Just go ahead now

Photo “you, there” © kate elizabeth

Things is strange.

Scrawled-on Windjammer bar napkins lie in wait.  Psycho Liza, a chunky Elvira, is on one of them.  She shows up at the Windjammer every Thursday at 5:07pm for the $2 wine drink special, sits at the same dinky round cocktail table every week.  By 4:45pm the place is packed with local shmoes just waiting to see what Liza’ll do this time.

 

Lukewarm ideas are here and there in the writing journal.  They’re gray flannel nights.  I had red silk and champagne ones in mind.  The wasted space idea’s a good one, but it’s stuck in my throat.  Every time I swallow, it gets a little closer to the vat of gastric acid licking up at it, wanting to denature it.

 

Had a pleasant surprise from Walter Conley, who thought to stick a “for Miss Alister” under the title of his noir piece “Princes,” published in “A Twist of Noir.”  Link’s here if you’re curious.  Walter’s hot these days, been bending light with his words.

 

Got a dark piece called “Zero,zero” coming up in MiCrow, the flash fiction supplemental section of Full of Crow.  Theme is “Half,” publication is “MiCrow: Winter, 2010.”  It’ll be online February 1.  Main Full of Crow page link’s here, if you want to get a preliminary feel for the intense heat waves over there.

1/31/10 NOTE: the 2/1/10 MiCrow pub date has been pushed out to 2/10/10.

 

Smash the glass and grab the goods.  Just go ahead now.

 

Blake’s ladybug

Photo “on the fence” © kate elizabeth

The breeze of a nervous sort slipped across my elbow and I looked up from my tofu salad.  A generic man-boy in business casual had left me in his uptight wake and I felt my eyes whirl in his bluster to the bar.  My mind swayed with his circling as he sniffed out a seat and brushed it off before he sat.  I watched him uncurl his newspaper and adjust his everyman’s glasses.  He ordered ice water with a lemon slice and fidgeted with his straw and newspaper.

A calmer breeze warmed the air and I watched a fair woman in a smart skirt drift toward the man-boy’s anxious back.  As she moved around him to sit, she touched his shoulder and sent him to the moon.  Man-boy and straw and paper jumped and landed askew.  Concern and amusement took turns in Smart-skirt’s eyes and she laughed an apology.  Recovery of self was no small thing for one with so much of it to gather back up, and Man-boy struggled with just an amenable nod.

Smart-skirt made it easy with words that whistled and went tra-la-la and Man-boy got back up on top.  He affected a smile and thanked her for meeting him there in the midst of her tropical storm of a day.  She countered with niceties and they broke out portfolios and Man-boy talked big at the helm.

Soon it was apparent that Smart-skirt was missing, was lost in her finger-tracings of the wood grain on the bar.  Man-boy asked her the cause of her distraction and Smart-skirt said, “Huh, what?”  He repeated his question and she turned her light on again, and here’s where I leaned my ear hard their way.

“Sorry,” Smart-skirt said.  “I was thinking of the ladybug I rescued last night.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, I had a pet for an hour,” she said, then laughed.  “A ladybug was drowning in my dishwater last night and I lifted it out, put it on a Tupperware lid with a little piece of lettuce.  I have no idea what ladybugs eat…”

Man-boy just stared at her.

“No, it was great!”  Smart-skirt grinned.  “The ladybug stayed there for quite some time.  I thought it an eternity.  But really, it had only been an hour before it flew up to make love to a ceiling light.”  Then she laughed and shrugged.

My fork clattered to the floor.  Man-boy and Smart-skirt whipped around to look.  I stared back at them, defenseless.  Smart-skirt’s shrug had shook me loose and I was snagged in the remembrance of a dream: I’d been suspended in the words of “Auguries of Innocence” being read to me, soft and thoughtful, by a man with hands of love and work.

I looked at Smart-skirt and said aloud, “To see a world in a grain of sand; And a heaven in a wild flower; Hold infinity in the palm of your hand; And eternity in an hour.”

Smart-skirt smiled and Man-boy rolled his eyes.  I shrugged and they turned away, and we all got back about our same business as slightly different people.

Fin

It all starts with a bar napkin…

See more napkin fiction at Esquire Magazine here.

William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” in its entirety can be found here.

May flowers

Photo © Getty Images

 

After the rousing final hymn, the congregation seated themselves jubilantly to receive the Reverand Doctor Silbus McInnery’s benediction.  They bowed their heads and holy smiles under the protective ark of his raised arm, and they waited within a collective inner peace, as the Reverend Doctor paused to receive his words from God.  And at last the glory of them came. 

The Reverend Doctor’s booming voice filled the cavernous sanctuary, washed over the congregation to complete this Sunday’s cleansing and send them forth with freshened godly vigor.  “May you receive and extend the blessing of the Lord.  May you be faithful and trustworthy in all things.  And may you serve with full devotion the God of All things, His hands and feet in a world of desperate need.”

 

There was a pause, and then the organist broke loose with his postlude, all stops, full organ.  Some parishioners stayed seated to listen to it in its entirety, despite the titillating incident of a bombshell named Val strutting into the service dressed like a hooker.  But despite the benediction, most of them were abuzz with unwholesome curiosity as they filed out from their pews, chomping at their worldly bits to press Miss May for details.

