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Some of my friends have been giving this oneword thing a go.  Dee, Professor P , MichaelO , Thom G …  Quinn Browne  has been especially prolific, has turned out some real beauties.  So call me a lemming.  Anyway, the word was “surround” and I was typing like a fiend and the dang bell went off when I was on “…you should find…” and I wondered what to do.  I looked around, no one was watching, so I just finished, ha!

  

Photo © Substreet.net  

He was just a kid, 20 or so.  I’d known him for a month or two.  I knew his dreams, he knew a little of me.  He confronted me in the hallway.  I had stuff to do.  He said they can’t help me here.  I said I know, they’re doing nothing for me either.  He asked me what I thought he should do.  I told him I’ve heard tell that you should surround yourself with the people who do what you love to do, live how you want to live, and soon you become that.  I said you should find a community of people, leave this place.  He nodded, head down.  I know that, he said, but I can’t.  Me either, I said, and continued down the hall.  I had stuff to do.

 

 

PHOTO CREDIT:

Photo from http://substreet.net/silvercrest/

Sunday Scribblings – The green iris blues

NOTES:  I’m all uptight over an assignment to revise one of the stories I submitted for grade over the last four months, yet I wanted to participate in SS, so a quickie.  Say, any advice on revising short stories, Professor P?  ; )

Revisions made 7/2/09

 

For ten hours a day, six days per week, Jane Wulandari sits rigid in the blue plastic chair at her work station, leaned into the task of painting eyes on hundreds of doll heads per day.  For 802,000 rupiahs per month she deftly wields her brushes and paints in the exact sizes and numbers prescribed, and makes near-perfect irises and pupils on the whites of each doll eye every time.  She is no artist, by any means, and not particularly intelligent, but easily trainable at repetitive labors.  She comes from a long line of factory workers and laborers, blue collar survivalists.  So when America began exporting hundreds of thousands of its jobs overseas, she soon found a marriageable Indonesian man on the internet.  With his help, she began the process of obtaining all the proper documentation and left Chicago for Jakarta.  And in that gigantic capital city, she enjoyed many happy years calling herself a fine artist and boasting of her brilliant foresight.  And even now, though her hands, back and neck ache almost unbearably, she is still pleased with herself, though less so as she keeps a watchful eye on the latest goings-on in America.

 

PHOTO CREDIT

Photo from “the making of Barbie” at http://www.designboom.com/snapshot/gallery.php?SNAPSHOT_ID=24&GALLERY_ID=1077&PHOTO_IDX=0

 

Click here for more on prompt “#169 – Toys” from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Prescription writing

I fell in love with a writer featured in the June 2009 Sun Mag (more on that later) and got stuck into planning a long short for ESC that spins off of one of his stories.  This piece here is just a practice run at imitating his style and I tell you I’m cured.  I’ll still to do the spin-off but in my style.  And I would ask any of you if you’ve ever tried to imitate another writer’s style exactly, and if you did, how in heck did that go?!

© Jackson West 

 

I fly into San Fran on business as usual, and as usual I make plans to hook up with my buddy John in Frisco for some off-hours shenanigans.  John and I met at a writers’ conference a little over a year ago.  We clicked—similar backgrounds, practically identical writing styles.  The big difference is John’s a full time writer now and I’m still a wannabe with a day job.

 

I get done with my client around six and drive the rental over to John’s place on Vallejo Street.  Parking’s a problem as usual, and as usual I have to walk back nearly a block to John’s.  I climb the two flights of stairs and knock on John’s door.  The smells of all the people who live there mix in the hallway with years of spilled beer, and the smell of pizza coming up from the shop down below.  John opens the door and gives me a tough-guy hug and a slap on the shoulder.  We have a couple of beers, catch up on shit and then we hit the street.

 

We walk over to the Grant Street Saloon for serious drinks, maybe some food, depending.  Everyone in the place, old school Irish-Italians, most of them, they all know John.  They all holler something or other at him and a couple of them get up and kiss his cheeks European style.  John introduces me.  This here is Dean, he says to them.  They make a big fuss over me, shake my hand, slap my shoulder, ask if I’d let them buy me a drink.  Sure thing I say.  The bartender, Paulie, he gets the Jack Daniels Single Barrel down from the shelf and pours us all one over ice that looks like it’s been dragged around the block in a dirty sock.  And before you know it we’re shooting the shit, buying each other drinks, singing along with the Sinatra tunes Paulie put on.

 

Then close to closing time I see this average-height, dark-haired guy come in for last call.  His hairline’s receded a bit and a few grey hairs are coming in at his temples.  He looks to be in his late thirties, but he looks all washed out and friendly with death, like he couldn’t give two shits about being on the planet and wants off bad.  From a distance he looks like he used to be good looking, his face does anyway, even as gaunt as it is, but his body looks sad, like it used to be two or three sizes larger, like it used to be tough, athletic and now it’s sucking into his bones.  His aura’s troubling, and on top of the look of him, it’s all too creepy a combination.

 

Frank and Mario, the only guys left hanging with us, and John, they know this guy, call him Doug, give him the hugs and all.   John asks me if I remember Doug.  I tell him I don’t guess so.  Sure you do, he says.  He tells me I met him at Tony Nick’s on one of my trips out here.  I do remember meeting a guy named Doug maybe six to eight months ago or so, but this guy doesn’t look like him, not like I remember him anyway.  I look all uneasy at the guy’s face, and in the split second his haunted eyes meet mine I recognize him.  Oh yeah, yeah, I say, and I shake hands with him.  I tell him sorry about that, man, and he gives me a quick nod, tells me not to worry about it.  Then he sits himself down at the far end of the bar, lights a cigarette.

 

Paulie starts to get the Old Crow down for Doug and Frank hollers to Paulie to give him a Jack Daniels and to put it on his tab.  Doug nods at Frank, downs his drink, and Paulie pours him another.  Doug takes this drink slower, and then Frank and Mario go down and bullshit with him some, pat him on the shoulder and sit back down near John and me.  As soon as they do, there’s a big racket over by the pool tables.  Seems some college kid has gotten pissed about something and decided to punch a hole in the wall.  I see Paulie nod at Doug and Doug gets up from the bar and starts walking toward the kid like the grim reaper.  The kid’s built like a nose guard and I’m thinking Doug’s no match for him.  I start up out of my seat to go back him up, but John holds me down.  Leave it, he says to me.

 

No one moves a muscle to give Doug a hand and I don’t get it.  Then I do.  By now the college kid sees what’s going on and starts to swagger toward Doug.  He seems to think there’s going to be a trading of words before fists.  And that thought costs him.  Doug jabs him quick and hard as hell in the gut, knocks the wind out of him.  Then he drags the kid toward the back door.  He kicks the door open so hard it slams with a big, hollow bang against the outside wall and he shoves the kid out into the skinny side street.  He blasts him out there so hard he hits the pavement and rolls up against the wall of the next building with a thud and Doug’s all over him messing him up good.

