Here’s your birthday present…

Yes, these are my lips, my lipstick.  Yes, I kissed a piece of paper and scanned it.  Not much I wouldn’t do for the scat-writing man who keeps adding fuel to the fire he lit under my ass on May 22, 2008.

Happy birthday, Paschal : )

The goat notes

for SS#187 ”adventure” and 3WW’s “karma, obey, wither”

Photo © Giles Orr, of the blog, Traveling Blogger

I met the Goat Girl in an airport where all interesting things happen…  Alright, more specifically, two hours ago, I met the Goat Girl in Chicago O’Hare where I wind up frequently in compromising situations, like Chicago wants to kick my ass.  Or rather, after meeting the Goat Girl and imbibing her mysterious vibes, I should say it’s that Chicago wants to make love to me.  Chicago, the lover, and me the object of its desire.  Enduring, unrelenting Chicago, intent that I’ll come to love it and dump New York City one day if it keeps on trying, keeps on plying me with its windy joys.

Two hours ago I got off the first flight out of Minneapolis to make a connection in Chicago back to New York City.  I was looking forward to a touch-and-go at the office, a quick debriefing on the Minneapolis client and then dinner and a show with my good friend, Jan, who I’ve had to keep blowing off because of work.  No sooner did I turn on my cell and step out of the jetway, I got a message from my boss.  “Lyn, Tony here.  Change of plans.  You’re flying out of Chicago around 12pm for Detroit to meet at 4pm with Slidell & Barker’s Adam Jacobs.  I’ve e-mailed you everything you need on that crybaby.  Celia’s e-mailed your new itinerary.  Counting on your savvy as usual.  Good luck.”  Sonofabitch.

I looked at the time.  Just 8am and already everything was fucked.  It wasn’t the change of plans itself.  That’s situation normal.  It was the growing frequency of these fuckings that pissed me off.  It was seeing no end to Tony’s new trend, stringing me out, spreading me out across the country, over-scheduling me, so that now my new trend has become disappointing people I care about, telling them, “No go,” over and over, “I’m sorry but the big, bad Tony is sending me out again…”  It’s getting dangerously old.  And it’s getting that way because of what’s not getting old.

It’s the high of what I do, calming clients’ fears, finding win-win solutions that keep them happy and on board with us, that keeps me in the game, needing it, strung out on it.  And Tony’s like my pimp, for chrissakes, taking advantage of that, working it, pushing it.  It’s a cycle that’s going to snap in two, the same old chain of looking good—if I look good, Tony looks good, his boss looks good, the company looks good—that’s going to break if each link’s not maintained, fat and happy.  It’s a cosmic law.  Like cheating death, it ain’t gonna happen in the inevitable end.  So why do we all try to defy it?  Stupid question.

I took all that heavy mental shit with me to the biggest blank spot I could find on the concourse, a lovely patch of carpet by the windows to the world.  There was only one person sitting in the seats near there, a young woman, twenties maybe, pretty, long dark hair parted in the middle.  She was dressed like Stevie Nicks back in the late 70’s, had on a low-cut kimono top over layered skirts, silk and lace, and tall curry-colored, high-heeled suede boots.  A silky shawl with tassels had worked its way off her shoulders and wound around both arms all the way to her hands which held a small, red book with a big, white goat’s head on the cover.  Hence, the Goat Girl.

I parked my stuff at the end of the row of seats opposite the Goat Girl, far enough away to amply respect her space, and sat on the floor where there was a rare find, a plug in a wall by the windows.  I took that to be a good sign, that my karma wasn’t totally hosed.  I unpacked my laptop, plugged in and started getting all the details on my flight and my new problem child, Adam Jacobs, and his company, and I felt like someone was burning a hole in my head with their eyes.  A good burning, oddly, like good vibes, warmth.  When I looked up and around, I saw no one looking at me. 

This continued for about an hour until the meaning of too much of a good thing became too vivid, and I was about to pack up and get the hell out of there when I heard the Goat Girl say, “Excuse me.”  I looked up and she was looking at me, more like into me, with wide, clear blue eyes, particularly striking contrasted with her almost black hair.  National Geographic’s famous Afghan Girl with her huge, haunting green eyes came to mind and that was all.  Blank.  No words came to me.  Goat Girl said, “I’m finished with this book.  Would you like it to read on your travels?”

My eyes were withering under the intensity of her gaze and I had to look away or…  I don’t know, become enlightened or die, maybe, something scary anyway.  I somehow said, “Sure.”  Patchouli wafted from her laces and silks when she got up and brought the book to me.  Goat: A Memoir by Brad Land.  I took it and smiled, told her, “Thanks.  I appreciate that.”  She smiled back, filled me with warmth, and sat back down.  Patchouli lingered.  I read the front flap.  Lots of physically and psychologically violent shit happened to this Brad Land guy, and I wondered what someone reeking with peace and love would be doing with this book.  I had to know, felt like there must be something about the whole of it, the effect of it that would tell me, so I obeyed the urge and began to read.

About an hour into the book, I’d been through Brad’s ghastly carjacking and beating by two brutal, severely creepy ghouls, “the smile” and “the breath,” and was well into the sadistic, psychologically damaging Clemson hazings when I found two post-it notes stuck to one of the pages.  The first note read, “Stop fighting chaos—accept it, roll with it, relish the challenge it offers, and be unabashedly amazed at the results.”  And the second one read, “The ground of challenging injustice is gratitude, the heartfelt desire to honor the wonder of that which is; to cherish, to celebrate, to delight in the many gifts and joys of life.”  This was getting stranger by the moment.

I looked up at the Goat Girl and she was happily about the business of organizing her stuff.  I aimed an “Excuse me” her way.  She looked at me with those eyes and I dared continue, “Are these your post-it notes in here?”  She smiled, then in a faraway voice said, “The notes…”  I waited.  Nothing.  I said, “Yes, the two post-its with words of spiritual wisdom,” and she answered, “Oh, the notes.”  I waited again.  Then she asked me, “What did they make you think of?”  I told her I wondered if the person who wrote the notes, wrote them in reaction to what they read in Goat.  I wondered if the note-writer applied new age spiritual teachings to how a person in Brad’s position could have dealt with his experiences.  And I also thought maybe the notes had nothing to do with the book at all, maybe were quotes taken down from some source and just stuck in there for lack of a better place at the time.