 

Plain, bespectacled and makeup-less May sat dazed on her pew.  She put a skinny, pale hand tenderly on the place where Val had sat before she’d left in a panic during the final hymn.  May could still feel the fullness of Val’s femininity, could still hear it whisper of its power over men, could still smell a hint of lavender in the essence of Val’s female eternity.  And despite Val’s inappropriate makeup and flesh-tight, flashy red attire, May bloomed with love for her, for entering her church world and awakening her to her own feminine potential.  May was as a bare tree in the dead of winter compared to the wild flowering of Val, and she knew without question that she desired to flower, too.

 

May felt a shadow press down on her, felt the unpleasant sensation of a heavily powdered face too proximate, and she jumped from the grating sound of old Mrs. Bird’s voice, “Will you be joining us for fellowship presently, Miss May?”

 

“Yes, Ma’am,” May answered low, perturbed.

 

Mrs. Bird withdrew her face and patted May’s shoulder.  “Good girl,” she said, and tottered on her way to the fellowship hall, delighted, in anticipation of firsthand news of “the hooker.”

 

Other of the church ladies were heading May’s way with the same looks of evil delight and anticipation on their faces.  Normally, these ladies wouldn’t give her the time of day.  They saw her as odd, devoid of qualities and interests that might endear her to a man.  And without a man, there would be no family and without a family she was considered a lesser being in their eyes.  Here she was at age twenty-six, a member of the church’s singles group for five years now, and the fruit of a marriage had not been produced.  She was deemed hopeless, a poor, mousy thing only Jesus could love.

 

May braced herself out of duty and stood up, weary.  She shuffled to the aisle, and let the sea of ladies overtake her, all of them working exceedingly hard to be friendly to her and to conceal what they really wanted to know.  But once they’d crossed the threshold to the fellowship hall, they didn’t even bother with coffee or cookies.  They commenced immediately to closing in on her and barraging her with questions with respect only for each other’s status within the church.

 

Mrs. Bird was one of the oldest deacons and therefore was allowed to go first.  Beads of sweat on her forehead were threatening to roll down and make mud of her face powder.  She fanned herself madly with her church bulletin.  “May, dear, do tell us about this flashy red Val person!  Was she a real, live hooker?”

 

“No, Ma’am, she was not,” May said.

 

The ladies paused in wait for more.

 

Mrs. Kline couldn’t stand it.  She was next in status and jumped in, her lips quivering with her questioning.  “Well, what was she like?  Did you have a chance to talk to her at all?”

 

“She was polite, Ma’am,” May said.  “And really, we had little chance to talk.  We did talk a bit about salvation and then the service began.” 

 

May fidgeted.  She wanted to tell the ladies that she and Val had looked kindly at each other, and in their exchange of smiles had made a genuine connection, that she could tell Val had a good heart.  But the ladies’ desire for lurid details was palpable and she thought it best to keep her thoughts to herself.

 

Mrs. White exaggerated a sigh and stepped closer to May, put a hand on her arm and smiled artificially.  “May, dear, surely there is more to this whole thing,” she singsonged.  Then she stepped back and blustered, “Now, do tell!  What all was running through your mind when this Val person left in the middle of the final hymn?  And do you think she’ll be back?”

 

May had had enough.  She answered hurriedly, “I don’t know if she’ll be back, Ma’am, and I suppose she was late for an appointment.”

 

Mrs. White said snidely, “With one of her clientele?” then she tittered, and all the other ladies followed suit.

 

May looked at the clock and feigned alarm.  “Ladies!  I’m actually late for an appointment myself!  Please do excuse me.”

 

“You have an appointment?” Mrs. Kline raised an eyebrow.

 

May smiled.  “Yes, Ma’am, I do.” 

 

She didn’t tell Mrs. Kline that it wasn’t an existing appointment, but one she’d only just decided to make.  May dug in her purse for her car keys, found them and smiled politely at them all.  They stood, shocked and unmoving.  Only until May took a step forward did they begin to part like the Red Sea with each of her steps. 

 

May walked quickly to the side door and burst out into the sunshine.  She clutched her bible to her breast and ran to her car, got in and started the engine.  It had come to her that God had brought Val to her to effect this awakening in her.  She joyfully turned her car onto the main drag and headed toward the mall.  It was time for an extreme makeover.

 

Fin

 

 

This fun little ditty, “May flowers,” was written with the Sunday Scribbling prompt “#197 – Extreme” in mind and is a spin-off from my story “The Salvation Skits,” that was published in the online literary journal, “disenthralled,” on January 1, 2010.  See Special #3 in “disenthralled” for the full story.  And click here for more on prompt #197 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

 

The Salvation Skits

Photo “Come, baby, reach me” © Sarah Bloom

Well, this is just a gas, seeing “The Salvation Skits” up over at the hot, new literary journal “disenthralled.”  I spewed out the first draft of the skits in October of 2009 and editor Walter Conley watched over the subsequent drafts with his tender-tough and artful eye.  The changes were minor betterments aimed at clarity; otherwise, the story was always in five parts, sometimes overlapping, always revealing different sides of itself through selected characters’ eyes.  The final draft was completed at the end of November and sat on the shelf until December 15, 2009 when Walter published Part I of the skits as a preview-of-coming-attractions sort of thing.  The full-blown deal was published earlier today as Special #3.  I hope you check it out, and if you do, that you’ll let me know what you think of it, either via comments on “disenthralled” or here.  Feedback is king.