 

My eyes must be the size of quarters and it’s like I haven’t blinked in days.  I’m staring from the bar out the back door not believing what I’m seeing.  This vision of death, this Doug guy, he’s one super-human son of a bitch.  I look at John, ask him what the fuck that was all about.  John tells me that’s what Doug does.  He says Doug’s got issues, says it’s not just one thing, but everything, and the violence stops the world for him for a moment, puts everything into perspective for him.  I ask John how it is that Doug’s down to the weight of a girl practically.  He tells me Doug’s on one of his self-destruct trips, that he won’t eat, just drinks, fucks his stripper girlfriend whenever she’s not pissed at him, and works for his buddy Pete painting houses when he needs some cash.  Jesus, I say.

 

John goes to the shitter for a piss and a snort and I go out onto Grant Street to look for Doug.  I catch a whiff of the ocean and then the smell of coffee blows down from the all night joint up the street.  I find Doug around the corner still in the side street down by the back door.  His knuckles are bleeding and he’s sitting on the curb blowing smoke rings, staring straight ahead.  The college kid is lying face down in the street, not moving.  I say hey to him.  Hey, he says.  I ask him about the kid.  He tells me oh, he’s alright, just needs a couple of stitches and some recovery time.  I ask him if I can be straight with him.  Sure, he says.  I ask him how it is that he’s lost so much weight in the last several months and looks like so much shit.  He laughs and tells me how you know, man, living’s tough for some of us.  I tell him I know.

 

We sit there for a minute or two and then Doug decides to talk.  He tells me to watch my back with John, tells me to be careful that I don’t get on his bad side.  I ask him what he means by that.  He says about a year ago he knew that a mutual friend of theirs was banging John’s girlfriend behind his back but he didn’t tell John.  John found out about it and found out Doug knew but didn’t tell him.  I tell Doug that’s insane.  You did the right thing, I say.  He nods, blows out the last drag off his spent cigarette and flicks the butt into the gutter.  Yeah, but John never forgave me for it, he says.

 

Then Doug tells me that’s when it all began, him losing weight and falling down fast to what he is now.  I ask him what he’s talking about.  He says all that happened when John began using him in his stories.  I ask him what the fuck.  You know, he says, giving his protagonists my character, my ways, and sticking them in all these loser roles.  He tells me the bad shit that happens to them, happens to him, more or less.  I tell him now I don’t know who the insane one is.  He laughs and tells me that’s not his problem. 

 

He lights another cigarette, blows the smoke out hard, straight in front of him, looks directly at me and tells me to listen.  He’s been put through the wringer in John’s stories, he says.  To name just a few things, he’s been a small-time drug dealer, a bookie, and a pool shark and he’s been busted and hosed down and left freezing in the corners of jail cells; he’s been a crazy drunken painter tasered and hog-tied by the cops for making a scene outside a bar; he’s run a fight club and about got killed; and he’s been a loser on a self-destruct trip, drinking his life away, not eating, and waiting to die while he has an off and on relationship with a stripper that lives above a bar.

 

I went white on that last one.  Wait, wait, man, I say to him.  I ask him to entertain the possibility that maybe it’s his issue, that he’s psychologically identifying with John’s characters and it’s dragging him down.  All he says to me is there’s no way, that he knows what he knows, and it’s up to me if I want to take all this seriously or not.

 

I sit there with nothing more to say.  I don’t believe him or disbelieve him.  I ask him for a cigarette.  He takes one from his pocket, sticks it in his mouth, lights it off his own cigarette and gives it to me.  I try to blow smoke rings.  I’m having no luck.  He looks over at me, gets all impatient and tells me I have to hold my mouth like this, rounded and out a little and to lock it in place, in that O-shape.  He tells me I have to pulse air out gently from the back of my throat, not to blow it out.  I work at it until I get it.  Doug smiles, gives me a slap on the shoulder.

 

About then John comes up to us looking all nervous, says he thought I’d taken off without saying good-bye.  I tell him that’s insane.  He asks what all we’ve been talking about.  Fiction, I tell him, to see what he does.  Now he goes white.  I tell him how I was just telling Doug, here, about a story I’m planning to write when I get back.  John recovers, asks if I don’t mind telling him.  I tell him I don’t mind at all and I give him some bogus story line.  John smiles, tells me he likes it.  What I don’t tell him is what I’m really planning to do and that’s to write Doug healthy again, stick him in some winner roles in my stories.  It’ll be John against me.  May the best man win.

 

Fini

 

 

PHOTO CREDIT:

 

Photo http://farm1.static.flickr.com/182/448989441_c0ace1d4f9.jpg?v=1175916545

from Jackson West’s photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacksonwest/

 

 

 

Missalister’s “Prescription writing,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#168 – Vision”  Click here for more on prompt #168 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

 

The one that got away

 

“Foggy Morning” by RoyJr

 

It’s early, foggy, and the sun’s working its way up.  I’m running as I do every morning on the long dirt road that shoots off the main drag and goes way back into the woods behind our house.  Dew is everywhere, glistening, and the damp dirt gives, feels good under my feet.  I’m coming up on the brook that goes under the road around the second bend, and I hear a rustling over the rushing of the water.  Then I hear a great breaking out of running, jumping, and branches snapping and cracking hard in the woods.  I look left, toward the sounds, just in time to see the white tail of a deer bouncing away from me through the barely lit trees.  The racket goes diagonally ahead of me quickly, fades in a few minutes to no sound.

 

I shake my head and smile.  And I think about deer hunting, what an unequal match deer and hunters are.  In my car on the back roads especially, I’ve had many a stand-off with a deer all locked up, dead-on in my headlights and staring at me, incapable of making a decision.  And countless times I’ve watched deer come into clearings during the day so nervous they can’t eat the grass they came out to eat in the first place.  They end up having to high-tail it back into the woods and I end up wondering why they bothered.  So it’s not as if hunting deer is like hunting something particularly cunning, like a wolf, say, so that if you manage to kill it, you’ve accomplished quite some thing.

 

I finally come around to supposing it’s a Paleolithic thing—a primeval desire to hunt and fish and bring one’s kill proudly home—when again the deer startles me, at least I think it’s the same deer.  It’s a nice-sized buck, real pretty.  He busts out of the woods just up ahead in front of me and runs all unnerved and majestic across the road to the right side now.  He crashes into the woods and I see him jumping over downed and new trees, through ferns, and into the thickness.  And then I can only hear him, sounding like he’s running southeast up the hill toward the Greeleys’ place.

 

Now I begin to think something’s not right with this buck.  Even if deer aren’t the sharpest of creatures, they’re aware of human presence and have base instincts to stay clear.  The fact that this one has exposed itself to me twice makes me nervous and I begin to think about what I’d do if it’s screwed up and gets it in its head to mess with me.  But then, concern for the buck rises up in me just as quickly as the fear did.  Then I start thinking about the buck heading toward Greeleys’ place and that’s not a good place to head to.  It’s a long way off from deer season, but Mr. Greeley and his people go way back to this land and they give and take from it as they please in the old way of things.

 

About then I hear what sounds like a rifle shot.  I don’t even know if that’s what it is, don’t even know if it’s Mr. Greeley doing the shooting, but I feel bad either way, and suddenly deeply sad.  I think about what if it was the buck and how maybe he wouldn’t have gotten shot if I hadn’t come along and scared him, rattled his brains.  But that’s absurd.  I’m just trying to live my life, that’s all, and that’s all the buck’s doing.  I feel better thinking that way and the run feels good, too.  I’ve hit that good place where my heart rate’s just right and even and I’m feeling strong, like I could go on and on.

