First Drafts

Ahem...

2008-02-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, things are a might slow 'round here.

Allow me to shake them up again...by sending you over to my blog (insert wicked giggle, here).

What Jayne Says

Word play

2007-08-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

Since there's been no activity on here in months, I thought I'd shake things up a bit. This is actually posted on both my blogs. Warning, there is some language here.

So...anyone else still out there?

I've been thinking a lot lately about language. Mine, in particular. To be more specific, my use of "foul" language.

See, The Man (i.e. "the man in my life") and I have decided to make a conscious effort to clean up our language. We both cuss too much. He was in a conversation with a coworker a few days ago who commented on the incredibly foul language of another colleague (let's just, it would make a sailor blush). She pointed out that he does cuss, not as often the others they work with, and he almost always checks her (the colleague he was talking to) reaction. She doesn't like the language at all. It pushed him to do something about his own habit.

I've spent a good few months feeling guilty lately when I cuss around him. A random "damn" or "hell" has never bothered me, but I know I've gotten comfortable and that's not all I'm saying anymore.

I will admit that sometimes, there just aren't other words--either for emphasis or intensity. I mean, come on, when I fell a few weeks ago and nearly broke my tailbone, saying "shoot" just didn't do the pain justice. And I've always thought you should say what you mean (and mean what you say, of course.) I've even been known to use the "f" word for shock value, or to make sure I'm getting the attention I'm needing from the person I'm talking to.
A friend of mine said that swearing wasn't banned in his household. However there was a rule about the use of certain 4-letter words. You couldn't use them just 'cuz. You had to be creative in your use. In my house, creative use or not, you got punished. But we're all different.

I know I need to curb my mouth. Does that mean language will disappear from my writing? Not all. Some words just can't be replaced, specifically because of the implications to writing.

I mean, really--would "fudge" really replace "fuck?" I think not.

We took turns at holding the knife

2007-01-09T01:29:00.000-08:00

We took turns at holding the knife
Like two players from Westside.

I acted like a Liberated Woman.
You made your exit as the graceless,
Diabolical man.

But you held the knife first, making you the prime culprit my dear
Because, as you once explained to me
Playground rules never disappear, they just hide in the thickets.

We think of chance as a spiky persuasion.
A fleeting shooting star, a once in a lifetime affair.
Yet being the daughter of randomness, having that chaotic lineage
Means that chance is often an actor in a small production,
Forced to stage many guises.

So when you contacted mid-winter hungering
For our last renedezvous or perhaps recapturing what still remains
I should have felt the tide turning.
I should have listened to my heart.

We took turns in holding the knife.
Our pride took care of the rest.

Please

2007-01-02T11:55:00.000-08:00

remove me fro this blog

Thank you

A start

2006-11-07T21:24:00.000-08:00

I left every thought of grandiose romantic love in a hotel room thousands of miles from home.
I left it there with the letters you wrote me, ripped into pieces and dumped into the bin. I left it there with wishes of more time, of thoughts of staying and with a deep loneliness that would only be removed if you returned.
I wanted with every bit of me for you to come back, for you to spend the night, for you to kiss me.
I stopped dreaming of prince charming, I ended my fairy tale.
And thus begins my story.

If only the writer's block would leave me the f*#$% alone...

Howdy...One Word...

2006-09-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

I'm also new to this group, so I thought I'd follow LuluBunny's lead and do the One Word prompt. A warning: I don't follow directions very well. Enjoy...

Yourself: easy (as in "like Sunday morning" not "that woman on the corner.")
Your partner: amazing
Your hair: blonde
Your Mother: well-intentioned
Your Father: wonderful-wonderful (family thing)
Your Favourite Item: couch
Your dream last night: amazing (see above)
Your Favourite Drink: wine
Your Dream Home: secluded...but not remote
The Room You Are In: cluttered
Your fear: alone
Where you Want to be in Ten Years?: home
Who you hung out with last night: WonderDog
What You're Not: overly extroverted
Your Best Friend: an ass
One of Your Wish List Items: books
Your Gender: female
The Last Thing You Did: posted
What You Are Wearing: t-shirt
Your favourite weather: Texas fall--in December
Your Favourite Book?: falling apart
Last thing you ate?: um....
Your Life: slowing
Your mood: calm
The last person you talked to on the phone: Madre
Who are you thinking about right now?: The Man (the amazing one *grin*)

One Word

2006-09-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

I'm new to this group, so by way of an introduction I thought I would do the One Word prompt.

Yourself: individual
Your partner: non-existent
Your hair: red
Your Mother: difficult
Your Father: unreliable
Your Favourite Item: iPod
Your dream last night: forgotten
Your Favourite Drink: tea
Your Dream Home: remote
The Room You Are In: messy
Your fear: voicelessness
Where you Want to be in Ten Years?: home
Who you hung out with last night: dog
What You're Not: outgoing
Your Best Friend: writing
One of Your Wish List Items: Cessna
Your Gender: female
The Last Thing You Did: ate
What You Are Wearing: t-shirts
Your favourite weather: crisp
Your Favourite Book?: memorized
Last thing you ate?: cheese
Your Life: liberated
Your mood: calm
The last person you talked to on the phone: father
Who are you thinking about right now?: nobody

One Word

2006-08-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, we'll give the prompt a try, an easy way to get back into this? Let's hope!