Special thanks to Quin Browne for going beyond noticing and to Walter Conley for this opportunity to run with the big dogs.  The way of Walter is an art form in itself, made this first publishing experience of mine a joy.  Sarah Bloom’s photography adds to that, and I’m honored Walter paired it with my story.

And now, here’s what you readers of “The Essence of a Thing” pay extra for: a tidbit, a little story background.  “The Salvations Skits” is based on one, small seed of truth.  In my roaring twenties, I really did show up at a church service straight off a night of partying.  And the rest of the story bloomed fictionally wildly from that small seed, took over the entire garden, and went on to consume the neighborhood.

The delicious hours

  

“the melancholy twilight” by kate elizabeth

 

I was blank, like a fenced-off portion of an untouched field of snow.  Only my face could be seen amidst my body of snow, and that was just a cut-out from a photograph I remember looking like.  Perhaps I cut my face out of the first picture of me that I could find and stuck it, in haste before the final thaw, on the patch of snow that I had identified as me.  And somehow I felt that was important to do, to identify myself from the others, while at the same time knowing it wasn’t important at all. 

 

I can always tell myself from the others who assume forms, who come with conditions, and with whom I interact in ways I can only imagine after the interaction has happened.  I can tell myself from the particular way that I’m always searching for one set of circumstances that can be ridden out to multiple good endings, like waves can be ridden out to joyous, laughing ends with beach fires launching red-hot, popping embers to the heavens, and showing no sign of dying, for we are ones who can feed the fire and fill the cups with drink until we desire the party to end, and to end happily so that we can do it all again, just this way.

 

Over and over like a mirror held to another mirror at just the right angle to reflect an infinite tunnel of mirrors, I looked until I found the one.  He told me, “I particularly like the way your skin and hair are configured around your bones and brains,” and I smiled, said to him, “Likewise.”  So I lay by his side for what they call ever.  I lay there thinking I would die if anything happened to him, if either one of us changed our angles or dropped our mirrors altogether.  I remember praying infinite secret prayers to a god I thought had the power to freeze this feeling in both of us and protect us from injury and old age and death.  But we would always wake to playing a kneejerk game of ego against ego, a game designed to destroy the idea of permanence by proving over and over there was no such thing.

 

As a blank portion of snow I can laugh now, but then I was not amused.  Then, I railed against there being no control of our waking lives and even in our dream lives we could but watch what happens.  Only one life is more mundane and the other more fantastic, fantastic because it has no constraints like gravity—which is the same as the ego with its constant wants and worries—holding us down, back and away, at an infinite arm’s length, from what we desire.  Only in the fantastic can anything happen, anything at all, and what we desire can be anything at all and not always what we thought it was.  Then, I chose the fantastic over the mundane, because I thought they were not one and the same.

 

And then one time, in the pre-waking fantastic hours, I could see that the things that seem solid to the look and feel of life are, in the end, inconsequential in the realm in which I thought them consequential.  To my amazement, nothing was graspable with the hands, because neither my hands, or those things that I wanted to grasp, were solid things that could connect with one another physically, as we know the term, and so I swiped at color-shaped air and missed and tried and tried again and missed.

 

I thought then, “If I’m to get along here, I’m going to have to change my thinking,” and I moved toward the essence of words that formed ungraspable ideas.  At first I did it out of anger and then for survival, and then, although out of my body where it could be said to be too late, I did it naturally, as if I’d always moved this way.  I did it as just another idea with mass, rolling with other ideas with varying masses, through and along the fabric of infinite space.

 

“I will remember this and apply it to my remaining time on earth,” I said.  I was certain that the profundity of all that I’d seen had affected me in such a way that I would carry its great force of weight into the waking world.  But of course I did not.  I awoke with the same empty-handed yearning-yet-knowing that I wake with every day.  I woke with the same delicious melancholy, my truest, most constant companion that casts a suspicious eye on graspable things until I drop again into the infinite space of night and search for the graspable things of the day and see how that is conveniently not possible because it’s not necessary.

 

Fin

 

 

Click here for more on prompt “#195 – Delicious” from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

  

Last tracks

What to do with the dead things watching all around like shepherds abiding in the field?  They watch from inside the walls, from inside the car and living room sound systems, from inside the stains on the carpet and the shoes still under the piano.  They watch the decorated tree, the absurdity of glass balls and colored lights on a pine tree inside the house.  They make it seem bizarre, like the sky filling with fearsome lights and hosts of angels announcing babes in swaddling clothes.  And when we go to the manger to look, we find only dead things watching there as well.  From the stark white field they watch blankly over the sad, empty barn, the unused sawdust still in the corners of the stall, the untouched hay still dangling in the net.

What to do with all these dead and watching things but to ponder them in our hearts?  When will they go away?  And if they won’t, how many dead things watching can one person hold?  How many, before a person goes insane or dies themselves and begins to watch from inside the things they used to use, from the air within the places they used to live and visit?  Even the deer who walked solitary across the lawn in the night, leaves between the long shadows at noon some sad part of itself inside its tracks.  Ordinarily, that would not be so, had not so many dead things been watching and whispering the story of the deer into the receptive ears of my imagination.