 

Right when I reach the old, falling-down sugar shack, I hear more crashing in the woods and I’ll be darned if it’s not that buck again way ahead of me busting back out of the woods from the right.  I see him start across the road, blood streaming from his side and my heart breaks, and in that instant of breaking I’m acutely aware of an otherworldly feeling that I could trade places with him.  It could be me going to run until I can’t anymore, until I fall to the ground and bleed the rest of the way to death.  Strangely, I feel myself not only willing to do that but yearning to.  It’d be the last living thing Mr. Greeley shot for awhile once they found me and found out where that bullet came from.  And that’s all it took.

 

It was a surreal moment or moments, I couldn’t tell which, of running toward the deer up ahead of me as he crashed unharmed and spotless into the woods on the left now, snapping branches, rustling up underbrush with his pounding hooves, pounding and leaping, until I can’t hear him anymore.  Until my eye catches a glimpse of red and I look down and realize blood is flowing down my left leg from a blasted-out place in my left side.  I keep running, not believing what I’m seeing is real.  It’s too absurd.  Things like this don’t happen these days when we leave the house.  We go about our business.  We run, go to work, go to the store, go back home, have dinner.

 

Fini

 

 

PHOTO CREDIT:

“Foggy Morning” by RoyJr found here:  http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3030/2935787357_a67042d6d3.jpg?v=0

Visit RoyJr’s flickr photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/roy/ for more good shots.

 

 

The above was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#167 – absurd.”  Click here for more on prompt #167 from other Sunday Scribblings participants. 

 

If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you

ESC’s still going on but I’m so tired of trying so hard that I blew off Ms. Flan and upped the goof level from last week’s SS offering to this no-brain bit of fun with this week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt, “soul mate.”

Alexa returned from the ladies room visibly refreshed.  She sat down at the table, took a sip of wine and leaned toward Melvin.  “Now where was I?” she said to him excitedly.  “Ah yes, my sister’s behavior!  Well, now, naturally I took my sister aside and told her, in a not so nice way, that such behavior would not be tolerated.  I mean, this was my bridal shower, for crissakes!  And there she was pouring on the charm, buttering everyone up with compliments that sounded fake to me, but everyone was blushing and acting all flattered, sucking them up as if they’d been deprived of compliments for months!  My God!  More people were actually talking to her than to me and I  was the one everyone was supposed to be lavishing attention on, not her!  And Melvin, I mean to tell you, even after I talked to her, my sister did not step down and let me have the stage, even knowing how hurt I was…”

Melvin let Alexa ramble on.  He watched her eyes blankly, both his hands on the table, the right one turning his salad fork over and over.  On the white linen tablecloth the fork made barely audible thumps that were comforting to him.

 

His eyes had fallen to Alexa’s cartoon mouth and he felt a heavy, trance-like pull as he watched the wideness of it moving fast and elastic.  A hint of fear disturbed his mind and he thought to tear his eyes away from the motile mouth lest he become hypnotized.

 

Melvin stopped turning the salad fork and focused on it, examined it, noticed the simple clean lines of it.  He turned it over, brought it close to his eyes.  Dansk.  Stainless.  He put the fork down, looked back up at Alexa and smiled passively.

 

From what he could tell, she had moved on to her second wedding and was dramatizing yet another injustice done to her, this time by her best friend.  She was blessedly interrupted by the waiter.

 

“Another glass of merlot, Miss?” the waiter asked, nose high, eyes closed.

 

“Oh, absolutely!  Please!” Alexa enthused.  “This is such fine wine, so smooth and flavorful, and the aroma—“

 

“Yes, Miss,” the waiter cut her off and turned to Melvin.  “And for you, sir?”

 

“Ah…I suppose not…no, I’d better not…since I’m driving—“

 

“Very good, sir,” the waiter said impatiently.  “Your dinner will be ready momentarily.”

 

Melvin nodded and the waiter walked away.  Immediately, a vague sense of regret bothered him slightly.  Perhaps he should have ordered another glass of wine.  He looked at Alexa and for a moment thought of interrupting her so that he might attempt to regain the waiter’s attention.

 

But Alexa had begun right where she’d left off, with her best friend having just winked suggestively at her new husband number two, and Melvin felt it would perhaps not do to interrupt at this critical point of Alexa’s never-ending story.  He sighed, and comforted himself with thumping his salad fork.

 

Dinner arrived and Melvin ate silently, concentrating on cutting his Chicken Cordon Bleu just so, and trying to single out the different spices in the cream sauce.  Alexa managed to eat and drink and still to continue on with her life story.

 

By the time the dishes had been cleared, she’d finished telling him of her third and last marriage—as of this telling—and she was expressing her desire to marry again.  She wanted children and she couldn’t see her way to having them out of wedlock.  She didn’t believe in that.

 

Melvin swallowed hard.  He hoped she hadn’t already targeted him as a potential husband number four.  Images of a mute, expressionless life filled his mind’s eye.  He saw Alexa moving fast and sporadic like a chicken with her chicks around a barnyard.  He saw her cartoon mouth engulfing him, taking him inside it and digesting him slowly as a mouse being worked through a snake.

 

He felt something grab his hand and he jumped, and a deep, displeasing sound forced its way out of his body.  He looked around him trying to believe the sound hadn’t come from him.  People nearby had stopped eating and were staring at him, surprised, shocked, concerned.  He smiled at all of them sheepishly and looked back at Alexa.  She had drawn back in her chair, recoiled from his reaction.  She sighed, relieved, when she saw that he was alright.

 

“My goodness!” Alexa said, one hand over her heart.  “Now where was I?  Oh yes!” she said and smiled coyly.  She reached over the table, took Melvin’s hand in hers.  “I had just taken your hand in mine and I was going to tell you that I know this is just our first date, but I feel like I’ve known you forever!  I have never felt this way before!  I feel like you and I are soul mates!  Can you feel it?!”

 

Melvin cleared his throat.  Suddenly he wasn’t sure what he felt.  He found himself unable to get a proper reading of his emotions.  And who was he to say if they were soul mates?

 

Alexa was leaning toward him, expectantly.  An indefinite measure of nervousness settled on him for a moment.  He looked at Alexa.  She was nice looking, certainly, and she had nice eyes…

 

“Ah, maybe…there’s a chance I might feel it…perhaps I do—”

 

Alexa had to cut in or she’d burst from joy, “Oh I knew it!  I knew it!” she exclaimed, bouncing in her chair, both hands clasped over her heart.  “This is how it happens!” she exclaimed, all giddy.  “This is how true soul mates are united!”