A boarding announcement was being made and the Goat Girl stood up.  “Think about it for awhile,” she said.  I blinked at her.  Again, words failed me.  She took a pen from her tasseled purse and began to scrawl something on a corner of her airline ticket jacket.  She ripped the corner off and handed it to me, said, “Here’s my name and e-mail address.  When you’re done thinking, let me know what you come up with.”  Then she winked at me, turned and headed toward her gate.  I sat there in a Patchouli cloud and watched her go and go.  It was all too wacky.  Then I looked down at the paper she gave me, looked at her writing and compared it to the post-it notes.  It was the same writing.

It was 11am.  I packed up my stuff and walked toward the gate for the Detroit flight and did nothing but think about the peaceable notes and their hostile backdrop, like a representation of the world and its violence and drama and the antidote, peaceful presence.  I know those notes could apply to anyone in just about any chaotic or unjust situation, but I like to think the Goat Girl was some mystical thing there for me with those notes, because they fit, because I took them to heart, because they lifted a great weight from my mind and body.  Tony’s going to have to buy into my win-win solution for him and me, or I walk.  And I’ll roll with the chaos as always, only now with excitement to see what comes of it each day, like reading a book and turning a page and finding something I can use, like a couple of goat notes.

Fini

Cover from The eBook Store

 

Missalister’s “The goat notes,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#187 – Adventure” and 3WW words karma, obey, and wither.  Click here for more on prompt #187 from other Sunday Scribblings participants and here for more from 3WW participants.

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BEHIND “THE GOAT NOTES” STORY

My mom picked up “Goat: A Memoir,” among many other books on sale at the small library in the small-time Vermont town where she lives, where I grew up, and inside it were the two post-it notes I quoted.  I became possessed both with the strangeness to me of famously independent and stubborn Vermonters writing new age spiritual teachings on post-it notes and with such notes found in such a book.

The last mile

This leaf caught my eye on my cool-down mile this morning.  My eyes are trained to look for hearts in leaves, for lady bugs and dragonflies and rainbows and signs of all kinds, known or made up on the fly out of my need for one.  It has been an insane many days of healing a sick dog and working like a dog and drinking like a fish and writing crap and gearing up to hit the road again.  Lots of and’s.  So I think a heart in a leaf means fewer of life’s and’s, fewer lazy gerunds inging in ears like tinnitus and more vivid verbs, precise verbs, all the action happening in verbs.

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Of last miles and monkeys on backs…

Cinderella, one of my favorite bands growing up, visuals here for posterity, for your big hair, pretty boy fix.

Lyrics here.

Sunny, lovely

Photo from nomad4ever.com

 

After the 11:15 a.m. seizure, I stopped praying.  I had started after the first one at 10:00 a.m.  I’d prayed for a miraculous healing then, and ended my prayer precisely as I was taught as a child, “In Jesus’ name I pray.  Amen,” which meant that whatever you asked for was surefire going to happen.  So of course the seizure stopped and of course I said, “Thank you, Jesus,” with genuine gratitude in my heart, and I stroked Buddy’s fur until he fell asleep, until the next seizure at 10:20 a.m.  I figured God must be counting each seizure stoppage as one miraculous healing, so I prayed for another miracle, and this went on until 10:55 a.m.  By then I was tired and cold and getting very angry.  I prayed again with impertinence.  Each seizure had left me with worlds less faith, so I added a snide, “You know, Buddy could really use a miracle here, God,” and you know where that got me.  I could feel God’s holy ears slamming shut.  They made a wind that smoothed across Buddy and me, chilly and impersonal.

And it got me to thinking I never have had friends in high places.  I was never able to schmooze to gain favor, and I always said that was because it felt so chintzy to me, like thin, cheap plastic, and it gave me the creeps whenever I tried to play that game.  Part way into it, I’d always feel like what I’d end up winning wouldn’t be real, wouldn’t be like it is when I really earn something worthwhile, something I’ve worked hard and honorably for.  But now I think the only reason I won’t schmooze is because of pride, not good pride, if there is such a thing, but bad pride, arrogance.  So all my friends are just like me: broke and can’t do shit for anyone besides bake cookies and just be there.  Lots of folks will tell you that’s all that matters, really matters.  I say yeah, but it’d be nicer to have a mix of Haves and Have-nots for friends.  But, like I said, I don’t feel right about collecting Haves.  I wish it could be like drinking water for me, though, especially now.

My husband, Gene, dropped dead of a heart attack six months ago.  And as if that weren’t enough, a week after after he was buried, things began going wrong with the house.  First the bathtub began leaking and I didn’t know it until I saw water streaming down one wall in our remodeled basement one day.  Then the furnace died right as winter was gearing up.  Then the hot water heater busted and flooded the little guest room in the basement because the drain in the utility room was filled with sand I find out.  I could go on.  Anyway, now there’s a puddle of water under the kitchen sink.  So money’s scarce and five thousand dollars-worth of property taxes are due on a place that’s falling apart, and that’s not all that’s falling apart.

My body feels constantly under attack from viruses and my head is like a junk drawer filled with an impossible jumble of thoughts of burdens and cares and fears and loss.  I go to find one helpful thought in my junk drawer of a head and I run the fingers of my mind through it and I paw and pick and push through it and all the junk just fills back in on itself, just rolls over the tops and under the palms of my mind’s full hands.  And I emerge with a thought I wasn’t looking for at all, and just thinking whatever thought it is makes me forget what thought I was looking for in the first place.  Until later, when I might see something that reminds me, and then I go back to the junk drawer and it begins again, the pawing and pushing.

Seems I remember something in the Bible that says God doesn’t dole out to a person more than they can handle, but along with prayer, I now also don’t know about that.  I really think the possibility of losing my dog, on top of everything else, might just push me over the edge.  Buddy and I go way back, twelve years back, before Gene even.  I would tell anyone straight up that I did not need my neighbor’s bratty daughter to ram into the side of him with her bicycle and cause seizures and intestinal problems and now the vet wants to operate on him judging from what he saw on the barium xray he did today.  My neighbor was nice enough to offer to pay for it, but how am I going to pay for the emotional loss of Buddy if he loses against the bad odds of surgery?