The deer, a buck it turns out, he came from Wolcott, spread his seed heavily around the region throughout his twelve long years.  At three years of age, he’d lost his left eye to one fierce male challenger before establishing himself the superior one in strength and will.  There was no mistaking this one-eyed buck for another, for the damage to his face was distinct.  Around the blank, sunken place where his eye had once been, and on down to the corner of his mouth, it was dark and furless and the shape of an upside down tear.  He’d been identified so many hundreds of times by so many hunters in their seasons of killing, that he’d garnered the nickname “Achilles.”

He was a favored topic deep in the woods under naked moons, in beer- and liquor-soaked hunting lodges all over the state.  Hunters who dared to believe, swore they could hear Achilles’ name sizzling from the fires as they pissed them out on their way to drinking their long day shut.  And in their fitful, drunken sleeps, they saw Achilles with his garish tear and his great misshapen rack—five points on the right side and three points sprouting myriad other points on the left—trampling them under foot and snorting back laughter over his massive backside.  But in the broad daylight when the telling of tall tales resumed and the hot air of them wisped from mouths and froze white on beards, it became a joke to take aim at Achilles’ heel, for surely then he’d be felled.

Achilles was scarred from arrows and bullets that had grazed and glanced off his hide, but he was either too intelligent or too blessed to be killed by mankind.  “It was a great grey wolf king that did the honor,” whispered the dead, watching things.  On a biting wind that swirled down and up from Achilles’ last tracks in the snow, I heard it was not so much his body, but his will that’d got old.  It seems it was more a fight between his will and his survival instinct, than it was between him and the wolf king.  And Achilles’ will was just strong enough to win that last challenge that freed his deer soul.  He gave his life up quickly and with grace, and the meat of his gigantic body gave the strength of life to a pack of wolves, fattened the bellies of their yearling pups.

The next summer, I saw a daughter of Achilles come out from the woods pushing time, looking back.  A big, spotted son of hers followed reluctantly, daring the scent of danger, mistaking it in ignorance for a less evil thing.  She pressed the point, and she made a large circle before going back into the woods, to buy them some time.  Sure enough, a bit later came the danger, a mangy, dog-like beast running full of purpose, nose to the ground, following exactly and quickly the scent found in the otherwise vacant steps of the mother.  When the beast got to her circle, it was stymied for a time, made its own determined, small circles until it zeroed in on the mother’s large circle which it traced back into the woods.

That was the only answer the dead and watching things gave to my question.  Only that spring will come, babies will be born, new things will happen and it will be more of the same only different and so profuse that it will overwhelm our senses, overspill our time, and push the old things out the top of our overfull brains.  It’s no easy thing, all that goes on, all that washes over us when the tide come in, and all that washes away from us on its way back out to sea.  It’s wearing, all this perpetual giving and taking, heating and cooling, flooding and receding until we’re bleached out by the sun, white and waterless, cracked dead wood on battered beaches.  But until that day comes, in the meantime of our lives, the dead and watching things, they dare us to live.

Fin

 My “Achilles” is Julie Zickefoose’s buck, from her blog.

Click here for more on prompt “#194 – Dare” from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Tomorrow is today

My dog’s old.  He gets himself into a ball, takes three shaky sniffs in, and lets out a smooth, even sigh that goes on for three seconds.  I look over at him ending that pre-nap ritual with his three lip smacks, and I smile.  We’ve been together for a long damn time.  We never fight.  Because he can’t form words and he’s not consumed with being right. 

I can sit here for the ten minutes I have to write this note before going on to the next thing and he lies down nearby, gives me space to be.  I look over at him and he picks his head up, like “What?”  I say, “Oh nothing.”  He puts his head back down, like “That’s cool.”  And it is. 

It’s cooler even than seeing something I wrote featured on a site not my own, cooler than playing God with WordPress snow or starting up the annual countdown to Christmas…  Put that and all the other happening stuff together, though, and it becomes one big blessing, one fun ride that balances out the bad stuff.

So.  Good stuff coming up:

12/15:  Miss A’s countdown to 12/25 begins a day late and that ain’t all.  This year it’s gonna be a twelve part story about a whacked out evil plot involving twelve super-non-heroes pitted against one superpower pushing peace.  Something like that.  I’ll be winging it as usual.  

12/16 note:  countdown ain’t happnin’.  As planned, anyway…       Bad Stuff scores two, gets fouled, aaaand makes the free throws for four, total!  Would you listen to that crowd?!!!

12/15:   An excerpt from a thing I wrote in October called The Salvation Skits is up on disenthralled, in Issue #3, and the whole of The Skits will be run on January 1, 2010.  I got a sneak peek of Issue #3 yesterday morning and found the blow-away factor to be to the moon.  Today, I’m just dazed from the trip.   The writers Walter Conley is attracting are E=MC2.  They give me a clear view of that place I want to get to. 

12/17:   The Essence of a Thing turns two.  And that in turn means it’s time to take a look back at 2009, at where I’ve been, am now, and want to go, and to realign the Sites and Aims on my About page.