 

Fini

 

 

 

 

“You Talk Too Much”

George Thorogood

 

You talk too much, you talk too much
I can’t believe the things that you say everyday
If you keep on talking baby
You know you’re bound to drive me away

Now you get on the telephone with your girlfriend
Your conversation baby ain’t got no end
Yakety-yakety-yakety-yak all the time
You keep on talking baby drive me out of my mind
You talk too much
I can’t believe the things that you say everyday
If you keep on talking baby
You know you’re bound to drive me away

Well I laid out in the afternoon I start to nappin’
You walk into the room with them jaws a-flappin’
You keep that motormouth moving morning, noon and night
You keep on talking baby make my head turn white
You talk too much
I can’t believe the things that you say everyday
If you keep on talking baby
You know you’re bound just to drive me away

I think you’re trying to put me through some kind of test
I’m begging you baby won’t you give it a rest
You talk about people that you don’t even know
Keep it up baby I’m gonna pick up and blow
You talk too much
I can’t believe the things that you say everyday
If you keep on talking baby
You know you’re bound to drive me away

Don’t get me wrong baby I don’t mean to complain
But if you keep on talking you’re gonna drive me insane
You keep on talking all around the clock
I’m begging you baby won’t you please stop
You talk too much
I can’t believe the things that you say everyday
If you keep on talking baby
You know you’re bound to drive me away

 

 

PHOTO CREDIT

Restaurant photo from http://www.arkansas.com/images/blog/Image/Michelangelo%27sConway.jpg

 

 

 

The above was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#166 – soul mate.”  Click here for more on prompt #166 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

 

Ms. Flan in ink on card stock with gouache color

 

Illustration © 2009 Christine Marie Larsen

 

The strange, prickly ways of Flannery O’Connor [1], Anna Arco calls it.  I should be so strange and prickly!  Stranger even, and more prickly, forbidding, doctrinaire, witty and obsessed [2], especially if that group of words  that amounts to “odd” also amounts to knowing, through and through, that writing is all about meaning, about revealing as much of the mystery of existence as possible [3].

I’d dare say that anyone who cares deeply for the art of writing has tasted it, the occasional enlightened string of words that has dropped into their heads from “somewhere,” that shocked the bejeebers out of them when it hit, and meant some momentous thing to those who read it.  I’ve sampled some hors d’oeuvres that way and it’s left me starving for the whole meal of regularly delivering illumined meanings and mysteries in the most universally eloquent and brilliant way within and without my power to do so.

My intentions are good, but my data storage is limited.  So before I forget everything I’ve felt and professed here, before I go back to my, “Huh, what?” tendency to bull through life, all nervous, blind and brawny, I have the urge to scrawl on this blog wall, “Ms. Flan was here,” and to set down some things I learned from her recently.

I also have the urge to affix just the right associative image to accompany my scrawl, just in the slim chance and event that Ms. Flan’s essence does sink in and stick down.  And I found the image that is unlike any other, like Flannery O’Connor’s writing is unlike any other writing.  I clicked through a barrage of Google offerings that everyone already has in their fireside albums and landed on illustrator Christine Marie Larsen’s site, in the color illustrations department, for at least an hour.

I scrolled down through, studying each illustration that at first glance could be considered by some to be easy or simplistic, but they’re not at all.  The technique is fascinating, and in the eyes of every person, dog, or other animal, there is a live spirit looking out.  And sketch or no, the essence of each famous personality is there.  There is meaning and the vibrant and fun mystery of life loaded into every single one of these illustrations.  And the happiness in me built, illustration after illustration, into full-blown, glowing joy.  So be careful when you look for yourself.

Now then, along the lines of Kurt Vonnegut’s marvelous “Eight rules for writing fiction” list [4], from Ms. Flan’s “Writing Short Stories,” I made myself a “Strange and Prickly List” to get stuck into at least once per day: 

 

Strange and Prickly List

“A short story should be long in depth and should give us an experience of meaning,” or, put another way, “meaning is what keeps a short story from being short.”

“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.  You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.”

Meaning over theme:  “When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.  The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it.”

“The habit of art”:  more than just a discipline, “the habit of art…is a way of looking at the created world and of using the senses so as to make them find as much meaning as possible in things.”

Find a way to make the action you describe “reveal as much of the mystery of existence as possible.”  There’s “only a short space to do it in and” you “can’t do it by statement.”  You have to “do it by showing, not by saying, and by showing the concrete…”  Find a way “to make the concrete work double time for” you.

“In most good stories it is the character’s personality that creates the action of the story….If you start with a real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen; and you don’t have to know what before you begin.  In fact it may be better if you don’t know what before you begin.  You ought to be able to discover something from your stories.  If you don’t, probably nobody else will.”

“A complete story is one in which the action fully illuminates the meaning.”

On what the form of a short story is:  “…the more you write, the more you will realize that the form is organic, that it is something that grows out of the material, that the form of each story is unique.  A story that is any good can’t be reduced, it can only be expanded.  A story is good when you continue to see more and more in it, and when it continues to escape you.”

“The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then to try to discover what you have done.  The time to think of technique is when you’ve actually got the story in front of you.”

“Fiction is an art that calls for the strictest attention to the real—whether the writer is writing a naturalistic story or a fantasy….Even when one writes a fantasy, reality is the proper basis of it. A thing is fantastic because it is so real, so real that it is fantastic.”

It is possible to deliver the goods to the intelligent reader as well as the average reader, “Good Country People,” a case in point: “The average reader is pleased to observe anybody’s wooden leg being stolen.  But without ceasing to appeal to him and without making any statements of high intention, this story does manage to operate at another level of experience, by letting the wooden leg accumulate meaning.…It operates in depth as well as on the surface.”

Fini

---

[1] Journalist Anna Arco’s title in “The Catholic Herald” of her review of Brad Gooch’s “Flannery: A life of Flannery O’Connor”

[2] From novelist Joy Williams’ “Stranger Than Paradise,” a book review of Brad Gooch’s “Flannery:  A life of Flannery O’Connor”

[3] From Flannery O’Connor’s “Writing Short Stories”

[4] A cool way to receive Vonnegut’s 8 from a blog on my roll—Chloe’s “The Froth”

Operation Bandwagon

Here’s a goofy character study amidst three settings because I was incapable of any great thing this week.  And because the props here are a guitarist, an artist, and a writer, and there have been friends that have written to me wondering if I was writing about them, I’ll begin by saying the guitarist was modeled after Thorogood’s lead guitarist and everyone else is a figment of my imagination : )  And Michael, don’t think I’ve forgotten about the sharecropper gang.

 

The guitarist

 

It was a warm Thursday night just barely inside a Texas October.  Evie had gone all out with her makeup, picked just the right clothes.  She’d got in her car and followed the MapQuest directions to the stripped-down strip plaza where Bootlegger’s bar was supposedly at.  The only colorful thing in the whole plaza was the bright-lit blue canopy on the Blockbuster store at the far right end of it.  Everything else was grey or tan.  Grey pavement, grey storefronts, tan grass and trees in grey planter islands.

 

Evie turned into the plaza and looked around for Bootlegger’s, saw a concentration of cars at the far left that led her eyes to the Bootlegger’s sign up on the false front and then down under it to the great, long row of big, blacked-out storefront windows.  Hard, the place was, and blank like the eyes of a shark, made her feel like she should park closer to Blockbuster’s protective blue glow.

 

She landed in a curb spot, got out, and looked toward Bootlegger’s.  She took a quick breath and began to walk all apprehensive through the night cut through in spots by the orangey dots of parking lot lights.  Far below the glowing haze of them, crickets were making a racket, and hellacious Blues riffs rushed out and around the ground and swirled up into the air every time the Bootlegger’s door opened. 

 

Evie fussed toward the place, tugging to get her clothes to set right on her again after sitting so long in the car.  The two bouncers yakking out in front of Bootlegger’s caught site of her about then and watched as she began digging in her purse for her wallet, digging and not finding, missing a step for stepping on a pebble.  The bouncers shut up and watched her like TV, amazed by the contradiction between beauty and bumbling.