Yourself: warm
Your partner: Comforting
Your hair: Up
Your Mother: Nutty
Your Father: Gone
Your Favourite Item: Journal
Your dream last night: Colourful
Your Favourite Drink: Rye
Your Dream Home: Oceanfront
The Room You Are In: Cluttered
Your fear: Regret
Where you Want to be in Ten Years?: Fulfilled
Who you hung out with last night: Friends
What You're Not: Short
Your Best Friend: Many
One of Your Wish List Items: Jet
Your Gender: Female
The Last Thing You Did: Breastfed
What You Are Wearing: Tanktop
Your favourite weather: Warm
Your Favourite Book?: Undiscovered
Last thing you ate?: Burger
Your Life: New
Your mood: Comfortable
The last person you talked to on the phone: Brother
Who are you thinking about right now?: Ben

One Word

2006-08-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

Ell inspired me to try my hand at the One Word post as well. Just like I think she mentioned, it is definitely harder than it looks. I actually found out a few things about myself from this exercise. Thanks Diana!

You can view it on my blog!

One Word

Jam

2006-08-05T05:05:00.000-07:00

Sitting at the table on the balcony I looked out towards the horizon. The sea looked calm, the sky clear, with only the odd cloud waiting to be boiled away by the sun that was gradually climbing over the mountains behind our apartment.

The table before me was laden with breakfast; a pot of steaming coffee, a jug of chilled, freshly squeezed orange juice, a rack of toast, butter, white plates, shining silver cutlery. The day's newspaper lay folded to the latest Sudoku puzzle I was becoming more and more adept at. The sports pages were strewn across the only free space on the table.

I smoked a cigarette, admiring the view, listening to the small Spanish village coming to life. The harbour, over to the right and partially hidden by the rocky outcrop of the mountain, was beginning to get crowded as local fishermen headed for their small boats and the English cafes opened for passing trade; hungover English couples and families with 2.4 children looking for bacon, sausage and egg in this foreign land.

I flicked the stub of my cigarette over the balcony to the scrub below. There was no danger of starting a fire. The sprinklers were set to come on shortly.

Pouring a cup of coffee I finished reading about the latest football transfers and leaned back, mug in hand, putting my feet up on the white wall. I watched three green birds swoop to nest in a nearby tree, reminding myself that I would have to find out what they were, before promptly forgetting all about them as I did daily.

The baby splashed happily in her pool to my left and I glanced over to see what she was giggling at this time. Her smile made me grin as she kicked her feet in the water.

I heard the patio door open. Putting my feet to the floor and turning in my chair I watched you come onto the balcony. You were wearing a light blue bikini, your breasts held safely but tantalisingly by the fabric. A sheer sarong around your waist added to the "less is more" effect, your legs flashed briefly as you walked towards me. Blonde-brown hair, swept over your shoulders, fell around your face as you leaned down to kiss me. I kissed back, savouring the feel of your lips on mine.

You knelt by the baby, kissing her head and making sure she was comfortable in the pool. My wife and daughter, the shining lights of my life.

You sat and I handed you the white pot and a knife before you even had chance to ask; "Pass the jam, darling."

Our morning ritual. I never tired of it.

One word

2006-07-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

Diana, you were right about this one - much harder than it looks. I put it on my own blog, but here's the link:

One Word

Promise

2006-06-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

By the end of the longest day of the year he could not stand it,
The ribbon of cars winding all the way to Seattle,
He in the middle, fingers turned plastic from
gripping the steering wheel,
ears attuned to horns and revved engines,
squealing brakes and
FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKERS
Rebounding off the walls of skyscrapers
Spiralling up into taut stretched sky
Where colors clashed, light streamed through
Particulate poison created by greed

In the belly of his world his guts coiled like a snake
Strike-ready but blind
Hot energy massed, spreading upwards towards
the promise of a new kind of history
an awakening from nightmare and
complicit silence

Down the the metal river he passed
till on the border
Between lands, over water
He stopped, stepped out,
flesh and bone in a world
of nothing natural
But sky above
air and water below

All around the sounds
of ranting road rage rose
as he walked – yes walked –
To the rails, grabbed metal with
Forceful hands and rose up to stand
One moment above the water

For everyone else the days will darken slowly,
A minute here, another there
Later dawn, earlier sunset,
Till the world is swaddled dark for hours and hours
And the daylight that finally comes is tinged gray with rain
And swollen clouds, with only the promise of the winter solstice
And the slow turn to light
As comfort

But he, not standing it,
Falls through poisoned air, fleeing
Machines, cut trees, the slow return to winter
That without human change
Will one day be eternal

Behind him the relentless river
stops, disgorges its human burden, and wakes
to the sound of a wife’s questions, to
the possibility of grief
and of redemption.