 

So.  Alright, then.  Mañana…hoy…lo que…

Dios, te necesito

Note:  Been in a funk, couldn’t write, the horse died, Mr. Conley sent me an e-mail that gave me an idea, it’s time to start the snow up…  Not necessarily in that order.  Anyway, this weird one’s for Dee, who asked for one.  See, Dee, you’ve the life of a queen compared ; )

 

Stairwell photo © Chromasia

Jay opened the door to the rundown apartment building, stepped into the close air inside.  Smells of piss and desperation got all mixed up in the city air he’d just let in.  He ran his eyes over the mailboxes on the wall, looked for signs Nico still lived there.  She lived hand to mouth, was getting kicked out of places all the time.  When he saw her scrawly writing on the paper insert under her apartment number, he started up the dingy stairwell.  Every other bulb was still missing.  Cheap-ass landlord.  A crack like a gunshot got swallowed up by a woman’s scream, “Get out!” and a man bellowing something indistinguishable.  Of course someone had to yell, “Shut up!” and a baby had to squall.

Jay hit the third floor and started down the hall to Nico’s place.  From out of all the lowlife sounds and sirens, he thought he could hear Nico alternately crying and barking angry, unintelligible words.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  He stopped in front of her door and listened.  Sure enough.  He listened awhile longer for other voices in there with her.  He heard none.  He knocked.  The sounds inside stopped.  He knocked again and waited.  Nothing.  He dug around in his pocket for his keys, flipped through them, found the key to her place and tried it in the lock.  The key still worked and the door pushed open.  Nico had forgotten the chain guards.  They swung loose on the door, scratching and rattling.

He stepped inside, left the door ajar in case he had to beat it.  With Nico, he never knew what he’d find or what she’d do.  He called to her again.  No answer.  He scanned the place.  There was only a small bar to divide the kitchen from the living area and the bedroom was about the size of a closet you could see most of if the door was open.  It was.  Nico wasn’t in sight.  There was only a heavy plastic curtain for a door to the bathroom and it was closed.  He watched the curtain for a moment, thought he saw it move.  But that’s like looking at a dead thing’s eyes.  Stare at them long enough and you swear you see them move.

A bad feeling swept through him, heated his head, made him sweat.  He heard something hard drop to the floor in the bathroom.  He moved fast to the curtain and swiped it aside.  And there was Nico, bent over in a pink negligee, retrieving a Bowie knife from the floor.  A few drops of blood were oozing from a long scratchy line on her left inner wrist.  Jay blew out all his tension in one breath.  He smiled.  This was classic Nico.  She was a brilliant artist but a boob when it came to killing herself.  Once, when she’d been unable for three weeks to get inspired to paint, she’d swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, but it was only enough to make her sleep for two days.  And now, here was this thankfully uninformed approach to wrist-slitting.

Nico straightened up and blew a strand of long black hair out of her face.  When she saw Jay’s smile, she bared her teeth and pointed the knife at him.  “You deserted me, you fucker!” she growled.  She was shaking mad.

Jay backed up.  “What?” he asked, incredulous. 

“You know the kind of care I need,” Nico yelled at him.  “You know how fucking weak my mind is.  You know how I’ll fall down if you don’t keep coming around regularly.  I need to feel like I’m number one with you, you bastard!  Or I can’t work!  It’s not like I’m asking you to be here every minute, for chrissakes.  I know you’re just a punk, got things to do.  But I need you to get me up more often.”

“That’s getting old, Nico.  Get yourself up,” Jay said.

“No one can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, Fool,” she hissed.  She lowered the knife and grabbed a handful of toilet paper, stuck it to her wrist and looked madly around the bathroom.  “Where’s my drink, goddamn it?”  Jay pointed to an old fashioned glass on the toilet tank.  Nico grabbed it and pushed past Jay, gave him a shove with her shoulder.  The negligee opened enough for him to see she had nothing on under it.  He cleared his throat.  She flounced to the living area, knife in one hand, drink in the other, her feathery mules snapping the fat of her heels.  Jay followed. 

“If you want a drink, fix it yourself!” she hollered over her shoulder.  Then she noticed the door to her place was open.  “Born in a barn, were you?” she snarled.  Jay rolled his eyes, took his time walking to the door.  He shut it, turned and stood a few feet in front of it, by the bar, arms crossed in front of him.  He stood quiet and watched her, a pretty piece of work still, at almost forty.  Pink nail polish eaten away by paint thinner, pink lips moving.

“I need to feel famous, like Marilyn Monroe, Jay.  I need you to kiss my ass and cater to my violent mood swings, get me my drugs, help me to the toilet when I overdose on the outrageous shit that goes down in this fucked up world, to puke it out, get it done and over with so I can go on a little longer, just a little longer…”  Nico broke down, set the knife and drink down on the coffee table and let herself fall onto her ratty couch like to die.  Tears pumped out of her eyes with every sob and spilled over her cheeks onto the cushions.  Jay turned his eyes away from her, disgusted.