And that’s when it hit me.  Gene loved our house so much that he used practically every spare moment he had to work on improvements to it.  But Gene could be a spiteful man, used to say things a little meaner than he had to if he disagreed with someone else’s point of view.  He resented Buddy, used to tell me, “If you had any sense, you’d put into the house all the time and money you spend on that dog and we could have the nicest house on the block, but no!”  I got to thinking it’d be just like Gene to go all sour grapes over dying and having to leave his precious house behind and “that damnable dog” still gets to live.  And for more than just a moment, I allowed myself to think maybe he was haunting the house, tearing it down piece by piece, taking it with him in a way, and taking Buddy out while he’s in the process.

Although I have about as much faith in Gene’s capacity for mercifulness as I do in God’s, I had to try to get Gene to be reasonable, to stop.  But how do you contact the dead?  The only way I knew was via a Ouija board, like we used to do as kids, so I hurried down to Toys R Us and bought one.  I invited my best friend, Pam, over and we set the thing up, lit every candle I had in the house, turned the lights out, put our fingertips lightly on the planchette and I asked the question, “Gene, honey, are you responsible for the problems with the house and with Buddy?”  The candles flickered and then all blew in the same direction, like something was passing through, and then the planchette began to move.  It landed on “Yes.”  A chill riddled my spine and shuddered up and out the top of my head.  I was covered with goose flesh and scared beyond belief, but I had to go on.  I told Gene I loved him so much and missed him terribly, but I had to ask him, “Why would you do this to me?  What purpose does it serve?”

The next moments were terrifying.  The temperature in the room must have dropped to freezing and all the candles except for the two on our table were extinguished by a biting breeze.  I looked at Pam as the planchette began to move.  I could tell she wanted to stop this whole thing, wanted to run from this house, but I also saw love in her eyes, and sorrow, and like I said, all folks like us can do is be there for one another.  That’s all we have.  Somehow she stayed glued to her chair as Gene spelled out his message, “You are next to die,” and then the planchette jerked over to “Farewell.”  We both withdrew our fingers from the planchette as if it were a hotplate, and the room seemed to heat rapidly to what felt like ninety degrees.  Sweat was dripping down our faces.

I ran to the wall switch and turned on the lights.  Pam told me I should get out of here immediately.  She wanted me to leave with her, stay with her and Richard and the kids, but I couldn’t burden them like that, and what good would it do?  How do you hide from a ghost?  Gene would just follow me to Pam’s and bring bad on them.  So we both agreed to stay in close contact and that I should write everything down as I’m doing now and file a copy somewhere, in the bank safety deposit box, or with the attorney’s office that assisted with Gene’s last will and Testament, or somewhere.  And then at least folks would know what—

“Hi Hon, whatcha doing?  What’s with all these candles?”

I jumped out of my skin and snapped my journal shut.  My pen went flying and I could hear its plastic-ness chattering on the hardwood floor behind me.  “Oh, Gene, honey, I didn’t hear you come in!” I said, with a little too much effort to appear nonchalant, I’m afraid.  The pen rolled to a stop and all was silent.  “I was just writing the day’s events in my journal here.”  I smiled, but my lips felt thin and wavering.

Gene squinted his eyes at me and then around the room and back to me.  “Where’s Buddy?” he asked.

“At the vet,” I said.  “How was your game?  Did you guys win?”  I tried to sound excited, genuinely interested.

Gene regarded me with suspicion.  “We lost,” he said.  “So why is Buddy at the vet at this late hour?”

“Well, I—”  I shifted around in my chair, tried to buy time as I searched my junk drawer desperately for an answer.

Gene just waited, stared at me.  I felt the heat, but I tried to calm my mind.  I would calm my mind.  I thought of sunny, windswept beaches, like my therapist had suggested during our last session.  I remembered the sounds on the tapes he made for me when I got panicky: the waves rolling, the gulls lulling, and I was to visualize myself lying on a blanket on the beach, happy and peaceful as I listened to his voice on the tape instructing me in breathing deeply and holding my breath for as long as I could, three times, and on the third time I was to spiral down like a leaf from a tree in autumn.

Once I was sure that I could come off casual, I reached out and daintily took the stem of my wine glass and lifted my glass of Shiraz sexily to my lips.  I looked at Gene, took a sip, and then said in a sultry voice, “Come here, Baby, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Gene didn’t look pleased, wasn’t buying in.  “Alright, Charmane,” he said.  There was irritation and exhaustion mixing up his voice and I braced myself.  “If that’s the way you want to play it,” he said.  “I’ll sort out what’s up with Buddy myself.  Now can you explain why you’re drinking wine with all the medications you’re on?”

I quickly pawed through the junk drawer, but it was too messy and I lost patience with it.  I felt desperation rise within me and then rage rose up faster and higher in competition with it.  I tried to thwart it.  I thought in circles—sunny, sunny, beaches, windswept beaches, blankets, warm and windy, sunny, lovely—until I felt empowered.  And when I did, I yelled out, so sure it was the right thing to yell, “Well, I have news for you, Gene!  I’m not on meds!  God says I don’t need all that crap, so I can drink all I wa—”  Gene’s look stopped me cold.  I became frightfully aware it wasn’t the right thing to say and I clasped my hands over my mouth as I watched Gene flip open his cell phone and dial the number to that godforsaken place.

 

Missalister’s “Sunny, lovely,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#185 – Junk”  Click here for more on prompt #185 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Coaxing out the flowers lady

Photo “mr postman” © kate elizabeth

Lady, do you have a story to tell?  Ever since I drove by your place, you’ve been on my mind.  It was September fourth somewhere between Ithaca and Bainbridge, maybe around two or three in the afternoon.  I saw your small clearing pushing in a circle into the woods, and I took it in all at once like a postcard.  If you’d showed it to me like a flash card and asked me, “What did you see?”  I’d have answered, “Flowers, overwhelmingly flowers, of every color.”  I could hear you maybe say, “Good.  What else did you see?”  I’d say I saw a beat, tan and cream-colored trailer with rust letting on where water prefers to travel down its sides, and I’d admit that I was struck momentously by the clash between natural beauty and its manmade opposite, the offense of it.  And I’d tell you it led me to believe you were beleaguered by offenses. 