The Artist's Jar (Inspired By The List Prompt)

2006-06-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

Around a monolith of tall wood,
It’s fibrous tip gathered and pinched by metal,
The end of which is slightly discoloured from use,
That to me is called a paintbrush,
Crowd an indistinguishable Lilliputian army,
The deepest blue, an almost black,
Jostling for worship at the elitist totem
With it’s aged reputation of oils and passion.
An artefact with realisations of grandeur
Which an artist might balk from wielding,
And those Lilliputians of scratchy lines
Whose variety lies in the width of their tip,
Or reliant on the dubious skill of the barer,
Would give up their last drop of life’s ink
For a shot at the big time.
Poor impotent graphic pens.

List

2006-06-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

To do:
Water the plants and pay the bills
Turn down the heat.
Prepay the gardener and get him to remove the rocks.
Cancel the paper.
Send the cat to friends.
Get the neighbour kid to pick up the mail.
Don't forget to set the light timers
And nobody'll know I'm gone.

The Stormy Petrel.

2006-06-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

The molecule was so very alone. It moved slowly, with effort, pushing it’s way through the dark oppressive atmosphere down there.
It was disconnected from others where it should have been whole.
It was lost, but more than that, something held it there alone and isolated. Fragmented from everything, it slowly explored the dark depths.
Central to its existence was a powerful rigid force with a surface like granite but without granite’s beauty. The molecule was not allowed to move from within this being’s murky underbelly, and for a long time it never even supposed that it could. Its world was this darkness, and darkness was its world.
The molecule spent its days circling this dark wall of oppression, round and round through the layers of smog and filth, never becoming tainted by it, but not knowing any different. The stormy petrel could only fleetingly affect the molecule, but powerfully at that, and would never let on how weak and vulnerable it actually was. While the molecule slowly changed over time, its strength grew in the wake of repeated attempts to retain authority by the Darkness. And as it grew, it became lighter and spread more thinly.
Darkness became incensed and tried to regain control of the molecule over and over again, but having less impact with each attempt, until one fateful day when the molecule began to rise into the air above the smog around the base of the Darkness.
The dark power battered the molecule with everything it had, but where the molecule should have been shattered into submission, each attack stretched it and thinned its structure.
Suddenly the molecule became self aware, and knew that it held a special power all of its own.
When the final desperate blow from the Darkness came, it fell upon absolutely nothing. For the molecule had realised that it’s strongest power came with the ability to thin itself so much that it disappeared without a trace.
Soon after this revelation, and with the Darkness roaring impotently from below, the evolved molecule rose above what had been its captor for so long, and looked down upon it. The Darkness was completely hollow inside. The rigid exterior surrounded nothing of value at all but a bad smell.
The molecule rose to taste true freedom for the first time, and eventually evolved enough to merge with others and become something whole and hale.

Inspiration

2006-06-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

I just found this site and I am in awe. She freewrites daily and the results are wild and wonderful. I'm afraid that I will never be this loose and creative but I'm now reading her daily for inspiration.

You've Stayed Too Long

2006-06-08T16:26:00.000-07:00

I decided to combine two older writing prompts (from 3/11/06 & 4/13/06) into this one story. The two prompts were 'You've stayed too long' and 'I've changed my mind.'
Enjoy!

I sensed it coming before the gunman contemplated pulling the trigger. I think I even expected it to happen. My hearing heightened in the split second the safety clicked off and the trigger was pulled. I could hear the bullet travel through the barrel with an explosive sound that rang in my ears. It was an out of body experience, as if I was hovering above, watching a man I did not know get shot. But I was actually that man and I could definitely feel the pain.

I watched the bullet travel toward my chest at break-neck speed. But in my world, from my perspective, it was traveling as slow as ducks on a pond during a lazy summer afternoon. I watched it spiral toward me with no way of moving out of the way or nothing to stop its journey. I could feel my body anticipating… tensing… just waiting for the impact. What felt like an hour, but was actually faster than the blink of an eye, the bullet hit me with such force I was thrown back several feet.

I heard the second shot while the first hit my chest, burning a hole through the top layers of my skin before puncturing through my left pectoral muscle. I felt every layer tear, searing the edges of the entry wound. The bullet made a suction sound much like a spoon piercing into a perfect mold of Jell-O, leaving behind a hole that could never be fully repaired.

I felt the pain surge through my entire body. My right hand automatically reached for my chest in an attempt to shield my wound from more trauma as my body crashed to the asphalt.

As quickly as the bullet entered my body, it stopped even quicker, like a semi-truck colliding with a brick wall. I could feel it wedge into my breastbone, coming so close to my most vital organ it was as if with every pump of my heart I could feel the heated tip of the bullet.

As I lay on the black asphalt, watching myself struggle to stay conscious, but also hoping to be relieved of the amazing pain, I heard a woman scream. My mind was racing, thinking that I needed her to call for help even though at this point I just wanted to die.

