gaze, her eyes, locked onto mine, through the leaves and the crimson roses. She slowly turned her head toward the ground, her eyes fixated on the floor beneath me. And then a pail, as if of its own volition, toppled over and poured out over the cement through the doorway in front of me. There I stood in a puddle—my poem in one hand, and cherries in the other. Silence. Her blonde hair flowed with the gentle breeze. She looked up from the puddle, and smiled. She seized my sweating palm. Her gray eyes, like tusks, pierced through me. My eyebrows furrowed. I looked downward, into the cloud of red spreading its way through the puddle—a man’s face, a boar’s tusk thrust through his forehead, like the horn on a majestic, beautiful unicorn. He mouthed words as if he were in a trance. I looked up to scream, looked up to see if there were anyone around to witness, to help him. Help me! Her faint voice singing the lullaby lingered all around me. My cries—inaudible. Futile. I was no longer walking to the art-deco building reading Venus and Adonis. No longer was I on campus. ***** “I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow, / If thou encounter with the boar tomorrow.” —William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis Her voice—in its colorful smoke—flowed like a river through the serene, yet haunting impressionist meadows of my mind. She continued for what felt like an eternity around me, shifting through concept, through shifting reality. Only shuffling leaves of tall trees and their low hanging moss billowed in the wind around me, as I sat down on a solitary park bench and took out paper and a pen to journal through these emotions. Hesper, the veiled woman of my past—vanished. Inside my puddle, the simulacrum of my real world, I sought a way out. Many hours, many days, had been lost. Suddenly, a bird of hope fluttered past me and into the sky at high noon—before my eyes could follow it, it faded out of view. I don’t understand any of this “language” in this poem! What does all this mean? My translation of the ancient text was futile. Instead, I experienced language in the endless symbols, the endless despair, the endless curses—the endless cherry-red blood, splattered across the flowers in the haunting meadows of my past. The endless reading of Shakespearean words and symbols took ahold of me. My endless reflections, rippled in fractals on the surface of my puddle, continued to confound me in black and white, like the pages of a short story yet to be read. Lost forever in this reality. Lost forever in eternal shadows—a young boy, a woman’s aggressive pursuit, her tusk thrusting through—that summer, I struggled. I thought I was ready. Sitting in the puddle of today, I still get goosebumps thinking about that summer’s frigid classroom, or worse—the poem. Even more goosebumps from my childhood that I can only suppress. But no matter how hard I suppress it, she always comes back to me, like a relentless demon latched onto my soul. Will you please… please, just go away? …I won’t let her win. I’ll get out of this puddle. I’m going to be somebody. I’m going to be remembered. I will not fail. I’m going to be successful. Your path is defined, and you will see it through until the end. There is no more room for failures. You’ve already lost too much time… …I continue reciting my poem today, man’s aeonian pursuit to succeed—to no end. |
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Trip Nguyen is a lover, writer, actor, and an advocate for following your life’s passions. Previously an actor with a decade of experience in commercial and film acting, he began training in his favorite city in Texas, Austin. After a decade in pursuit of a film career, he has returned to academia to broaden his horizons. Currently, he is an undergraduate student in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. |
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