I pictured an uneducated, gruff husband who enforces your weaknesses, keeps you small, and considers the proliferation of lush and billowing beds of flowers a threat to his manhood; and yet he tolerates it, either out of a played-down love for you or because he needs a cook, among other womanly “duties.”  I imagined him out in his big work shed by the woods, working on a ’78 Trans Am restoration project he’s had going for an eternity, could see him out there working and waiting for a buddy of his to come over and help him pull the engine.  I could see the buddy drive up in a rusted-out truck, get out, look around, and say, “Oooh, purty.”  Then he’d swagger up to the work shed, simultaneously hiking his pants up and tucking his shirt down in them and saying, “Smells like a goddamned perfume factory ‘round here!”  Then he’d chuckle.  Of course both men would know what’s at stake in that game.  The husband would know to growl and say, “Yeah, well, let her plant her stupid flowers, I say.  It keeps her off my back.”  Then he’d jab his buddy with his elbow, wink and add, “And there’s less lawn I got to mow.”  And to that they’d both tip back and roar like Tim Allen doing “Men Are Pigs.” 

I saw no swing-set or kids’ toys anywhere on your little circle of land, no evidence of playful young lives anywhere, just a shadow of one, now moved on.  I pictured a bright daughter who left home as soon as she could get some money saved up, get a grant or a scholarship for college, and get the hell out of there.  As much as she loved the softness of you, it was too soft, too benign, too seemingly unaware or hapless to shield her from her father’s gruffness, meanness, the misfortune of his apparent intellectual and emotional insufficiency.  She was embarrassed of the trailer, embarrassed that her father’s work shed was nicer than it, embarrassed for you, and she imagines nothing that could be powerful enough to drag her back to that whole bad scene, not even the flowers.  She writes to you, she calls you from college, asks you to visit during spring break, says she’ll pay for the airfare, but you are too small to stand up to your mechanic husband, to tell him he’ll have to fend for himself for a couple of weeks.  Or are you too small, Lady? 

Perhaps I’ve got it all wrong.  Just because your legion of flowers wasn’t quite enough to neutralize the trailer for me, that doesn’t mean they’re not enough for you.  Maybe you’re fine wherever you are in the world.  Maybe in caring for your millions of flowers, you receive some thing—inner knowing, acceptance, peace, or the like—that you ultimately need internally so that it doesn’t matter what goes on externally.  That would certainly explain why every time I sit down to get you down, you have nothing to say, because you have no problem and maybe it’s me who has the problem.  Alright.  I don’t care who has the problem as long as everything that needs to be revealed gets revealed and the story gets told as it needs to get told.  I’ll keep working on it then, and if you have anything to say, I’ll be driving by your place again, or you can just speak to your flowers and I bet you I’ll be able to hear what you say from wherever I happen to be.

 

PHOTO CREDIT

kate elizabeth.  I found her photos today, find them extraordinary.  They make me feel the way I feel after seeing any real, raw, art thing, like I felt after watching “Winter Passing” last night: awed to silence like death, desolate like needing a glass of good bourbon whiskey when all I have is beer and it’s late.  I recommend a perusal of her work, certainly for her captions, the most interesting I happen to have seen on Flickr.

Sunday Scribblings #183 – First Kiss

 

Photo © Quick Candles

I saw him some distance away, walking toward me, lanky legs striding long in worn jeans, silver-buckled black boots on his feet.  His head was down, his shaggy black hair hanging forward, shadowing his face.  A black tank top was stretched over his torso and his muscled arms were covered with tattoos, all bluish-black, no other colors.  His fingers were silver-ringed and tattooed, and in one hand he held a black fedora.

My instincts rose up urgently, warned me, “Look away from him!  Run away!”  But my body felt leaden and my eyes wouldn’t or couldn’t obey.  They stared on, big and wide, and watched him lift his head to throw back his hair, watched him set the fedora down on his head in one deft sweep of arm and stride of leg.  His lips were full, encircled by a goatee and mustache and from rims of black liner, his dark eyes shone and shifted side to side until they found my big, wide eyes and locked on them.

He strode directly to me.  Still, I wouldn’t or couldn’t move and I felt my eyes begin to flicker with fear and to fight to retreat as if to faint, and on seeing this he stopped just short of me.  He spoke my name softly, “Elena,” and the surprise of that familiar word from a stranger’s mouth brought him quickly, sharply back into focus.  “There,” he said, smiling, his eyes shining more softly, muted as candle flames low in frosted votives.  His voice was deep and pleasing, mesmerizing.  “I only want to kiss you,” he said, stepping closer.  “May I?”

My eyes screamed, “No!”  I was not ready.  And he stepped back abruptly, as if pushed back.  Hurt leapt from his eyes briefly before fierce, high flames consumed it, and he turned, seeming indifferent, and ambled away like to a long, slow song.  Immediately, a roiling cloud of emotion—regret, sorrow, desperation, longing—let loose and flooded my mind.  I tried to call out to him to come back, but I had no voice.  I was reduced to tears of frustration, left gasping for meaning.

I felt a yearning to participate in the part of living that has to do with loving, and at the same time my recoiling felt far more real, more convincing.  Yet the more I revisited the dark stranger’s approaching, the more hazy it all became, and soon I was imagining choreographed scenes of his approaching, as in a movie, with music as we two rushed together.  And even having no reason to assume I’d ever see him again, I prepared myself to act out my movie scene, hoping I would.