I saw the woman running toward me in a panic, cell phone in hand talking to a 9-1-1 dispatcher. She was describing the scene before her and the condition in which I lay, the blood from my chest wound staining the ground the deep red of a pomegranate around me. That was the last thing that I remembered until arriving at the hospital.

I found myself in a long white sterile room sitting amongst strangers. There were hundreds of people, yet no one seemed to give me any notice. They all sat, staring ahead at the blank walls. As I averted my eyes from everyone else, I realized what they were watching.

I sat quietly in my seat watching as images were projected on the white walls in front of me. I felt I was watching an old home movie, flickering with no sound and nothing to smile or laugh about. There I lay on a cold steel gurney while doctors worked feverishly around me.

A calming sense fell over me as I sat and watched the projection on all four walls. I thought of the great life I had lead. Though not long, I had accomplished most of what I wanted and was proud of the forty-five years I had lived. I felt ready to exit the life that I knew and move on to my next endeavor, wherever that may lead.

The picture began to scramble and fade as doctors started to silently scream across the table at one another. I continued to watch as they suddenly stopped, staring at the machinery that was supposed to keep me alive.

I could feel myself fading with the movie before me. I had wished for death only moments ago, but a deep sense of sadness came upon me as I looked down at my lifeless body and realized that I would never hold my family in my arms again, dance to my favorite song or even eat my favorite ice cream one last time.

As I continued to fade, I couldn’t take my eyes from the man I once was, laying on the cold metal gurney with the white sheet placed over me. I heard a voice calling my name from afar. I tried to hold on, to not fade away in hopes that the owner of the voice could help me. It suddenly hit me. That was my life, no more…no less. I began to panic. I needed to be back on earth, I needed to live the rest of my life as I had planned.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I yelled. “I don’t want to die anymore! I want to live! Turn back the clock; change my fortune, whatever you have to do! I don’t care. I’ll do anything you ask.”

“But you don’t understand,” answered the voice with a pause. “You’ve stayed too long.”

Only Connect!

2006-05-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

Whew! This one was hard. Personally, I didn't find it as informative as the book had suggested it would be. I tend to write about the same things a lot so it's not like my three entries were all over the place, not really. Still, it was a stretch to connect them, which I guess was the point. I feel stretched. I'll share my thought process as I worked through this, and then below is just a short freewrite. Is there something there to be expanded upon? I just don't know. There might be a character lurking underneath.

I will say that this was an "interesting" exercise. I either loved it or hated it, and don't feel that I'll know which one for a bit.

The three journal/blog entries I picked at random:

This one, whose overall theme was "feeling on the outside, like a weirdo in the world, while simultaneously understanding that there are others just like me who are moving around in the world quietly, reading the same things I am, thinking the same things I am, wanting to meet/talk to someone just like me only we don't know of one another's existence, with the added bonus theme of not living up to my potential in any arena."

And this one, whose theme was "sugar, as in too much of, how it calls to me and always has, with a subtheme of gluttony and greed versus organic, healthy desire."

And then this one, whose theme was "poetry, and the state of being hyperaware of the mysteries and wonders of Life whist those around you are slogging in the details."

***

So. How to connect loneliness, gluttony, and peace?

***

One might say that I have been drawn off course by a siren's song and that song, for me, lies in attention. Flattery. Praise. Or maybe not that so much as approval. Yes, it's more like that. It doesn't have to be outright enthusiastic praise; a simple nod of approval is enough to activate the craving. It's like sugar to me, like candy and ice cream and chocolate pudding all in one except it doesn't even make me fat or give me cavities.

If I'm in a situation where no one knows me, perhaps in the car dealership waiting on a repair, I become starved for approval, for recognition that I'm "special." I can manufacture it in my head, though. I can envision someone glancing at the book I read as I wait and immediately recognizing that it's not this season's best-seller. They can see that I'm not like everyone else. And in the same way, I am only halfheartedly reading because I'm simultaneously glancing up from my book to see if anyone is watching me. Look at me, notice me, see me!

I wonder about "normal" people, about how they have a healthy respect and desire for praise or approval but they don't seem to be as greedy for it as I am. They don't seem to be bottomless pits of need, or empty wells that are merely being filled one bucketful at a time. When they find someone who appears to really see them, who approves of them unconditionally, they don't become consumed with gluttony as I do. I drive all of my partners away with my possessiveness and jealous need to consume every piece of them. I demand to know their every thought and emotion. I get panicky if I don't hear from them every few hours.

It has always seemed as though it's only when I'm In Love that I can really live. It's only when someone reflects back to me a version of me that is in accordance with my deepest beliefs about myself that the world seems to be a wonderful place. When no one loves me, everything's dreary and it all seems futile. But when I've been chosen by someone and given that approval and admiration all is beautiful in the world and rife with poetry. With someone else I can enter that world that seems ephemeral and foggy, like a misty neither-her-nor-there place that is not Life or Afterlife but a little bit of both and while I'm in this haze I cannot fathom how "everyone else" manages to slog around in the mud of details and chores.

