Rosario Ortiz (reluciente) wrote in nevermore_logs, @ 2022-02-13 01:38:00 |
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Rosario had never taken a class with as weird selection of assigned readings as this one had. She could follow the logic of most of Merlin’s choices. There were a couple of volumes on meditation and trance work: that made sense, since achieving clear mind was the first step (so Merlin was constantly telling her) to achieving control. There were books on ancient oracles, seers, methods of divination— there was even a book by an ancient Greek diviner (Artemidorus Daldianus, who was altogether way too interested in dreams about boning one’s mother). There was a volume of Aeschylus’ plays and an enormous encyclopaedia of Greek mythology. Again, understandable. Others were more tangential, but they gave her stuff to think about. Camille Flammarion’s Astronomy for Amateurs: dated in its science and purple in its prose, but the dreamlike way Flammarion wrote about astronomy held her transfixed. When people gaze on the night sky, he wrote, our sense of solitude has disappeared. We feel that, if only as infinitesimal atoms, we form part of that immense universe, and this dumb language of the starry night is more eloquent than any speech. Each star becomes a friend, a discreet confidant, often indeed a precious counsellor, for all the thoughts it suggests to us are pure and holy. It was weird to feel so seen by a guy who’d died a hundred years ago. Writ in the Stars: Constellations in Myth by Celeste Le Verrier was another revelation. Unlike Flammarion, the language was so crisp it almost could’ve been written yesterday, if not for the lightly yellowed pages. A glance over the title page revealed it was the same age as her: published 1997. Le Verrier wrote about the stars with a clear-eyed reverence, and Rosario found herself captivated by the legends in a way she hadn’t been since she was a kid. She devoured the entire thing in two sittings and went searching online for other works by the author, and was disappointed to find that Le Verrier had never published another book. She didn’t even have a Wikipedia page. And yeah, Merlin: Shaman, Prophet, Magician seemed like kind of a flex, but it was still a good idea to understand who she was dealing with, so she’d take it. But did he seriously expect her to read that biography of Nostradamus? Or the ridiculous new-agey astrology book he’d slipped on top of her ever-growing study pile last week? And what was with all the philosophy books? Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments, The Metaphysics of Philosophical Daoism, Earth and Reveries of Repose: An Essay on Images of Interiority, Critique of Pure Reason— what was any of that supposed to tell her about demigods and visions? Rosario had barely made a dent in those ones. She was in med school, she was used to dry and dense readings, but trying to follow Immanuel Kant made her brain hurt. Maybe this was what she got for pushing Merlin one too many times for some cut-and-dried answers on gods and belief and the metaphysics of it all. Maybe this was his way of saying you get what you ask for, kid. Nothing sucked worse than homework, though. She threw herself at it the same way she threw herself at any assignment: do your research, make a plan and work your way methodically down the list, step by step by step. It worked great for exams and term papers. For meditation? Not so much. For all the reading she’d done and all the notes she’d taken and all the starscapes Merlin had conjured during their lessons, Rosario was just as bad at it now as she had been at the start. It was infuriating, to have the theory down, to have an expert talking her through it in one-on-one classes, and still not be able to get it. It was like she and her brain were working at cross purposes, and she couldn’t even goddamn blame it because she was asking it to do something that went completely against the grain: to let go of the wheel. Goddamn fucking meditation. But Rosario was not one to admit defeat, so here she was, Thursday night, a time she could’ve been productively spending studying, sitting cross-legged on her bed in a darkened room, determined to kick meditation’s stupid ass. Her notebook lay open in front of her, lit by the glow of a single candle on the nightstand. Step one: Sit. Get comfortable. That part was easy. Rosario closed her eyes, rolled her shoulders a couple of times and focussed on slowing her breath. In for a count of five… out for a count of five. In… and out. In… The door flew open and clattered against the bedroom wall, and Rosario sucked in a breath so sharp she nearly choked on it. A soft