Time became as water flowing under an endless bridge and I became colder, feeling nearly in the grip of winter when I saw him again at last.  He was dressed still in jeans and black tank top and I thought it strange that he had no coat.   He was standing amidst a group of people, staring at me, waiting for me to notice him.  My eyes sparkled, beckoned, and he moved quickly toward me.  I tried to throw open my arms as I’d rehearsed in my movie, but they wouldn’t, couldn’t move.  Still, he felt my joy on seeing him and he embraced me and kissed my mouth slowly, tenderly, once.  He pulled back to regard me, his strong arms still around me.  I smiled.

His full, soft lips had left me swooning, desiring more, yet feeling too weak to request it.  I felt my joy and desire draining fast away like blood rushing from my body.  And the bizarreness of that thought was as an intense jolt of electricity that stopped my heart and opened my eyes to further bizarreness, to bent and overturned cars and a buzz of voices and radio noises and me on the side of a highway, my blood draining away despite the best efforts of two uniformed souls.  I opened my mouth to thank them for trying, but no sound came out, and anyway, I could see it was too late, that my dark stranger was the angel of death and he had on me a firm grip.  I closed my eyes and relaxed into his arms, and as he bore me away from this life, I thought it strange how this last kiss was as sweet as my first, when I was just a young girl beginning a new phase of life.

 

Click here for more on prompt #183 – First Kiss from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Nathanial Crum

Light Drawing, “Poseidon” 1979 © Eric Staller

The Westhaven Writers’ Club’s second Writer’s Voice workshop session had just ended and Nathanial Crum was hounding the Big Guns as usual, disrupting the usual order of things.  Every other mannerly Big Gun, Noteworthy, and Wannabe was holding to the unspoken rule, keeping to his or her place within the post-session environment.  The Noteworthys were talking excitedly amongst themselves in the middle of the room and the Wannabes were drooling all over themselves in the back.

In the greater scheme of things, the Wannabes were angling for positions within the group of Noteworthys, those writers who had been published in multiple magazines and had a novel in progress.  And the Noteworthys had their eyes on prestigious positions within the group of Big Guns, those writers who had one favorably reviewed novel—and perhaps the incidental compilation of short stories or poems—published by one of the major book publishers.

Any Noteworthy or Wannabe could attend as many classes, workshops, events, or mentoring programs as they liked and could reverently approach any group above their own—if they had something unquestionably valuable or intelligent to say or ask—but full acceptance into a group had to be earned.  The Big Guns who remained members of the WWC generally did so either because they couldn’t quite get that second novel completed or because the community service aspect of it looked good on their resume.  All Big Guns were required to mentor others and had earned the right to be as irreverent as they liked.

That is the way the WWC worked underneath its welcoming and beneficent exterior, and those new to the club were typically timid Wannabes who were eager to please and soon picked up on and embraced the unspoken rule.  This was not the case with Nathanial Crum, who had burst onto the WWC scene over six months ago, a Wannabe with more talent for being a pain in the ass than for becoming a good writer.  He was patiently tolerated on the surface and underneath it he was grumbled about.  He received pained smiles and polite excuses begging leave of his bumbling, fanatical presence by all except the majority of the Big Guns who mostly quipped and turned on their heels.

Long before now, had Nathanial been other than the obtuse sort he seemed, he would have realized that ingratiating fraternization equals acceptance and polite tolerance equals rejection, and he’d have gone on his way.  Instead, he seemed to persist all the more madly.  He’d spent a considerable amount of money thus far on WWC classes, intensives, various events and monthly workshops featuring guest writers from around the country.  All his instructors had thrown their hands up and pushed him through their courses as quickly as possible just to get rid of him.  Now, he’d completed all the steps required to register for the mentorship program and register he did, thought maybe he’d like to attempt writing a novella.

No Big Gun wanted to mentor Nathanial, for it would be far too time consuming and probably come to no worthwhile end.  They knew better than to seek help from the next level up, the Program and Operations Administrator, who was too unfamiliar with Nathanial to see their complaint as other than childish.  So they called upon the Big Cheese Big Gun to relegate the task of mentoring Nathanial to one of the Noteworthys.  The Big Cheese smiled, picked up the phone and called the Noteworthy he was mentoring, Abigail Fitch, and assigned her the task.  He thought it a delightfully tortuous additional way in which Abigail could earn her Big Gun stripes.   Abigail deigned to reveal her indignation, thanked the Big Cheese for the opportunity and dutifully sent Nathanial the standard, cheery acceptance e-mail welcoming him to the novella mentorship program.

She’d told herself mentoring Nathanial would be a good learning experience that would be invaluable in building her character.  But by the time the third Writer’s Voice workshop session rolled around, Abigail had hatched her own plan for deliverance.  Post-session, she would invite Nathanial to the Starbuck’s up the road under the guise of discussing his mentorship with her, outlining expectations of both mentor and student.  The Big Cheese Big Gun had broken the rules and so would she, by being straightforward with Nathanial, by telling it like it is, that his presence at the WWC was disruptive and that he should consider a writers’ club better suited to his personality and particular needs if he was intent on pursuing writing further.

When the third Writer’s Voice session was over, Abigail watched as Nathanial scrambled to get the last of his books together and begin to make haste toward her.  She suppressed the urge to run and stood her ground, braced herself, smiling weakly as she watched him approach.  He really was a pleasant-looking fellow and she thought it unfortunate that he was blessed with enthusiasm and cursed with ineptitude.  Twice, on the way toward her, he dropped the same folder and bent to pick it up quickly, never taking his eyes off her.  The poor thing was so used to people running from him.  Abigail felt bad for him until he opened his mouth and began to blather.  She interrupted him, “Nathanial!”  He stopped.  She paused.  “Nathanial, let’s discuss your mentorship over a cup of coffee, shall we?  Follow me to Starbuck’s up the road?”

Nathanial was so excited he could only shake his head yes, repeatedly yes.  He followed Abigail out the door and each of them headed for their cars.  Abigail arrived at Starbuck’s in about five minutes, ordered a grande caramel macchiato and sat at a table near the door so Nathanial would be able to find her with no trouble.  She waited for twenty minutes, got up to leave and saw Nathanial just coming in.  He saw her and waved, ordered a cup of plain black coffee.  She sat back down, exasperated, and watched him balance books and wallet as he paid for his coffee and hurried to her table.

“Where have you been?” she asked, irritated.