Focus

2006-05-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

Have you ever watched the rain fall through the heat haze created by a burning candle on the windowsill?

It creates a hypnotic effect. Focus on the heat haze and it appears to rise with urgency and anger against the backdrop of the languid, lazy rainfall. The rain itself appears to dawdle, defying gravity in its meandering path from the sky to the ground, while the heat haze pushes upwards, reaching for something only it knows what.

Shift your focus to the rain and it falls incessantly, relentlessly, at a steady pace on a path that will not be altered by anything earthly. Forcefully it beats down, stopping only when it hits something solid and even then it rolls right round it, it will not be denied its ultimate goal of reaching the floor.

In contrast the heat haze has calmed itself, relaxed into a similar lazy rise as the rain falling earlier. It wanders in random directions, going where it will, where any breath of air cares to take it, uncaring about how it reaches its destination, just knowing it will get there eventually, content with that. Until, in sharp contrast to the incessant rain, it simply fades to nothing, its life ended at its farthest reach from whence it came.

It is hypnotic, no matter your focus. Eventually you look away and the real world returns.

Present

2006-05-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

I bought her a present once. A Christmas present. An early Christmas present.

I was not, could not be, present when she received her present.

I was not present to see her face as she opened it. I was not present to see her smile, not present to see her eyes gleam, not present to see her pick up her present for the first time.

I will not ever be present when she presents her present to the world, demonstrating her skill and love.

I will not ever be present to see if she plays her present, not ever present to see what she can do with it, not present to watch her learn, not present to see her explore her gift.

But I bought her a present. A present for her gift and love. I know she loved it. Even though I was not present.

Shiny Happy People

2006-05-03T05:47:00.000-07:00

Lunch was just finishing up for the two little mouths in front of me.
I absentmindedly wiped a washcloth over both their faces and proceeded to clean the plastic trays of their high chairs.
The t.v. was on, but I hadn't noticed it until Sesame Street started.
The kids had no time for the show on prior to Big Bird and 'Snupalupalupagus' and so lunch continued every day without distraction.
These children, precious twins, a boy and a girl, ate anything.
Today was steamed spinach day... to which I would dig out a frozen entree as the thought of eating slimey leaves didn't sit well.
I unleashed the children from their seats, and they ran to the large area rug in the living room immediately breaking into dance.
Their tiny hands waved about as they bobbed up and down enthralled by 'Monster Time'.
I finished cleaning the kitchen up, able to watch the little ones from where I cleaned, and then came to join them on the carpet.
"Dance too! Dance too Monkey!" Milo screamed.
"Monkey" was the nickname the two had come up with for me, thanks to my very convincing ape impersonation. It was shorter and more familiar than my first name, and much better than being called 'Nanny' by two year olds.
The three of us continued watching as colourful puppets talked of being a friend, Oscar grouched and Elmo explored new activities. I used to watch this show as a child, I think everyone did, and it really hadn't changed all that much in 20 years.
R.E.M. suddenly appeared on screen, I watched in disbelief as they were quickly surrounded by 'back up singers' and groupies. These puppets had glamorous dresses, braided hair, and a tonne of soul.
More dancing ensued as Michael Stipe broke out 'Shiny Happy Monsters'.
The song went back and forth from the monsters being happy
*cue upbeat music and tonnes of very unique dance moves*
to being sad
*bright little eyes staring at the screen, pouts beginning to form*
but in the end happiness prevailed!
My little monsters and I were shiny & happy by the end of the song.
Even though they were only 2 years old, I think that the three of us all learned that bad days will eventually turn into good. I realized that these kids, just beginning in the world, were teaching me more lessons everyday then any adult could.
We all went outside to play after the show ended and as they pranced around outside with brightly coloured toys and sunshine bouncing off their perfect faces, I was happy to have this amazing day brought to me by the number 4 and the letter M.

I can never say quite as much as I know

2006-05-02T03:44:00.000-07:00

I'd already knocked twice. But I thought I'd give it one more try, and so made a lusty rat-a-tat-tat TATTA-TAT-TAT-TAT!! I could hear the cats mewing on the other side, which surprised me, because I didn't think cats came to the door like dogs did. Then I recognised that distinctive pawing-flickety-flick-of-gravel noise and remembered that the cats' litter tray was just inside the door. I put my eye up to the security-lense-thing in the door to check for any movement, when just at that moment Batesy opened it, and I almost fell into his arms. The cats fled.

Unimpressed, he grunted "Oh. It's you", and turned back into his flat. I listened for a "Come in then", but no such invitation was issued. The door was left ajar, like a toilet seat left up to reveal a steaming sh*t in the bowl. I metaphorically put down the seat, pulled the chain, and sat down. Which roughly translates to: I thought of the money that c*nt owed me and how much I wanted it back, so followed him down the hall.

