REJECTIONITIS
By Carlene Sobrino Bonnivier

“This is literature!”

There are so many ways to make it through the day. A job, for example, can require countless hours of doing things that have to be done right away and then need to be double checked. Any mindless repetitive task is good: dusting a surface or mopping a surface or making a surface to dust or mop; making lists of needed grocery items or thinking about needing items, cutting coupons out of the Sunday supplements for guidance; then you have to go get the groceries, bring them back to clean surfaces, cook them, eat them, clean up and out afterwards, start again.

There are cross-word, jig-saw, and other solvable puzzles. You could do sums. They always work out eventually. They could take a lot of time. There’s making things. Cute things. For Christmas. There are skis (snow and water), mobiles (snow and sand, hanging and homes), and there are balls (infinite variety, infinite distraction).

“What are we supposed to do with it?”

I could knit. I could knit a pair of glasses, a pair of ear muffs, a gag. I could pass one of the needles through my third eye and the other through my heart. I could watch television and knit. I could watch television and sew or iron or cook. I could not watch television and read literature or watch television and write literature. I could write for television while I watched it.

“It won’t sell.”

Exercise culminating in injury. Religions of worship and obedience. Rituals that numb or make you bleed. Sex, drugs, alcohol, food again.

A cat. Persian or Siamese. Fish. Fighting, Angels, Clowns. I could get a Siberian Husky or a South African Ridgeback or a pig. I could start a family and cover a minimum of 18 years. I could collect things, pile them up or spread them out or put them behind glass or scatter them on the lawn. I could take up gardening which smells better than housework.

I could put my right foot in.

Any body obsession. I could roll time up in my hair, paint it on my nails, shave it off my legs. Thoreau said we couldn’t kill time without offending eternity.

“But thanks for thinking of us.”

© Carlene Sobrino Bonnivier

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