floomp followed (probably her coat falling off the hook behind the door), and a quiet “oops, sorry!”, then the light flicked on. Chicky squeezed past the bed and made directly for the desk, frowning as she began shuffling through binders and textbooks. Rosario’s lips had formed around an incredulous what when Chicky turned and – with a start that jostled the desk and sent a pile of looseleaf notes cascading off the edge – realised at last that she wasn’t alone. ”Oh shit! What are you doing in the dark?” Rosario stared at her. “What are you doing in my room?” “Wha— Oh, I’m looking for my phone. Did you see my phone?” If it was Camino saying it, Rosario would’ve called bullshit – you ain’t lost nothing, you just in here snooping! – but Chicky answered with such an air of bewildered earnestness, it could only be the truth. Chicky was an even worse liar than Rosario. It still didn’t so much answer the question as it did raise several more. Like— “Why would your phone be in my room?” “I dunno, it isn’t anywhere else, so,” Chicky shrugged. Rosario rocked back her head and sighed, and without a word stretched across her bed to yank her own phone from its charger. With a few taps, she brought up Chicky’s number; moments later, a muffled ringtone trilled from the direction of the lounge. Chicky’s expression lit up. “Thanks, Charo!” she called over her shoulder as she made a dash for it— leaving the light on and the door wide open and the coat in a pile on the floor. It took a few minutes to put everything back in order. Rosario returned to the bed with another sigh and consulted her notebook again. Where was she? Right: Sit. Get comfortable. Breathe. Rosario breathed. She drew in long breaths, counting out the seconds in silence, and as she exhaled she tried to do what the books had instructed and visualise the tension flowing out of her. She never managed to persist with it for long. She guessed you were supposed to imagine breathing out a black smog or something, like you were expelling the poison from your body, but (a) that looked fucking dumb and (b) it felt really fucking dumb. She got a little further tonight by instead picturing her breath coming out in crystalline puffs on the crisp night air, like it would if she was up on the roof right now— or a mountain somewhere— no, in Cherry Springs, like Estella had talked about— The scrape of the door might as well’ve been a record scratch. It jerked Rosario back from the edge of calm with a violent start. “Rosario, favor—” As usual, Abuela plunged straight into conversation before she was even fully in the room. “I’m going to Fabiola’s, you remember Fabiola Muñoz? She’s— what you doing with all the lights out?” “I’m meditating,” Rosario said, and coloured at her grandmother’s incredulous eyebrows. “I, never mind, what d’you need?” “No, hold on, no puede ser,” Abuela raised an index finger. “You, meditating? En serio?" There was a tickle of amusement in her voice. Rosario squirmed, defensiveness leaping into her shoulders. “Plenty of people meditate, it’s clinically proven to reduce stress.” The tickle nudged the corners of Abuela’s mouth and touched the crow’s feet round her eyes. “Ah, is clinical, I see. This,” she made a circling gesture encompassing Rosario, the bed, the candle on the nightstand, “this is science, ah.” Yeah, and this was what she got for having been an obnoxious teenage atheist who’d needled her grandmother about superstitions and placebos and shit. But Rosario still found herself protesting, “It is! We learned about it in psych med, it actually affects your brain activity, there’s been studies—” “Okay, okay!” Abuela had flattened her palms in surrender. “It’s good, nena. I believe you. Listen, can you ask Lyra to look at the space heater?” Rosario grimaced. “It’s broken again?” It was. And Fabiola Muñoz’s grandson (whose face Rosario couldn’t picture, despite Abuela’s insistence that they’d shared the same high school year) had some kinda DACA situation that Fabiola was panicking about, and there was some book that Patricia-from-upstairs might come by and collect, and by the time Abuela switched off the light and declared (with a shadow of a grin) that she’d leave Rosario to it, another ten minutes had slipped away. Breathing, Rosario thought, and closed her eyes again. Breathe in, tensing up her right foot, curling the toes in tight enough to feel the protest in her muscles— and breathe out as she let it all go. Breathe in, same with the left foot— and out, letting it relax. She opened an eye to peek at her notebook. Right, calves next, then thighs, then butt, then all at once. Okay: Breathe in— “—sorry sorry I’m not here sorry—” Chicky had left her book on