When I arrived at the loungeroom doorway Batesy couldn't conceal his surprise at my being there: clearly most folk turned away. He had company, and likewise she couldn't conceal her annoyance that my arrival had now made this A Crowd. Equally transparent, I couldn't conceal that I felt the same way. So, there were all were, our naked displeasure exposed. Almost comic in our synchronicity we each silently set about retrieving tobacco from respective tin, handbag, pocket; then rolling, licking, lighting Rizla papers; and finally hiding behind our veils of smokey indifference.

It was only after this ritual of nonchalence was complete that his 'visitor' spoke. "How long is you planning on being ere?..." I didn't notice the dot dot dot suffixing her question, and I was about to reply saying: It depends on how quickly Batesy hands over what he owes me, when she continued... "...only me and Ronald was aving a p-r-i-vaaaate converse-sation..." [slight pause, as she watched me for a reaction] "...and we isn't finished, see?" I waited to see if there were any more dot dot dots to follow. She must have indeed finished, but I had apparently waited too long to reply because she then raised her voice and slowly, patronisingly, added: "Is... you's... hearin... me... Son?" -- "Hey, is he DEAF?"

The last question wasn't directed to me, but to Batesy. It was only then that I noticed that Batesy (evidently 'Ronald' to 2-bit whores) was wearing a bathrobe, which had separated to reveal, well, the reason his visitor was so keen to get me away. Alright, if the window had been open I'd've stepped out of it right then, because a sudden loss of the will to live swept over me. I saw the futility of pursuing this debt, and realised what a fool, a sap, I'd been in holding out any hope for it. "Forget it. Just go." I told myself.

Interpreting my silence as a refusal to leave she defiantly began manoeuvering Batesy from the room - with me still sitting here, catatonic in defeat. As they left, the smirk on her face betrayed that she felt getting him to herself again was a conquest of mountain-to-mohammed-like magnitude. I heard the click of a latch, the squawk of cheap giggles, the scrape of furniture, the grind of bedsprings, the sound of my money being spent. I felt my attention wander off, and finally I followed.

Outside the building I opened the handbag. Fifty, one-fifty, two-fifty, four-fifty, five... five hundred and fifty. He owed me four-hundred - and I'd been waiting for it all Winter. Yeah, the surplus could cover the Inconvenience being out-of-pocket had caused me. Rummaging through her bag I found the tobacco and a lighter, put them in my pocket, then tossed her handbag into a skip. She'd get her money back off Batesy - her pimp would see to that.

[for info: here is my last one]

small injuries

2006-04-22T03:29:00.000-07:00

"I don't think it was right to leave them there." Oskar shuffled from one foot to the other.

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Ignoring him, I continued ripping my tshirt into strips. In my first two attempts I had torn in the wrong direction, against the grain I guess, and hence they were almost useless. But now I was ripping the right way and they tore easily... nice and straight, along the whole length of the fabric. It was satisfying to get it right.

"Mummy wouldn't have put them there. She took them off just before she'd go to bed, it was the last thing she'd do. It wasn't right to have put 'em in that wee dish." he continued.

I really didn't have a clue what he was talking about. He was clearly agitated and was rocking from foot to foot, like a schoolchild waiting to be given permission to leave for the toilet. "Look" I said, whilst continuing to tear strips, "I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Any chance that you are going to tell me? Or are you just going to continue spouting cryptic shit?

He looked at me, stunned, as if I were a spotlight, then turned violently and ran towards the house. "What the....? Oskarrrr... where the fuck are you going!!!?" I forgot myself as I watched him pull at the door. "Oskarrrr....!!!!" He pulled at the door, then he was in.

---

"Listen cuntstable that's all I can remember. He was my fucking brother alright? My stupid fuck brother."

Constable Arsehole didn't like that, and proceeded to twisted my arm back between my shoulderblades, taking it almost clean out of the socket.

"Okay, okay, I'll try." I said, and with the release of his grip it all came flooding back to me, in a putrid wave of memory.

"As I said, he pulled at the door, then he was in... or maybe the door came off its hinges, and then he was in. It happened so quickly. Anyway yeah it was one or the other... and he was in the house. Yeah. Well. Well, well... the house exploded then. No, not exploded as such, cos it was already on fire. But when Oskar went in it just went Kaboom!! in an explosion of orange. Flames. My stupid fuck brother. I don't know why he went back. I guess he always was a Mummy's Boy, to his downfall. To his downfall."

The memory subsided and the pain returned, and I remembered why I'd been ripping my shirt. Two of my fingers: Ring and Pinky, were still in the house.

[for info: here is my first one]

First Meeting

2006-04-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

The meeting was a bit of a unique experience.
The first time we met lasted three full days, we haven't seen eachother since.
I would like to have this turn into something bigger instead of being so recollective, but I am not sure where to start the expansion.

