Uncanny Projects by Lauren Pruitt
For my second project, I sought inspiration from a deeply emotional personal experience that occured a few days before the acutal due date of the project. The story goes something like this:
At my place of residence, the 21st Street Co-Op, we were all preparing to play a game called Assassination. In this game, everyone that is playing is assigned to another player to assassinate while being a target for someone else at the same time. The player does not know who their assassin is, but they are given a clue as to who it could be a well as the name of their target. At the Co-Op, kills are made with water in any way, shape, or form. Players can use water guns, water bottles, water hose, swimming pools, etc. There is one Assassination Master that assigns who gets who for a target. Our Assassin master happened to be my friend Brett.
Before the game even began, Brett knew who was after who because he made a list of all of the targets and assigned them. I did not know who my target was or my assassin. The game was scheduled to begin at midnight on a sunday night. The thursday before this particular sunday, I had a very vivid dream that one of my neighbors, named Alfredo, stabbed me in the arm with a christmas ornament hanging on a christmas tree in our house commons. The only way that I could have revenge on him in my dream was by throwing him into a pool, causing him to die. It was the wierdest dream.
I woke up the next morning and told my friend Brett about the fucked up dream I had the night before. It was so vivid that I thought I had felt my arm being stabbed while I was sleeping. Brett gave me a look of bewilderment and told me that I may have had a premonition. Turns out that in reality, Alfredo was my assassin and the only way that I would have immunity from him would be to get him wet with water. I had a premonition, as silly as it was.
Close members of my family also have creepy premonitions through dreams that they tell me about. Sometimes my uncle will have dreams about my grandfather that will give him some insight as to the kind of person he was even thgou he died about thirty years ago. Other family members have dreams about me that reveal aspects of my lifestyle that I didn't think they had an idea about. It's quite interesting.
Reflecting on how I related to my family through premontions inspired me to write. I wrote and wrote and wrote word vomit till I could'nt write anymore. Some call it poetry, but I just call it writing. This is the piece that I wrote in response to my uncanny experience:
Wake up, Master Assassin
Guided, winding sidewalk
frienemy too close for comfort
daily conspiring a devious end to me
watch time and it's encompassing detail
dangle from clouds we blew in each other's faces
when our deepest secret evaporated into a red wine flavored mist
curing our substance thirst
only physical displacement could end this battle roulette
my giving up is it's depletion.
It'll be about one, maybe two, decades lost.
trapped in ideas, risks, failures, and rapes.
the end will be a big surprise.
rude awakening.
so rude, i'll twist my story from something that looked so good, it could never possibly hurt me to a fairy tale a little less incriminating.
Swayed by dotted line visions felt only when these pictures are drawn with our eyes closed.
Felt in our bones.
Guilt good deeds can't compensate
Memories of bliss a lifetime won't dissolve
a throbbing wound the hardest pressure couldn't suffocate
a fever no human can sweat.
Ambition and motivation have been replaced with obligation and resistance against euphoric daydreams we could only wish into reality.
And so, I will breathe with this earth
our matter condensed home crawling with leeches that would rather dictate than cooperate.
God Bless this mother whose heartbeat conducts my inhale/exhale patterns in return for appreciation of her harmless, careful tendencies.
Dance. Sing. Boast. Project. Play. and Never Forgot to Laugh Out Loud!!!!
Feel these to drown the barricades that pacify personal evolution with the moaning and groaning they've been raised to use against minds that have forgotten what it's like to be told "no".
It's no secret.
Liberty and Peace on every wish list.
but GIVE me liberty and GIVE me peace.
having been brainwashed to lie, cheat, and steal to attain either makes me tired
and we need rest.
a declaration served with garnishes of "do something!", "test yourself!" and "break monotony!!!"
Pour me shots of coherence so my vision/memory concoction can build the right consistency.
Pour me smoke to cloud everything up from the inside out without having to sacrifice what little is left of this bottled direction.
If this is lost, an incompletion will take hold.
Balance, please, during a mindfuck of turmoil and confusion where daily routine and nightly endeavors blend as well as oil and milk.
Happily situated in bodies of bodies closed off from judgement, thanks to the blameless pinches of this pure need,
a glass half full of invisibly sensation with a hint of arousal for the fearfulness in every experience.
I hope you can't see but pray that you can feel.
It with Me.
this electric Love has me the way you wish you had me
and to this day there is still no cure for our lucid disease.