 

By the time Evie had got organized and stood before the bouncers offering her ID, they were winking at each other and laughing.  Evie frowned, cleared her throat.  The bouncers straightened up, said, “Howdy,” to her, took her five dollars and opened the door for her.  The Blues met her head-on and the bouncers looked her backside up and down as she walked on through.

 

The inside was mobbed with folks come to see this hot band.  Evie put on an unfazed look, wore it like a wall against the stares, and walked as cool as possible straight back toward the L-shaped bar.  It was a great hulking thing, dark like the rest of the place but for the towering shelves of colored booze bottles glowing like stacks of gems from picking up the stage lights to the right.  To the left, the pool tables stretched back to the end of the place and the rest of the joint was a sea of cheap, cafeteria-looking tables and chairs.

 

The music was right loud and people were dancing and hollering and carrying on.  The bar was jammed up with folks getting drinks and waiting like vultures for someone to leave their barstool.  Evie fixed her sights on a couple of benign-looking good ole boys, bucked up and flashed them a smile, leaned in to them and hollered so she could be heard, “Say, would you boys mind if I squeeze in here just a moment so’s I can get myself a beer?”

 

The good ole boys couldn’t move fast enough.  “Oh, hell no, Missy!” one bellowed while the other one hopped up and offered her his seat.

 

Evie laughed, hollered, “Oh, no, thank you kindly, sir!  Just need a beer.”

 

“Shor thing, ma’am,” the seat-offerer hollered back.  He tipped his hat to her and hopped back up onto his stool.

 

While Evie waited for her beer, she watched the band.  The guitarist/vocalist was way more talented than she’d heard tell.  Dude was sitting down, all knees and big-booted feet, playing a Dobro with a bottleneck slide on his little finger.  He must have unwound to at least six feet tall, but there all of him was on a regular chair making it look small, going straight to town, tapping pedals, singing about having ramblin’ on his mind.  And with his long, brown hair, Lord have mercy!

 

The bartender hollered at Evie, “Three dollars!”

 

She jumped, looked around at the impatient bartender, frowned, and set herself to the task of digging around in her purse for her wallet, digging and not finding. 

 

“Here, man,” one of the good ole boys yelled toward the bartender.  He pushed three fifty across the bar.   “I got it.”

 

Evie leaned in to the patron saint and hollered, “Why, thank you!”

 

The good ole boy gave her a nod.  She gave him a sincere smile in return and took off to find a place to stand closer to the band.

 

The guitarist was winding up his ramblin’ with an insane grand finale of chugging and picking and mixing fingering with sliding.  The folks dancing had stopped to watch and the people seated had risen to their feet.  The guitarist landed the slide on a vibrato at the end of the neck, then slid to the top of the fretboard and squeezed the sound dead.  The people paused, stunned, before letting loose with the thrill of it all.  And the guitarist, he unplugged the Dobro, said his thank-you’s, and announced a break.

 

When he stepped down off the stage, he was surrounded with folks wanting to touch the hem of his garment knowing they’d be made whole if they did.  The guitarist was polite but clearly desiring to go where people weren’t.  He signed CDs, hugged babes, shook hands with wannabes, but when he caught sight of Evie, he stopped short.  He strew a path through the throng with excuse-me’s and offered his hand to Evie.  She smiled and he took her off to the side where it was more peaceful, to talk.

 

And those who fretted his return did not have long to wait for he soon found that Evie was more bumble than beauty and in his position he could have anything he wanted and what he wanted was more like the Goddess Athena.  For her part, Evie figured she just mustn’t have been beautiful enough, that maybe her thirty-five years were beginning to show, and she walked dejected toward the ladies’ room nearly tripping on a taped-down cord.

 

 

The Artist

 

It was a cool, December night in downtown Dallas.  Evie had beautified herself impressively, had bought a lovely peach-colored dress that perfectly complimented her skin.  And she’d found a lovely pair of heels that perfectly matched the dress.  Nevertheless, when she opened the much overdone door to the Mibenda Art Gallery, she saw that everyone, even the men, were more beautiful than she.

 

The men stood handsomely with arched backs, wavy hair swept back, and fashionable stubble upon their chins.  And the women stood knowing themselves through and through, holding their wine glasses delicately in midair, and whispering close and intelligently to acquaintances.

 

The flooring throughout was light yellowy wood.  And the reception desk, ceiling and walls and myriad partitions all were white.  Just below the ceiling hung sprinkler pipes, lighting tracks and air ducts, their round and square shapes odd blessings also in white disguise.  The square splashes of color on the walls that were Jacques Bagot’s paintings were spaced so far apart that they did little to interrupt the continuity of white.

 

Despite these significant intimidations, Evie took a quick breath and moved as coolly as she knew how, for it was Jacques Bagot she had come to meet, and hopefully to enamor.  She graciously accepted a glass of wine when offered one and donned a considerate and interested face that studied closely each brush stroke of each painting and came away seeming enlightened somehow.

 

A few beautiful men approached her for her opinions but left after a few words out of her mouth.  This caused Evie to doubt the freshness of her breath and she dug in her peach-colored purse, dug and dug until finding, her sugar-free wintergreen Tic Tacs.  And just in time, for toward her came Monsieur Bagot, his eyes aglow with the excitement of an exquisite discovery.  He took her hand since she knew not to offer it, and he bent forward slightly to kiss it, never taking his burnt umber eyes from hers.

 

Evie smiled and Monsieur Bagot touched the back of her arm to lead her aside to talk.  And talk they did, for just a minute or two, before Monsieur excused himself and evaded her the rest of the evening.  For her part, Evie assumed the mints had not done their job, and she left the gallery, mission sadly unaccomplished.

 

 

The writer

 

Evie brushed her teeth for ten minutes and flossed and swished regular Listerine around in her mouth for as long as she could stand it.  She applied her make-up to ultimate perfection, dressed bookwormy—even put a pair of +1.00 reading glasses in her bottomless pit of a purse—and drove north to the Frisco Barnes and Noble.

 

She parked her car and hurried toward the store anticipating breathing that divine coffee-and-print smell and being enticed by those comfy green and brown reading spaces and those rows and rows of colorful hope and escape in the form of books.  Although Evie was not particularly literarily inclined, she had always been drawn to the biography section.  Since she had no outstanding talents, she all the more relished sniffing the pages of books about those who did have them.

 

But on this particular crisp January evening, Evie was not here for that, but to meet Jonathan Walken, who had recently become famous for his first novel, “Egoic Bliss.”  The book spins off James Hillman’s acorn theory and asserts that although the ego is generally thought to be a hindrance to spiritual enlightenment, it is critical to keeping on track the soul’s overall educational journey toward ultimate perfection via the vehicles of human lifetimes.

 

Although Evie rarely bought books, and had never actually read one from cover to cover, this book had sounded so intriguing to her that she’d bought it the day after hearing of it and had devoured it entirely.  So she had her copy of the book with her and she made her way excitedly to the rows of folding chairs around a podium with posters of the book cover all around.  The seats were mostly taken, except for a few in the front and back rows.  She chose the back and sat, waiting knowingly, breathlessly for what seemed like forever.