Nico knew his disgust, could feel it, and it hurt her like all of life hurts her.  “I know you’re as turned off by the weak side of me as I am, Jay,” she said between sniffles.  Then she grew angry again, her voice rising with loathing.  “It’s the fucking ugly girl in me, so small and pathetic, so sniveling and snot-nosed and hateful, no mother could love her or even have pity for her!  The sickness that comes off her is so thick and diseased, like toxic waste.  No one knows what to do with it, so they just step around it, idiots in denial, denial that’ll end up killing them.  Fools.” 

Nico flipped onto her stomach, buried her head in the couch and wailed.  Her misery thickened the air, made it hard to breathe.  Jay turned to leave.  He’d had enough.  “This is bullshit,” he said.

Nico flipped back over and sat up, angry.  “No!” she yelled at him.  She got up, ran to him, grabbed his shoulder and yanked him around to face her.  “Not bullshit, Jay!”  She let him loose with a shove.  “Fuck it, Jay, give me my strength back!  Get me out of this!  You know what I can do when I’m that tough girl kicking ass.  That’s the girl you can’t resist.  Get her back and you’ll have your girl.  Talk your talk.  Talk her out of this weak, ugly girl.  We’ll drink and paint and write, run outside, howl at the moon, get the police called on us, elude their asses.  Like we used to, Jay.  Fucking do it!”

“Sorry, Nico,” Jay said.  “I can’t do that shit if I don’t feel it.  I came by here out of duty and it’s just not working for me.  There are so many ass-kickers out there that don’t need propping up.  Good artists—”

Nico leaned back and laughed a fake, raucous laugh.  She bellowed, “Oh!  What?  You know an artist that doesn’t need propping up?”  She doubled over laughing, then snapped upright and poked his chest with her finger.  “Name one, fucker!”

“Alright,” Jay said matter-of-factly.  “Jenny.”  Nico recoiled.  Jay continued, “She’s confident.  In herself and her talent—”

“Are you talking about Jenny Roland?”  Nico looked shocked, incredulous.

“Yeah,” Jay said smugly.  “Yeah, I am.” 

Nico was taken aback.  She looked at him like he had two heads.  “Her work sucks!” she yelled and flounced back to the couch, mules snapping.

“That’s not the word on the street, Nico,” Jay said.

Nico said nothing, just sat down on the couch, crossed one leg over the other and bounced it violently, glared at him.

“Anyway, people like Jenny are who I need to surround myself with,” Jay said.  “Not ones like you who need so much attention and for what?  You’re not even that good!”

Tears filled Nico’s eyes.  Her shoulders drew in.  She got small for a moment.  Then she wiped her eyes clear of tears, sniffed and reached for her drink from the coffee table.  She lifted it, started to move it toward her mouth.  Her big, black eyes locked on Jay’s eyes and he saw the flames in them, but it was too late.  Nico scored a direct hit to his forehead.  The thick glass bottom gouged the thin skin there, split it short and wide.  It looked like a hole a .348 cartridge would make.  Blood ran from it like crazy as he lay still on the floor in front of the door. 

Nico jumped up off the couch and ran over to him, bent to look, lifted an eyelid, checked his pulse.  He’d be alright.  She moved fast to kitchen, put some ice in a zip-lock bag and balanced it on top of Jay’s wound.  She hurried over to her easel by the window and dragged it closer to Jay.  With fast and fevered flourishes she sketched an outline of Jay’s sprawled body.  Jay was stirring and groaning.  Nico picked up her speed, roughly laid out a sidewalk behind him, a storefront with bars and a huge sign sticking out from it, “Dick’s Pawn,” a couple of goons in the background, running from the scene.

Jay’s eyelids were fluttering.  Nico squeezed paints onto a palette, shot glances over at him and quickly, deftly mixed the various shades of his clothes, his hair, his skin, the blood.  “Hold on, Jay,” she said under her breath.  She stroked and dabbed at the canvas, leaned back, squinted, cocked her head, went back in.  She could feel Jay’s eyes hot on her now.  “You bitch,” she heard him whisper.

Nico looked over at him.  He’d rolled onto his side, was holding the ice in place, smiling at her.  “Thanks, Baby,” she said.  She smiled and turned back to her stroking and squinting and dabbing.  “You could have thought of a hotter artist than Jenny, though,” she said.  “One I was more jealous of.”

Jay laughed.  “Who gives a shit?  It worked.”  He pushed himself up, sat with his back to the door, watched her work.

Apartment mailboxes © 2719 Hyperion

Missalister’s “Dios, te necesito,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#192 – Weird”  Click here for more on prompt #192 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

Girl of tomorrow morning

I’ve come close to a culture overdose during my time in Ithaca.  Reminds me of my Dallas days when anything I wanted was just a short way away.  I’d about forgotten how sumptuous that luxury is during the past couple of years of landings flat in the farmlands of upstate New York and high in the mountains of Vermont. 

Ithaca to me is smarts and music and funky fashion and ways of being.  It’s a friendly-sized city full of colleges and bohemian character in each of the shops and bars and restaurants up and down its hills and all over its Commons.  Tuesday night it was all about the music end of it, well, and some lousy pool-playing and of course a few beers and maybe way too much Jack Daniel’s.

The scene of the first crime was the Wildfire Lounge, formerly The Lost Dog, to see a friend, Doug Robinson, kick it up Latin-wise with some other hot Ithaca musicians backing up Sally Ramirez.  It was a combo CD release party for Doug and Sally’s “Crimson” CD and Sally’s birthday.  Beer and cake.  Mmmm.