“Ah…,” Nathanial hesitated.  Then he gathered himself and said, “Well, I remembered Starbuck’s as being south of WWC and so I turned left at Skillman and then I remembered it was north and I turned around.”  He put his coffee and all his books and notebooks on the table and sat down.

“I see.”  Abigail paused, waited for Nathanial’s usual nonsensical rattling, for the face contortions and flailing gesturing, but he remained silent and still, looking at her intently.  She frowned.  Perhaps he was different out in the world.  She shook off the idea and cleared her throat, and nervously launched into her rehearsed spiel.

For a minute or two, Nathanial just looked at her as she rattled on.  Then he looked down and began to scribble on his napkin between sips of coffee.  Abigail was painfully aware that she wasn’t doing well.  She stammered and squirmed and screwed up her face and used her hands too much as she fought to keep her thoughts in order.  Telling it like it is to someone’s face was so terribly uncomfortable and difficult, absolutely not her thing.  She thought she must look ridiculous doing it, but she had to keep going.  Soon it would be over.  Nathanial would go on his way and the Westhaven Writers’ Club would return to normal.

By now, Nathanial had finished his coffee and his napkin scribbling and he pushed the napkin across the table in front of Abigail.  She stopped her spiel, shaken, alarmed.  “What’s this?” she asked, her face a fierce wall against this strange intrusion, this awkward moment.  Nathanial said nothing, so she looked down at the napkin.  There were words on it and she began to read, her hands still frozen mid gesture.

Abigail looked up at Nathanial amazed.  The tension that had been building and overwhelming her dropped away, and she burst out laughing or crying, Nathanial wasn’t sure which, until she said, “Oh, God, Nathanial, what a riot!  What a relief!  I loved it!”  Her eyes were all sparkly.  He smiled nervously.  “So what happened next?” she asked.

“Well, Saucy Girl was mad,” he said, “But I picked up that carnie’s BB gun and I shot in a circle around the red star and it fell out, which is the point, to shoot out the red star.  That’s the secret, you see.  I already knew it, to shoot around the star, not directly at—”

“Yes, yes, I know!”  Abigail grinned.  “So what’d you win?”

“I won that little girl a panda bear as big as she was,” Nathanial said, smiling.  They both laughed.  Then his eyes softened and he said to Abigail, “You know, I’m really looking forward to working with you.”

“Likewise,” she said.

 

Fini

 

ABOUT  NAPKIN  FICTION  AND  ELECTRIFYING  PHOTOS

NAPKIN FICTION:  See other napkin fiction at Esquire’s “Napkin Project.”  Esquire mailed 250 napkins “to writers from all over the country, some with half a dozen books to their name, others just finishing their first,” and got close to 100 back.  What an awesome concept!  I’m still working my way through the list of 100, and so far, if I had to pick one to recommend, I’d give you “Luna Green” by R.T. Smith.  Amazing writing, and man.

PHOTO CREDIT:  In 1979, “Poseidon” was crafted outside of the United States Courthouse in downtown New York City. Artist Eric Staller enlarged a photo of the Greek sculpture “Poseidon Soter at Artemisium” and mounted it on a board with a single strand of holiday lights. He then turned the lights off and on while lowering the light-enhanced Greek god cutout to the ground. To capture this image, he used a tripod and left the camera’s shutter open for several minutes.

 

Missalister’s “Nathanial Crum,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#182 – Cheese”  Click here for more on prompt #182 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

The Jules Letters: Oranges and reds

NOTE:  After reading Stephen Levine’s book, “A Year to Live,” and discovering the concept of reconciliatory letters, Jules began the process of sending letters like mad—both physically and via her words on the wind, to every entity animate or inanimate, that she took exception to.  Her first letter is documented here, and the only other of her letters that I’ve featured here thus far, besides this one, is here.

Art “Busy City” © Michael Murphy

The weather is gray and hounding, pounding down the message of winter coming, and coming too soon for there was hardly any summer.  The leaves on the trees are fast turning ominous oranges and reds in random patches between the greens.  And the bare, icy feeling of being left behind by my father, and my mother Earth, is too close to that of standing stock still and purposeless in the middle of a major city sidewalk at six hours post meridiem.

I part the sea of people—the oranges and reds and greens of the movers and shakers against the grey backdrop of mediocrity—all on their way to Somewhere, and quickly, impressively, meaningfully.  Their speed jostles me, the perfumed wind and stink from them blows my skin and hair and clothes back, but my back is stiff and my feet are planted as if bolted to the concrete, and my mouth is empty of words to ask for direction.

My thoughts seem the only thing moving inside my body and they’re whirling as wildly as the world is spinning, bringing me a memory of Jules, of when I was the strong one able to lift her when she fell.  Sweet, soft-hearted Jules, delicate of both physical and emotional constitution, she had awakened early one morning with a feeling of dread.  And I’d sat up in my bed and heard it again, her wailing on the wind.  I brewed a thermos of coffee, left my house and was standing before her in hers by six hours ante meridiem.

I found her feeling lost and hungry for being found, her pretty bare feet fast pacing her living room floor.  She went ceaselessly in the shape of a star, from the long wall bookcase, to the tall eastern windows, to her tiny writing table, to a high-backed chair, to the vase of fresh flowers on a half-moon table, and back to the bookcase.  She moved gracefully, her head down and her heart full of sound and her mouth moving noiselessly but for a wayward whisper.

Jules pushed a strand of her reddish-brown hair back behind her ear, and although she didn’t look up from her pacing, I saw a smile on her moving lips.  She let her hand brush my arm lovingly on its way back down from her ear, an invitation to sit in my usual spot, to be a witness to the sounds of her heart.  She seemed in the midst of composing one of her letters, although I found it strange that between the usual odd and varied word, I began to hear the same words repeated as a chant, louder and louder to the rhythm of her quickening footsteps, “There’s got to be a place for me, there’s got to be, got to be.”