 

Finally, Mr. Walken appeared, tall and trim in a hip, suit jacket, no tie.  He looked to be in his late forties, had longish salt and pepper hair, a very pleasing face, and trendy glasses perched on his nose.  He held himself classily and walked calmly to the podium and organized his notes.  He paused for a moment, then smiled as he scanned his audience.  When his eyes met with the beauteous Evie, they seemed to vibrate and he lost his composure.  He cleared his throat, paused again, and then began his talk, slowly at first, making a concerted effort not to look at Evie.

 

After the talk there was an opportunity to ask questions, and by the time Evie thought of something smart-sounding to ask, Mr. Walken had closed the session and was inviting all those who’d like him to sign their copies of his book to come forward.  Evie jumped up and got in line, and when it was her turn, when Mr. Walken looked up at her, his eyes softened.  He asked for her name and after some seconds, he reluctantly drew his eyes from her to her opened book and he scrawled, “Pretty Evie, coffee after?” and signed his name all wild underneath.  She smiled a yes.

 

After everyone had dispersed, Mr. Walken walked lively over to Evie and said, “Well, Beautiful, we can’t have coffee here—too many potential interruptions.  So name your favorite place!”

 

Evie smiled, but her brain seemed to slow, to be unable to access information, and she could only say, “Ah…”

 

Mr. Walken tried again and then again, and just as he was about to excuse himself, Evie blurted out, “Dunkin’ Donuts!  No Frosted Java!  No—”  She went silent again.

 

“Does this happen often?” Mr. Walken asked, half joking.

 

Evie looked at her feet.  “All the time,” she said in a little voice.

 

“Why do you suppose that is?” Walken asked.

 

“I’m not altogether sure,” Evie said, still looking down.

 

“Why did you come here?” Walken asked her.

 

“To meet you.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because you’re somebody.”

 

Walken laughed.  “And what are you?  Chopped liver?”

 

Evie looked up at him, studied his eyes.  “Yes!” she said, “The best chopped liver!”  And she laughed and laughed until tears rolled down her face and her sides ached.

 

Walken laughed along with her, then he hugged her.  “Good,” he said, smiling.  “You understand.”

 

 

Fini

 

PHOTO CREDIT:

The Goddess Athena statue from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Athena_type_Velletri.jpg

 

The above mess was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#165 – covert.”  Click here for more on prompt #165 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

The sunshine vignettes

NOTE:  For last week’s SS prompt, “Disconnected,” I disconnected, not of my own choosing, but because the sun blasted and the steamroller rolled.  And all that blasting and rolling inspired this mess here that brought back  The miracle vignettes women, Rachele, Ruthey, and LeeAnn.  It was going to be for SUNY/ESC but it turned out too weird, turned out to be something that more of you might appreciate, and that’s meant, strangely, as a compliment : )

The late spring sun blasted up over the curve of the earth, pierced treetops and skyscrapers with its close, sharp rays, forced its way into all the eastern rooms of buildings, homes.  It cut through cobwebbed glass, left swipes of light on eggshell walls, made prisms of bevels of mirrors, and lay down blocks of brilliance on the floors.  It was moving fast toward the unbearable inner city summer heat, toward Moss Glen Falls to dry it out for autumn, for hikers and leaf-peepers, and on toward the ruthless winter of the Cascades, toward Mount Baker, that thirty-five hundred foot high money-making machine.

The sun swarms the earth like people do—hard and fast, come hell or high water, living or dying—and it would be no bothersome thing if there were no stories behind the things of it.  If the hill hermits could just rise to the sun, all happy in themselves, going about their business of writing and hiding and gardening like gnomes.  If the town drunk could just squint one annoyed eye at the damnable thing, the blaring ball of light and heat disturbing his addled sleep, and maybe lift a hand to swat at it before rolling his back to it.  If the common man could be common and if the uncommon man could just be that, with no hate or jealously or worldly love attached.

But there’s been a story put to everything, put to every life on the planet, that makes the simple, sweet thing sad, that makes the spirit wilt and the eye weep when the story ends what could be called badly, when objects and living things cared for too much take their leave like the sun leaves everything to the cold of darkness above and beneath the ground.  And peering out from the dark, in the moonlit eye of every beholder lies a million different views glinting off a million different silvers of knives and golds of candlesticks, stolen or earned, used for what could be called good or bad, for birthing or living or dying, but always for something, never for nothing, nothing but stories. 

I – Rachele

Rachele mindlessly waits for the miracle of a million good luck bucks to be dropped on her from somewhere, she doesn’t care where, and that’s maybe the thing keeping her from it—no sweet faith, only callous expectation and hard luck living, selling sex in a sleazy apartment, her beauty, her bait, her only good luck buck so far—in an indirect sort of way.

She got a bad start in life, left a hell pit of a house at sixteen, with only her irrational, juvenile thinking to guide her, and now she’s stuck in that no-win thinking because she hangs with folks who parallel her way of being.  From the ashtray of life, her only view of up is Paramount Pictures, and that’s a big jump up from stuck down. 

But something could turn around for her just because anything’s possible, anything at all, and because life’s not static.  Lessons advancing the human character and condition are happening all the time.  Trouble is, for everything learned, it seems like something else needs to be learned.

Rachele lost her big-money regular to Mary Magdalene a couple of months ago and had to get a roommate, Kat, a veteran sex saleswoman, to help pay the rent.  Kat’s fixing to turn thirty, has been in the biz for a long damned time.  And although eighteen year-old Rachele is still too young to know she doesn’t know it all, she’s learning a few things despite herself.

Rachele watches Kat like a hawk, like now, she stares at her across the empty booze bottles and PBR cans scattered atop her dinky, flip-down kitchen table, watches how Kat pushes her lips out to blow smoke up toward the grimy ceiling, how it makes her look so cool.  She likes Kat.

Trouble is, she just heard the other day that the cops found Mary Magdalene dead in a dumpster and her regular trick wants to come back around, and this time she’ll know better than to screw him over like last time.  Now she doesn’t need Kat anymore, wants to kick her out.  Trouble is, she’s just too inexperienced to know how to do it so she won’t have to pay hard for it.  She just tells her, “Kat, I want you outta here by tomorrow night.”

And Kat, she just blows her smoke upward and drags her eyes lazily from the ceiling to Rachele’s eyes and tells her slow and searing, “That ain’t much time to give a ‘friend’ what done you a big-ass favor when you was cryin’ for fixin’ to be put out on the street by your lan’lord.”

Rachele shies from Kat’s burning brown eyes, sits back in her chair a bit, thinking what to do, what to say.  She doesn’t know much else but meeting resistance with resistance and so she stiffens her backbone, gets all indignant-looking and tells Kat, “It’s my place and I gotta do what I gotta do.”

Kat lights another cigarette, blows the smoke at Rachele, and says, “Have it your way, fool.”

Rachele frowns, says, “Fuck you,” because that’s all that’s left to say when you’re wrong and cornered and your ego won’t let you off the hook without the last word.

Kat just smiles.  She knows she can get out of Rachele’s apartment in as long as it takes her to gather up her few clothes and cosmetics.  She knows she’s got at least five true friends that’ll put her up gladly because she’s done the same for them.  But Kat’s going to stay and make Rachele’s life miserable right up until 11:59pm tomorrow night.  It’s her duty.