 

The lounge was homey with the odd chairs and couches around and a few round cocktail tables mixed in.  Doug and company were spread out against your classic inner city brick wall: two percussionists, Sally, Doug on guitar, a double bassist, a violinist, a clarinetist, and a trumpeter.  In front of them were tubes of clear and colored lights intertwined, laid out in a semi-circle atop a great Persian-style rug.

Of course I bought the CD after being stirred by the experience, the feeling of flying by the seat of my pants right along with the performers, live, where there’s no erasing what goes wrong and only memory of what goes astoundingly right.  Just as much an experience is the CD.  It’s pure, recorded perfection, every sound placed just right and presented to the choicest ear—left or right or both—to hear it.  Doug’s engineering and mixing on this CD is beyond right on.  There’s a sample below, an audio clip of my favorite tune on the CD.

I rarely dare get obnoxious enough to snap photos all over the place, but I did it that night.  And rightly according to some subchapter of Murphy’s Law, my camera fucked up at every turn.  I couldn’t turn off either the flash or the camera’s infernal beeping at every push of a button except the shutter button.  The rechargeable battery was dying a slow death and the display went black.  I was apologetically winging it the whole way, until the second crime scene.

Scene two was The Chanticleer.  Look at this marquee, for chrissakes!  It’s screaming bloody murder to be photographed by anyone with a camera in their pocket.  Creative or not, you can’t screw this up.  And you can’t not enter after you step under it.  It’s like the Star Trek Transporter, landed us in JD and black forest beer land with roosters sandblasted into the bar mirror and a pool tournament going on.  Gave us a hankering to play some pool ourselves, so we beamed over to Pete’s Cayuga Bar for the third and final crime scene of the evening.

Pete’s was cool: skinny, long and deep off the street, a bar in one part and a pool table in another part.  We put our quarters on the table and cultivated our JD and beer highs, looked at the walls where anyone could sketch whatever.

I played my token shit game of pool, like a bad MC opening for Nick to do the serious ass-kicking.  He did, had a nice long run of it.  But mercifully it did end so we could proceed to scene four, a diner to get food, and then home, much worse for the wear.  Gawd I’m a blast when I’m gassed, but not so much the next day.  Kind of like Menina amanhã de manhã, Girl of tomorrow morning.

Vai (Menina amanhã de manhã)
Tom Zé e Perna
Menina amanhã de manhã
Quando a gente acordar
Quero te dizer que a felicidade vai 
Desabar sobre os homens, vai 
Desabar sobre os homens, vai
Desabar sobre os homens  

Na hora ninguém escapa
Debaixo da cama, ninguém se esconde
A felicidade vai
Desabar sobre os homens, vai
Desabar sobre os homens, vai
Desabar sobre os homens

Menina, ela mete medo
Menina ela fecha a roda
Menina não tem saída
De cima, de banda ou de lado
Menina olhe pra frente
Oh! Menina, tome cuidado
Não queira dormir no ponto
Segure o jogo, atenção
De manhã…

Menina a felicidade 
é cheia de praça
é cheia de traça
é cheia de lata
é cheia de graça

Menina a felicidade
é cheia de pano
é cheia de peno
é cheia de sino
é cheia de sono

Menina a felicidade
é cheia de ano
é cheia de eno
é cheia de hino
é cheia de onu

Menina a felicidade
é cheia de an 
é cheia de en
é cheia de in
é cheia de on

é cheia de a
é cheia de é
é cheia de i
é cheia de ó

English translation:
She goes (Girl of tomorrow morning)
Tom Zé and Perna

Girl of tomorrow morning
When people wake up to you
I want to say that the happiness goes
To fall down on the men, goes
To fall down on the men, goes
To fall down on the men

In the hour nobody escapes
Underneath of the bed, nobody is hidden
The happiness goes
To fall down on the men, goes
To fall down on the men, goes
To fall down on the men

Girl, it puts fear
Girl it closes the wheel
Girl does not have exit
From above, of band or side
Girl looks at pra front
Oh! Girl, takes care
She does not want to sleep in the point
She holds the game, attention
Of morning…

Girl the happiness
she is full of square
she is full of traces
she is full of can
she is full of favour

Girl the happiness
she is full of cloth
she is full of I suffer
she is full of bell
she is full of sleep

Girl the happiness
she is full of year
she is full of eno
she is full of hymn
she is full of ONU

Girl the happiness
she is full of an
she is full of en
she is full of in
she is full of on

she is full of ah
she is full of é
she is full of i
she is full of ó

The lyrics and English translation are courtesy of librarycat.  Hopefully, our long-missed Porto, Portugal girl, Devil Mood, will have something to say about the music and translation, if it’s off or on and anything else her creative self might think to add.

Slumming

Forland, Patterson, Weil taken by Ellen Datlow

Last night I attended a talk at Cornell entitled, “Publishing: A Literary Agent’s Point of View.”  It was given by agents from The Wendy Weil Agency, Inc., of NYC, Wendy Weil, president/agent, and Emily Forland, agent. 