Finally she stopped abruptly and faced me.  Her grey-green eyes watered with sadness, yet her wavering smile was as hope flickering.  She held out her pale, soft hands to me and helped me up from my seat.  “I’m ready now,” she said.  She motioned to the window and we both walked to it.  I poured another thermos capful of coffee and offered Jules some.  She took a dainty sip and said, “This letter is to my guardian angel.”  Then she turned to the nearest window, raised the sash and spoke this letter to the wind:

Dear Guardian Angel,

I nearly forgot about you.  Although I understand it’s not the way of the guardian angel to be absent, I feel that you are.  If my feeling is wrong, I sincerely hold out to you my deepest, most desperate apology.  Yet even as I allow myself to feel regret, I admit it is more regret that I still can’t feel your presence, not even at this very moment.  And if there was a time I needed you more, I can’t remember it.  You led me to finding out about these letters and they have been wonderful in clearing the air of unresolved issues past and present.  And now I’m sending one such letter to you.

I’m immobilized and fearful and I need your direction.  I’m tired from having tried so long and ineffectively to work things out for myself.  The darkness seems ever-present.  Surely the dawn approaches!  Surely my right livelihood calls and I just can’t hear it!  Open my mind, unplug my ears, lead me straight to it, and for God’s sake give me the grace and smarts to know that I’m looking right at it!  Settle me down in it right away, and let me reap the rewards and contribute justly and well to the world for whatever years I have left.  And don’t let me lose sight of you ever again.  Please.

Sincerely,

Jules

After that letter was dispatched, I could almost see through Jules, she was so free and light.  She was like chiffon fabric blowing in the chilly, fall air from the open window.  Even I felt worlds lighter somehow.  Now, here I am like crosstown traffic with Jules whispering to me on the wind, this time the stronger one.  I hear her telling me, “Remember the letters!  Remember the one when I was lost and hungry to be found,” and instead, I try to remember when I became the weaker one.

But she is insistent, her voice will not quit.  Each of my mental arguments is met with her whisper, “Send one.”  I tell her I don’t believe the letters work anymore, and I hear Jules’ soft, little laugh and then her voice, “You’re hearing me now, aren’t you?”  Anger cooks under my skin and I just want the wind to stop and her voice with it.  I yell at the top of my lungs against the wind, against the rushing sea of people, that it’s too late now, things have changed!  And I hear her say, “Do it for me.”  I look around exasperated, notice some people have stopped to stare.  Under my breath I tell her alright, I’ll send one, and I lift my heavy feet and plunge into the grey sea amidst the oranges and reds and greens.

 

 

Missalister’s “The Jules Letters…” series, copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#181 – Hungry.”  Click here for more on prompt #181 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Where the sun shines

 Photo – Javier’s Cantena © Guerin Design

Jenna got all dolled up for her dinner date.  Little black cocktail dress with a matching bolero jacket, sheer black hose, black heels.  She checked her look once more and headed toward the door.  Her roommate, Lil, looked up from a magazine, raised one eyebrow.  Lil didn’t believe in online dating, wished Jenna luck mockingly.  Jenna smirked and let the storm door slam instead of taking care with it.  Everything was fine.  Until a king-sized wave of nervousness hit her on the way to her car.

Jenna’s legs felt unsound, began to wobble.  Her hands shook.  They fumbled for the key fob in her purse, they rattled the keys, made it hard to press the button to unlock the doors.  What hell, she thought.  She looked back toward the house, considered calling the whole thing off.  Until movement at the living room window caught her eye.  Two slats of the blinds snapped shut where Lil’s eyes had been peering out.

Jenna huffed and got into the car and headed downtown to Javier’s to meet Matt.  Matt.  She liked the sound, enhanced as it was by degrees, from tepid e-mails to passionate phone conversations to this first hot date.  She thought back over the highlights of the wind-up to this moment, and she smiled, thought Matt might be the one.  Until she saw the Exit 3 sign and the wave of nervousness returned, complete with beads of sweat.

This is just not worth it, she thought going west on Mockingbird.  This is torture, she thought turning onto Cole.  Maybe Lil is right, she thought as she pulled up in front of Javier’s.  She fumbled for the door handle, got out of her car.  A handsome, young valet caught her arm when her knees buckled.  Oh, thank you, she said.  What a nice lad, she thought.  Until she heard him mumble to one of the other valets, something derogatory about her.

Jenna huffed and clipped up the steps and through the front door.  The maître d’ acted charmed at the sight of her, like he acts at the sight of anyone with money, and he led her into the dining room.  Her eyes flashed across the room looking for one man sitting opposite an empty chair.  And there he was, considerably heavier than he was in his picture online.  But no matter, she thought, considering how lithe their connection.  No matter at all.

The maître d’ led Jenna to the table and Matt stood to greet her.  Their eyes met, excited and joyful.  Their exchange of pleasantries was fiery and sweet.  Without breaking his gaze, Matt moved around the table to stand before Jenna and offer her his hand.  She took it and felt its warmth race to her heart.  She hadn’t been wrong about him.  He is the one, she thought.  Until he helped her off with her jacket and his eyes locked onto the sword tattoo on her left shoulder.  Then everything changed.

Matt’s eyeful of excitement and joy deadened during the cocktail.  And by the appetizer, the passion in his voice had flattened out to the thinnest sound of tolerance, at best.  Just one more offense, Jenna thought, and he would flee from their table as fast as his meaty legs could go.  Funny, she thought.  Funnier still, was her forgetting how objectionable tattoos are to some people.  She’d had hers for so long.  Her circle of friends and clients had them.  She hadn’t even thought to mention it to Matt.  She began to laugh until tears rolled down her face, and that did it.

Matt told her he was sorry, that he couldn’t continue.  He signaled the waiter and paid the check.  Then he escorted her to the entry, her eyes still streaming down tears of laughter, of disbelief, of hurt and rejection, of the absurdity of it all.  But there were no tears of loss or regret or shame.  To each, his own, she whispered when he said good-bye.  She watched his meaty legs carry him away, his Armani suit pants binding around them as he hurried down the steps to the valet stand.  And she thought if she were crazy enough to continue with online dating, she would add to her profile, “I have tattoos: one where the sun shines, two where it doesn’t.”

Fini

  

EXTRAS

Jordin Sparks’ “Tattoo.”  Fiery and sweet.