II – Ruthey

Ruthey had had it all, did all the right things to get it all—honors in high school, honors at Columbia, a smooth ride on the tenure track at NYU—but there was one weak plug in her DNA through which all the right stuff eventually exploded madly, seemingly endlessly, driven by a previously unseen or ignored pressure as water blasts through a dike with the wildness of a hurricane driving it.

She had an idea that the real American dream lay somewhere in the midst of kids and dogs, educating them, and educating people about them, and she was so naively, happily about that business that she didn’t see trouble coming.  One man is all it had taken to derail her, to poke a hole in the wimpy membrane barely keeping the plug from popping.  One man and the unquestioned belief that went hand in hand with him, that he loved her deliciously, explicitly.  And when she found herself in the drearily commonplace position of finding out otherwise in the usually scripted way, she heard a rip and a pop and she was gone as she knew herself.

In the mudslide of losses, of foreclosures and repossessions, she lost her life to city parks, to the bellies of bridges and the bowels of subways.  She lost it all to dumpsters and soup kitchens and standing in line for shelter at night.  And somewhere further along the line she gained a friend that extended a patient and strong hand, strong enough to pull her up high enough to get an eyeful of all the help she might avail herself of, to see maybe that for everything lost, something is gained.

Years of counseling later, of starting all the way over, she has a dive to live in, a black dog, Mauchunk, to love and feed, and a teaching job at a pit of hell high school in Brooklyn where hopeless hating goes on every day and assaults and shootings happen in its overcrowded halls on a regular basis.  But her kids are coming around at a snails pace, in a Freedom Writers kind of way, because after all she’s seen, she genuinely believes in beating all odds and therefore she genuinely believes in them.

III – LeeAnn

On the surface, LeeAnn appeared to be one of the haphazardly lucky ones from the get-go.  She was born healthy, not too hard on the eyes, not too brilliant but not too dumb, either, born to good parents in a good geographical location where good schools and good opportunities abounded.  This was her instant inheritance.  No work required.  Lucky girl, one would think, but it seems it’s all relative, this life and everything in it, for LeeAnn was also born a tenuous creature.  It was as if God wasn’t quite certain that this prototype would be able to stand completely on its own and so he gave it enough to get by on in case he got hung up suppressing Satan or squashing demons like grapes and wasn’t available to rescue the creature from self-destruction or external assaults.  When LeeAnn’s smarts failed her, there were her looks and vice versa depending on the situation and whether she was dealing with males or females.

On the surface, it looked like her whole life was one divine bail-out after another, looked like the whole of her existence was one big miracle.  And that part is mostly all true, for someone who existed in a perpetual miracle—like being always in the eye of a hurricane—would likely be unable to see their miracle status, like LeeAnn didn’t see hers.  Most all the hardship she ever had was of her own making, as if being comfortable with herself and others was not her deepest desire as she always said it was, as if she needed to make a reason to long for a miracle because she didn’t have a reason.

To her credit, though, LeeAnn did try to stand on her own many times.  But always, as with these particularly momentous efforts—as a teen, she suddenly began making all her own decisions, and quickly, too, with no mealy-mouthing around, and as an adult she left a wrong career for a right livelihood—she fell flatly, miserably on her face.  And that, to LeeAnn, revealed God’s own weakness in wanting ever to be the big cheese.  Co-dependency is what it seemed like, nothing short of unhealthy, but God was more emphatic than her and if that’s the way he wanted it, fine.

Now she lets him lead her through the valleys and up over the hills like the sun blasts up over the curve of the earth and storms it, like a steamroller rolls it, maiming or killing things in its heavy-pressing path, but never ever stopping to look back because it all just is as it is, blasting perpetually forward.  To LeeAnn it seems at once appalling and acceptable, appalling when what she calls love is attached and acceptable when no emotion at all is attached, when no story of caring one way or the other is told.  And the irony of the question that followed—why humans, who can not keep from putting stories to everything, are put on a callously sun-blasted earth—aimed to stick in LeeAnn’s craw but for the knowing that it’s the Big Cheese’s problem, not hers, so let him worry about it.

Fini

 

PHOTO CREDITS:

The photo “Apollo Sunrise,” was taken in November of 1969 by the Apollo 12 astronauts.  The photo and more information on it can be found at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap960620.html

 

Missalister’s “The sunshine vignettes,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#164 – Worry”  Click here for more on prompt #164 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

After project completion

 

There’s a spinning, the whirring of a hard drive still hard working, processing the need for slowing, coming down off top end to settle into idling, a form of healing from an imbalanced head-to-heart ratio.  The left buzz is too loud for the right song to be heard.

 

And so goes the spinning until the realization takes hold that there is not now any pressing work to be done for money.  There is, for a time, only heart work to be done for nothing but the satisfaction of time on earth well spent.

 

There is currently only the feeling that healing is perpetual, a constant, lasts at least as long as the human journey from birth to death.  There is always something to be balanced, set right, whether physical or mental abrasion or upending.  There is always something seen, heard, felt, that demands resolution or at least categorization, whether sensible or inexplicable.

 

Healing is always happening, may or may not be ultimately successful, but always just is.  The living, breathing earth and all its inhabitants are always spontaneously mending from excavation, pollution, forces of nature, scrapes, rape, gunshot wounds, colds and contagions, cancer, abandonment, being the last one standing, mending.

 

Living is puzzling, is ecstasy and torture and all points in between; healing is its own thing proceeding in a straight course.

 

 

 

 

A little camera jostling here but it becomes a small thing compared to this rare, live treat. 

 

 

JESUS JUST LEFT CHICAGO

Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, Frank Beard

 

Jesus just left Chicago

And he’s bound for New Orleans

Well now, Jesus just left Chicago

And he’s bound for New Orleans, yeah, yeah

Workin’ from one end to the other

And all points in between.

 

Took a jump through Mississippi

Well, muddy water turned to wine

Took a jump through Mississippi

Muddy water turned to wine, yeah, yeah

Then out to California through the forests and the pines

Ah, take me with you, Jesus

 

You might not see him in person

But he’ll see you just the same

You might not see him in person

But he’ll see you just the same, yeah, yeah

You don’t have to worry

‘Cause takin’ care of business is his name

 

 

 

The above was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#162 – Healing.”  Click here for more on prompt #162 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

 

A bay girl’s blues

NOTE:  this is another combined deal for SS prompt #161 “Confession” and making up for missing an early ESC assignment—some missing, misinterpretation, misunderstanding went on…  Anyway, the assignment was to draw from youth for first person fiction.  I was in a hurry, so lucky you ; )  The title’s inspired by Micheal O’s “The Bayman’s Blues” which I listen to at least once per day, for that voice, those guitar solos.  I once lived near Ozona, FL,  used to know shrimper, Captain Tom, used to go to SPJC, used to live on a bay, and some of my best memories were made there : )

I wound along Bayshore Drive where the ocean breeze pushed harder into the sandy land.  It pushed all warm, clear and spirited past me, through to the live oaks dripping down spanish moss.  It rustled leaves and tinkled bells and chimes on the old crackerbox palaces and the new ones on pilings.  The last week of the summer semester had gone on and on, all glaring and unbearably hot, and landlocked as I’d been, I was crazy for a fun time.  Ozona was singing its wild song and I bent toward its music like a palm tree in the wind.