In the car is where I choose to think of you now.
It’s a great opportunity to sit in comfort and quiet and flip through our memories.
That’s not to say that you don’t come to mind at any other time.
I do dream of you occasionally, in a clown suit or as yourself.
I’ll think of you as I make my way through my hallway on the weekend and wonder if you’re smiling at that moment, wonder what you’re doing.
I see us sitting by the river after wandering about the theatre.
I hear your voice as you reach down to pet the little dog that came up to our table, its master chuckling and smiling.
I remember us speaking of condoms and school and our laughter mixing.
I think of your leather jacket, how it smelled and felt when your arms were around me in a hug, when you went home after my last cigarette before returning to my apartment.
I remember the talking elevator and I think of how no elevator ride has been quite as fun.
I think of the revolving door, the parking meter, the quick run up to the washroom and the blue couches.
I remember you brushing my hair, my attempt to stay awake for at least a few more hours.
I think of us across the table from each other, eating Italian, the candle wobbling precariously on the edge, the metal handrail I peered through to watch passers by.
Your voice remains, gentle, joyful, warm, asking questions.
The smell of breakfast after walking blocks and blocks, the elation of having you near me for blocks and blocks.
Spotting you in the crowd, the instant hug, the courteousness of your actions, how excited I was, like a child, to finally get to spend time with you.
How I screwed up the passenger side door.
I think of driving with you, us laughing at anything, singing to Van Halen, you swearing at traffic, my eyes taking in storefronts and houses and sidewalks as we flew by them.
I think of how wonderful it will be to one day have you in the passenger seat of my car, in my life, in my world, of how I’ll notice changes in you, of what you will see in me.
I think of our voices joining in once again to ‘Walking in Memphis’ and my fingers on your neck and your smile lighting me up.
I miss you.
Although you’re not far.
Although I can reach for you and you for me whenever the need arises.
Although I have these memories to keep me company.
I miss you.

Ripples (Other selves inspiration)

2006-04-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

Imagine for a moment without incredulity, without judgment or prejudice. Take a deep breath, close your eyes if you will, and put your skepticism to one side. Listen to what i propose.
Our world that we know and touch, where we exist, where you now sit listening to me, is just one in a million reflections of the same world with slight ripples and distortions. Each world began as one whole, but from that fraction in time of its conception it split as each ripple changed infinitesimally.
A change as slight as the breeze shifting in a different direction; a baby newly born waited an extra minute to cry; a woman breathing in her lover's breath a moment longer.
All these lives, joined from their existence and yet all differing from each other.
They overlap and entwine each other, often mirroring events throughout them all, using experiences and reflecting infinite possibilities and outcomes across all the worlds. A spectrum of life, filling every inch of dimentional void and still expanding, always fitting, never bursting.
Occasionally the walls between the worlds become thin and stretched, reality for one world might lend itself to another.
Ever experienced a dobbleganger? Or stopped a stranger in a supermarket convinced that you knew them only to find them staring at you blankly? Ever had someone ask you if you have a twin sister? Twin brother? Must be an older sibling with a close resemblance then even though you proclaim you are an only child? They look at you with that same incredulous look you are giving me now. Because they know what they've seen, and your answer doesn't fit. So they disbelieve you, much like you are to me now.
Breathe.
Close your eyes.
Listen.
The easiest way to see between these worlds is to look at the light. We all share the light given by the sun. Different conditions affect how we use it. Shadows moving across a window at night are brighter shadows of a different world. Shadows that scare us, are things that are scaring a different us somewhere else. But the most magical way to see is by watching strong sunlight stream through a window or door, or a beam of light through trees in a forest. The floating golden specks that play on the light, those are other people, wandering in other worlds, touching the light with their other fingers, their hair, their breath.
Other you's.
Other me's.
Some happy, sad.
Some good, evil.
Everything.
And you know that feeling when you shiver all over and people call it 'someone stepped over my grave'? That's not someone stepping over it. That's you dying and sinking into it in another life.
So now open your eyes and disbelieve me.
But go away and make your little ripples in this world count.

Four in one . . .

2006-04-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

In the back of his mind he couldn't help thinking about her legs. Great legs.

He'd always been a leg man. His favourite body part. On women, that is. No breasts for him. Not that he had anything against breasts – soft, warm. They were okay, but legs . . . Now that's where a man's fantasy could really run wild. Long, slinky, smooth – lips and tongue caressing ankle, inner curves of the calf to inner knee to inner thigh to . . . Stop! He really had to get a grip. He was helping her change the tire, for godsakes. For all he knew, she had a six foot five, linebacker of a boyfriend ready to crack his cranium on the nearest light pole.

"That should do it. Just make sure you get to a garage as soon as possible. The spare's just temporary. It'll probably feel a little bumpy, but should do the job till you get home. You want me to follow you out of here? It's not the best part of town. I mean, I live here and all, but these few blocks - it's not the safest place for someone like . . . , well, for women on their own."

"Yeah, it is kind of scuzzy," no attempt at pretence.

"So how'd you end up here? Wrong turn? Get lost or something?"

Flicking back her ponytail, she turned to face him. "Not really. You really want to know? It's kind of stupid. But my friend said LA's a town of freeways. No one goes anywhere except by freeway. She just came back from visiting her family in Oregon and she says LA's abnormal. She said no one even knows the different neighbourhoods here – unless they happen to live there. So we thought a good way to find out what's around us would be to go places by city streets. Who knew I'd get a flat?"