 

Missalister’s “Where the sun shines,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#180 – Tattoo”  Click here for more on prompt #180 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

If jewels could yearn

© mcescher.com

 

Stuart turned his beat Cutlass off King St and onto the dirt driveway to his tiny, square tower house up on the hill.  He parked and opened the car door slowly, ever hopeful that he could ease it noiselessly past the point where it creaks once, and loudly, like one nerve-jangling dog bark.  It barked anyway and he cringed as always.  He got out of the car as if reluctantly, then reached back in and pulled out his lunch box.  He turned and paused, leaned back some to take in all three stories of his house, shook his head.

Just two years ago when he was building the house, he had been so enthused with it, had made it plain on purpose, not only because he had little money after his divorce, but because a tower should be plain.  He’d used his employee discount at Ray’s Lumber and Supply for most of the building materials and he’d bought everything else at auctions.  One particularly fruitful haul consisted of thirty-four used warehouse windows, narrow, rectangular ones, and he’d installed them uniformly on all sides.  Now the place looked ridiculous to him, like a skinny bird house with gun slits.

He had once prided himself on his design for the interior of the house, on the openness, the open, zig-zagging stairs and the landings onto balconies with only folding fabric screens and rough, sturdy beams to create spaces instead of rooms.  The only enclosed room was a bathroom barely big enough to fit within it a bathtub, toilet and sink.  He’d thought the design the most innovative thing he’d ever done, and the property a boon, just far enough from town in a country setting where he could enjoy a measure of peace.  Now he considered the whole project only another of his many follies.

Stuart shook his head again, shut the car door, and cringed when it barked.  He walked slowly up the sad, overgrown path to his plain front door.  He turned his key in the lock, stepped inside and set his lunch box against the wall, under the coat hooks.  He let his jacket slide off his shoulders and hung it and his keys on their usual hooks.  He paused again in thought, his empty eyes cast down.  The morning’s court custody battle had culminated three years of war with a decree against him.  His house, his actions, everything about him was deemed unfit.  Sole custody of Ellie, now seven, had been awarded to his ex-wife.  And his afternoon’s work at Ray’s had been as dreary and devoid of fulfillment as ever.

He looked around him as if befuddled, noticed his lunch box on the floor, and bent mechanically to pick it up.  He shambled into the kitchen area, poured a can of split pea soup into a pot and let it heat while he dumped the empty wrappers from his lunch box and ran a dish rag around the inside of it to clean it up some.  Then he poured the pea soup into a giant-sized mug, stuck a spoon in it, and climbed the stairs to his office area on the third floor.  He sat down at his desk, sipped his soup and stared out one of the gun slits at a long stretch of road at the foot of his hill, Sterling Road it was, that cut through miles of fields of corn and soybeans and wheat and oats.  A lone power-walker strutted purposefully along Sterling toward King, her arms pumping like a cartoon soldier, her shiny ponytail bouncing.  Stuart’s eyes brightened as the light of an idea began to spread out into a plan.

He pulled open the bottom right desk drawer and took care in lifting out a painted tin box full of old keys he’d collected since he was a boy.  Ellie had loved to play with them until she’d swallowed one when he wasn’t looking and he’d had to hide them away.  There were larger keys to old closets and cabinets and desks belonging to an untold number of people, good and bad people, people who worked hard or not at all, and all of them now dead and gone.  And there were smaller keys, keys that he fancied had once belonged to lovely women and pretty little girls to keep their precious jewels and innermost thoughts safe in boxes and diaries.  Stuart imagined these sweet, secret keys worn on delicate gold chains around pale necks, close to bosoms where no decent man would dare venture uninvited.

He plunged both hands into the box of keys, felt their cool shapes slide between his fingers.  Then, like scooping water, he lifted the keys up out of the box a little way and he watched, eyes aglow, as he let the keys cascade back in.  He smiled barely, wistfully, as he listened to the keys clink and slide and tap into each other and against the sides of the tin box.  He picked out one of the larger keys, set it on the ink blotter and returned the tin box to the bottom drawer.

He opened the next drawer up, pulled out a small cardboard box with “Ellie” scrawled on the top of it in awkward pencil marks, and he set it down in front of him.  He opened the box and pushed one finger around inside it, through a shimmering mixture of rhinestones and plastic pearls and colored beads, until his eyes glazed over.  Then, as if an alarm had gone off in his head, he blinked and plucked out six medium-sized rhinestones, two blue ones for him, two red ones for his future wife, and two gold ones for his future child.  He set them aside, dug through another drawer, and pulled out a bottle of super glue and a pair of tweezers.  He put three dots of glue around the bow of the key, and with the tweezers, he placed one set of blue, red, and gold gems on the dots like a jeweler working on the microscopic gears of a tiny, ladies’ watch.  When he was sure the glue had set, he did the same on the other side of the key bow.

He sat back in his chair and grinned, genuinely pleased with his handiwork.  Later, when he went on his run just before dark, he’d place the jeweled key on the shoulder of Sterling Road where the corn and wheat fields were divided by a tree line.  The next day, he’d wake just before sunrise, don his running gear and sit at his desk in front of the gun slit, watching with his binoculars to see if anyone would pick up the jeweled key.  If a woman noticed the key, stopped to pick it up, looked at it and tossed it back to the ground or just stuffed it in her pocket callously, or if a man picked it up, he’d pay no mind.

But if a woman stopped to pick up the key with an air of mystery and excitement and she examined it with wonder, turned it over in her fingers, and even though she could see the jewels were fake, she seemed still to covet the key, perhaps as a child’s lovely creation, then he would run out of the house in whatever direction it took to meet her head-on to effect a chance encounter.  And he planned to do this every day for as long as it took to find a woman who would equally covet him and the child she’d bear for him so that she could never part with either of them.

Fini

 

EXTRAS

On good recommendation from one sweet key, Paschal, here is Bryan Ferry doing Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” perfect for this piece.  Full version of Ferry’s cover is here.  CCR’s version is hot, too.

 

Missalister’s “If jewels could yearn,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#179 – Key”  Click here for more on prompt #179 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.