the desk in the midst of her earlier search. She dashed back out, mouthing a final sorry, and shut the door behind her. The coat fell off the hook again. Rosario stole another glance at her phone. Gah, almost eight thirty. She needed to get this over with so she could get started on her actual homework. (It was possible that Rosario would be getting further with this stupid meditation thing if she stopped treating it as something to be got over with – and, you know, if she stopped thinking of it as this stupid meditation thing. But then, she’d also be getting a lot further with her schoolwork – and spending a lot less time promising scholarship administrators that, no, really, everything was fine at home and, yes, she was gonna put in the work to get her grades up – if she wasn’t wasting so much time trying to make sense of gods and visions and stupid meditation.) Breathe. Breathe in, tensing the muscles in her right calf, and breathe out, not thinking about how much reading she had to catch up on. Breathe in, tensing the other calf, and breathe out, not thinking of the hours she’d been spending trying to digest woo-woo meditation texts and dream guides by ancient Greek charlatans while her textbooks stayed untouched— shit, maybe she needed to do the visualising-her-breath thing again, she was losing focus— The door opened again. Rosario flopped back against her pillows with an irritable huff. “Doesn’t anyone knock in this family?” Camino gave her an odd look. She flicked the light switch. “Why are you sitting in the dark?” Rosario was starting to question that herself. “I’m meditating,” she said testily, because she knew Cam was gonna roast her for it and she was absolutely not in the mood. “It’s got proven clinical benefits, we been learning ’bout it in school.” She waited for the incredulous side-eye, for the scoff, for the too-close-to-the-bone comment about how weird she was being lately— “Whatever,” said Camino. “Hey, um— you heard anything else about the rent and stuff?” “What?” Rosario’s brows twitched together; that was a left turn she wasn’t expecting. “No, why?” “Mr Fuentes just came by, he was asking round. Some people’s saying the building’s ’bouta be bought by a big name developer.” They both knew what that meant for their family, and Lyra’s family, and every one of their neighbours. And Rosario, frowning, noticed for the first time that Camino was picking distractedly at her fingernails, an uneasy line to her mouth. But— “People’s always saying that,” Rosario pointed out. “Yeah,” said Camino, and continued to fiddle with her nails. “I dunno. You seen what’s up round here, all the fucking hipsters and luxury condo shit. Someday they gonna be right.” Next time the light went out and the door closed, Rosario didn’t even try to pick up where she left off. No point going through the whole exercise of tensing and untensing her muscles by turns when they were all tense. She was gonna have to start all over now, which meant this was gonna take even longer, which— ugh, dammit. Not helping with the tension. Fine: breathing. Slow it down again. Count of five. In (two, three, four, five)… out (two, three, it’s just a stupid rumour)… in (two, three, so stupid)… out (wasting your fucking time)… in (fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck)… out (breathe out the stress in a thick toxic smog)… in… Rosario was no closer to relaxing when the knock came. An actual knock this time, followed by, “Rosario?” Ma’s voice. Rosario expelled her breath in a rush, stretched out her legs and called back, “Yeah.” Her mom cracked the door open. “Camino said you were meditating?” She shrugged. “I finished.” If it counted as meditating. She hadn’t even made it past step two. Ma stepped fully into the room, but she didn’t reach for the light switch. “That’s good. It’s a good you’re taking some time out, you’re working so hard all the time.” Her mom, who was pulling ten-hour floor shifts with swollen feet and a tender ankle, thought she was working hard. Her mom had no idea that she was half-assing her studies and scraping through her finals because she was spending half her time on fucking… magic lessons and crazy shit. Rosario shrugged again. “Cam said everyone’s talking.” “Everyone’s always talking.” Ma smiled, perhaps a little tightly. “Anyway, they’d be doing more than just talking if it was true.” Yeah. Maybe? Camino was kinda right, though. How many buildings had they seen go down and how many condos and coffee shops had they seen go up since they were kids? Sooner or later, it was gonna fall on them. And bitterly, Rosario found herself thinking, well shit, it’d be great if someone round here could tell us the future. |