Among the topics addressed were what an agent is, how to choose an agent, some miscellaneous things to know/think about in the choosing process, query letters, sources that aid finding an agent, a few thoughts on the publishing industry in transition with eBooks.  I’ve categorized all that below my summary of the evening since many readers here may already be familiar with those topics.

But first, the hottest thing I heard there was the story of Melinda Haynes.  It not only quickened my heartbeat, it pointed up the approachability of The Wendy Weil Agency, and that was part of the bar-setting for what to look for in an agent.  A synopsis of Melinda Haynes’  journey to getting published is contained here.    The short of it is that Melinda only had two short stories accepted by “The Crescent Review” before hooking up with The Wendy Weil Agency.  Emily Forland was the agent at Weil that found Melinda’s gem, “Mother of Pearl,” and she talked a bit about it, the gist being the first few pages of it were so good she was compelled to take it on.  And “Mother of Pearl” went on to becoming a big moneymaker for them, was sold to Hyperion Press and was an Oprah’s Book Club pick.

I came away from listening to Wendy and Emily with this:  when approaching an agent with a book idea or manuscript, of course it’s good to have credentials—especially to have been published in print, a distributed magazine at least, for example—and better yet, to have a referral; but, even if you’ve not been published, if your query letter and writing is exceptional, there is hope if your submittal lands at a reputable agent who goes beyond, i.e. one that actually reads all of what you send!  And these ladies, from this mid-sized agency, seem ones who go beyond.

What an agent is

Basically, they sell rights to books, a.k.a. projects, a.k.a. property, a.k.a. content, to name a few impersonal terms the industry has adopted (the industry being one that acts much as real estate agents do, hence the terms).  Agents sell book rights, print rights, eBook/magazine rights, audio book rights, merchandizing rights, translation rights, for examples.

How to choose an agent

Emily put it well, that agents are, or should be, gatekeepers, tastemakers, matchmakers, an author’s first line of defense, sounding boards for next writing projects.  Ideally, they should know their authors’ passions and know the markets and the editors to match them to.

Some miscellaneous things to know/think about in the choosing process

Agencies can charge any commission they want, but 15% for an agent is standard and the different rights are negotiable; and if you’re not agented you may get a bigger advance, but you pay for it in the end, pay 50% and give up all rights.

It’s best to sign book-for-book, best to avoid getting tied up in a multi-book deal.

There exists a bent to publish a brand (John Grisham’s books fall into this category, for example).  The Weil Agency, for one, is not enamored with that.  Some writers/agencies may or may not be.  It’s just another consideration.

You shouldn’t have to pay reading fees.  Be wary when approaching an agent or other persons/companies offering the service of reading and commenting on your manuscript for the purpose of bettering it before you approach an agent or, if you’re ballsy (crazy?) enough to go straight to a publisher.

Most agencies prefer to have exclusive relationships with authors but it’s not a requirement; however, full disclosure, divulging who you’ve disclosed your manuscript or book to, is required.

One reason not to let rejection get you down:  not all agents read everything you send before they respond with a rejection letter.

Query letters

Know the agency’s preferences.  Most agencies are taking online queries/submissions, and The Wendy Weil Agency is no exception, but they prefer written queries.  And query content may vary.  For the Wendy Weil Agency, in addition to query letters, they require a partial manuscript for non-fiction; a full manuscript or several short stories if you’ve not been published or partial manuscript if you have; partial manuscript for memoirs.  They’ll respond to all written queries but only to e-mail queries that they’re interested in.

The query letter itself:  the thing that sounded good to me regarding the importance of them was how Emily put it, that they’re basically a first presentation of your voice.  Your voice.  Man, I like the sound of that.  And after that it’s this:  professional and to the point; distinctive (not gimmicky, hokey, weird, or just plain insane); include your background; tell about the project that you’re writing; include a description of your project; add a paragraph stating the themes of the book and why it’s unique; and state your credentials.  Like all agents, they’re bombarded with godawful query letters and beg us to stop it!  LOL!  I can identify.  There must be nothing better to an agent than a right-on query letter and a gem of a manuscript.

The agent has to be able to work with the writer, and the query letter tells a lot about character: are they decent and polite people, boors, cads, rattleheads, sane or insane?  Wendy made a joke about there being a good kind of insane.  I don’t remember it exactly, but I can see how it would be not a problem if they were big moneymakers!

And of course referrals are one of the best ways to go.  In life in general, that goes without saying.  It’s always good to know someone who knows just the right person to lend you some assistance.  Helping others get ahead, a subchapter of the Golden Rule?

Sources that aid finding an agent

The Association of Author’s Representative, Inc.

Look at the acknowledgements in books of authors you admire (the company you’d most like to be in).  Some authors thank their agents and that can be something to pick up on.

Literary Marketplace.  Lists all agencies worldwide and what they require.  Found in libraries and via a subscription online.

A few thoughts on the publishing industry in transition

The publishing industry is in transition with eBooks/readers and the role of the agent is evolving, and it’s pure speculation as to what it will end up to be.  It’s got to hurt publishers, agents and writers with eBooks at $10 and printed books at $25, for example.  But I’m sure they’ll find a way to rake in dough.  I actually hope so, because I hope to be part of the pecking order that gets paid for words.

Cornell’s Goldwin Smith building, where the event was held