I turned in to Captain Tom’s Marina and parked over by the bait shop with its beat tin roof and makeshift signs painted “Tackle,” “Live Bait,” and “Beer.”  The place looked like it was fixing to tumble into the sound, board by pitted board, but it was built solid, all of it.  The weathered clapboards were as smiling old salts, guardians of the interior:  thick, wide floorboards worn wavy and smooth like a longtime lover; and great brown walls, knotty with character.  Signs were tacked up everywhere, made of everything—paper, wood and those rich, old-time, rusty tin signs that made even chewing tobacco look good.

 

I scrambled out of the old Monte Carlo I’d scrounged a couple hundred to buy, a huge maroon beast with a hanging-down headliner, cracked dash, and a hood a mile long.  The nearly six liter engine crackled and hissed and stunk as I ran flip-flopping by it, across the blinding white stones and crushed shells to the bait shop door.  The little shopkeeper’s bell jingled as I pushed inside blinking and looking around, hoping like mad that Captain Tom would be there and maybe take me out on his boat or go with me up to Fast Eddie’s for lunch.  When my eyes had adjusted I saw no one at all.  The place was left to its own sweet reserves.  I waited, delighting there, thinking about Captain Tom, picturing what all I’d say when he walked in the door and how things might go down.

 

The bell on the door jingled and I started, looked, trying to balance eagerness and coolness.  It was just Beau.  Beau was a go-getting cracker trying with all his might to make good, make something of himself against the damnedest odds of bad mojo in general.  He was older, like late thirties, like Captain Tom, and he was the Everything Man around the marina.  He lived just down the street in a beat-up shanty on a tiny piece of land left to him by his lost hobo daddy.  Countless times the City had tried to buy Beau out or to condemn his shack, but Beau’s neighbors would always rally around and help him rectify whatever the enforcement order listed as being in violation.

 

Beau came blustering in blinking, and when he saw me, he stopped just short of me and stepped back, his face brightening.  He regarded me with a satisfied smile.  “Why, Miss Emmeline!  You lookin’ finer than fine today!  You gonna go catch y’self some rays at the beach?”

 

“I just might,” I said, blushing.  “Say, Beau, have you seen Captain Tom?”

 

“Sure ‘nough!” Beau said, grinning.  “Cap’n Tom took Miss Lilly out on the trawler earlier.  Came in from shrimpin’ last night, slept for a coupla hours and he was up and at ‘em gettin’ ready to go out again.  Then I seen Miss Lilly drive up and I says to myself—”  Beau stopped, lifted my chin with the crook of his first finger and exclaimed, “Wouldya look at that sweet lil face!”  He cocked his head around slightly, examining my eyes and different angles of my face.  “Why, Missy Emmy!  You got a way big thing for Cap’n Tom doncha?”

 

I snapped my head away, angry.  “What makes you say that?”

 

Beau laughed.  “Sheeit, girl!  Just look atcha!”

 

“Christ, Beau, give me a break!” I begged him, my eyes starting to tear up.

 

Beau put his arm around me, gave me one of those side hugs, and whispered in my ear, “You too good for the likes of Cap’n Tom, Princess.  That one, he ain’t never gonna settle down, an’ he got an ornery streak twenty-five mile wide.  Trus’ me.  You deserve a good, lovin’ man, an’ Cap’n Tom ain’t that!”

 

I smiled.  Beau made my heart glow, he was so sweet.  He gave me one final squeeze and let me go.  “Now, Miss Emmeline, what can I do you for?” he asked, laughing.  “I bet you be wantin’ some beer, am I right?”

 

I stood there, head down, twisting one flip-flop around on the floor, pondering.  It was sort of my secondary plan, getting some beer and seeing who all was down on the causeway.  But that was a lie, I guess, because it felt all wrong now.  I looked up at Beau, his face so tender and earnest, and I just said “I don’t know, Beau.  Right now I’m just gonna go out on the dock and think for awhile, alright?”

 

“Suit y’self, Missy,” Beau said.  He patted my shoulder and winked at me.  “’Member what I said ‘bout Cap’n Tom, now, girl!  I ain’t talkin’ jus’ to hear myse’f talk, now!”

 

I smiled at Beau.  He was a good, good man.  “I hear ya, Beau” I said to him.  I jingled out the door and walked on down the steps toward the dock.  It was a short dock, not like the one down a way, south of the breaker, with 52 slips.  Here there was just seven on one side and the other side was for the trawler.  This dock was all worn like the floorboards in the bait shop and had as much character.  I walked down to the sad, wooden end, sat down and swung my legs to that wild, Ozona tune.  I watched my feet swing and felt that pushing ocean breeze smoothing over my face and back through my hair, like it was trying to tell me this was nature and everything in it is OK.  I didn’t believe it.  I only wanted to believe vigorous, humorous, mighty Captain Tom was for me, him and his smiling, sea-blue eyes.

 

I looked up, stared out across the sound, out toward Honeymoon Island, thought about how beyond that was the Gulf of Mexico all wide and looking endless, like there was no more land after that, like Ozona was the end of the Earth.  But it wasn’t.  There was Texas and Mexico and the wide open Pacific and if you kept on going you’d end up right back here at this very dock.  I smiled, dreamed on, let my staring eyes glaze over, and soon enough the piercing gulls’ cries dulled down to what sounded like women’s voices, millions of them, riding the pushing wind.  The voices were whispering, laughing, confiding, confessing: Listen, listen…I could have done better…I followed my heart…I didn’t live fully…I never loved you…I loved you…  It was all so rich and heady a thing that I impulsively added my own confession to the wind: It was your free-spirited power I wanted, wild Captain Tom, but I see now that I have my own.

 

Fini

 

 

THE BAYMAN’S BLUES

JMike Inferno

Lyrics supplied by the man himself.  Go here, look for the ReverbNation widget, top, righthand sidebar, and forward to “The Bayman’s Blues,” to listen and let the words and music work on you…

 

I’m sitting here in Clamtown digging my heels in the sand

Thinking about a way of life needing more than a helping hand

You know the fish are getting smaller and the oyster beds ain’t what they used to be

The Fish Island factory has all but been claimed by the sea

 

Well it’s the story of an American dream long gone and it feels all wrong now

The locals want to know why a man like me wants to come along now

The life of a bayman ain’t nothing but an empty shell

And the folks down in Clamtown got nothing but a story to sell

And they’re gonna sell it to you

 

Well you can smell the history driving down old Seven Bridges Road

If you know what I’m talking about it means you’re probably getting old

Well San Fran had the gold rush and Clamtown had the fruit of the bay

West coast gold turned to silicon, this East Coast town fades away

 

Well it’s the story of an American dream long gone and it feels all wrong now

The locals want to know why a man like me wants to come along

The life of the bayman ain’t nothing but an empty shell

And the folks down in Clamtown got nothing but a story to tell

And I’m gonna tell it to you

 

 

PHOTO CREDIT:

 

Photo from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2373/2325915137_b81a3ee9f8.jpg?v=0

 

 

 

Missalister’s “A bay girl’s blues,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#161 – Confession”  Click here for more on prompt #161 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.