"So, you're slumming."

Red-faced, she blurted, "No, no. Just the opposite. I wanted to see for myself what's around. I mean, I met you didn't I?"

He wondered if that was an invitation. He took a breath, "Well, now that you’re here, you want to go for a coffee? That is unless you have a boyfriend waiting or something."

"No, I really have to get going."

Figures, he thought. Oh well, my intentions were dubious, at best.

She got in her car, long legs giving a tantalizing last tease, and turned on the ignition.

He called out, "I can still follow you out to the freeway entrance if you'd like."

She turned to look at him, a slow smile forming at the corners of her mouth, "You know what? I changed my mind."

The four: body part, dubious intentions, slumming, changed mind

I've changed my mind!

2006-04-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Her severely distended belly precedes her into the office, where she sets down her bag imperiously. She rings the bell to summon the receptionist who is a very distant three feet away from her.
"Yoooo hooo," she calls out waving a manicured hand.

He enters meekly, sits in a chair in the corner, and proceeds to make himself invisible.

"Can I help you ma'am?" the young receptionist asks, smiling to disguise the hint of an edge in her voice.

"Yes. Well. Ive changed my mind," says the woman with a dismissive gesture.

"Beg your pardon?" perplexed, the receptionist looks at the woman, trying to understand her meaning. She changed her mind about wanting service? About the color of her manicured nails? About?

"You heard me! I've changed my mind," she repeated drumming red lacquered fingernails on the countertop and dropping her eyes meaningfully to her huge abdomen.

The receptionist's jaw dropped and mouth gaping open she manages to collect herself long enough to say "just a sec" before running out to get Dottie, the matronly head nurse who could handle anything.

Meanwhile, the lady shifted her considerable bulk onto her other hip and sighed irritably.
Dottie appeared behind the counter, the receptionist in the background plainly listening; not even bothering to pretend not to be eavesdropping.

"How can I help you dear?" Dottie asked amiably, her shiny gray hair tucked into a graceful braid.

"I already told her," she waves a ringed finger imperiously in the direction of the receptionist. "I've changed my mind."

Dottie laughed heartily. "Yes, I'm sure dear," she said, still chuckling.

"No, really. I don't see what's so funny. I want to see Dr. Cabrera. Right now!" She goes so far as to stomp one high-heeled foot on the ground.

"Okay dear, just a sec," Dottie chuckles and shakes her head as her silent-soled white shoes carry her back to the Doctor.

The woman sighs. Her face shows the strain of the last 8.5 months. Despite her carefully applied makeup she looks tired, strained. Her ankles and feet are swelling out of her fashionable heels, her waist has disappeared and her roots are showing.

Dottie returns to open the door for the woman.
"Come on back. Dr. Cabrera will see you now. Let me just check your vitals first." Dottie leads her back at a slow pace suited for waddling.

"Can't we just skip all that? I've changed my mind and that's all there is to it!"
"I'm afraid not dear. Let's see how much you are weighing now." Dottie points at the digital scale and the woman stands on it with an air of resignation.
"189, okay. Let's check your blood pressure."
Dottie leads her into the examining room where she fastens the cuff on her arm and pumps.
"120 over 90. A little high, well mention that to the doctor. And your temperature." Dottie keeps up a stream of comforting chatter while she notes everything on the woman's chart and gets her ready for the Doctor.

The woman sighs as she examines her feet, dangling from the examination table. She thinks about all the times she's been in this same room, all the many bodies she has dragged in here: her slim self torn between fear and trepidation on the table. Her growing bulk. Her questions about bladders and heartburn and vomit. She thinks about all the dreams she has dreamt on the examination table while staring at the silly stickers on the ceiling invoking nurseries everywhere.

Dr. Cabrera enters, her long dark ponytail swaying as she turns to close the door behind her. She smiles kindly at the woman on the examining table.
"So, what's going on? What can I do for you today?"

"I changed my mind Dr. Cabrera."

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean." the Doctor crosses her legs and looks patiently at the woman in distress.

"I can't do this. I've changed my mind. I don't want to do this!" Her voice is rising in pitch and volume as she talks. Her eyes are starting to look suspiciously shiny.

"What can't you do?"

"This. This whole thing," she pokes her belly angrily. "I can't paint the nursery yellow and I can't pick out toys that won't be choking hazards, and I can't stay in a boring marriage for its sake and I can't give up my life and I can't wipe butts and I just can't. I can't give a shit everytime it smiles or gets a new tooth or goes down the slide. I can't! I changed my mind! I don't know what the hell I was thinking!" She is starting to cry now. She wrings her hands and talks on as mascara dark tears stream down her cheeks. "Just undo it. It's my body. I changed my mind. Take it out. Take it. I can't!"

Dr. Cabrera hands her the box of Kleenex and rubs her shoulder. "You're doing a great job already and you're almost done."

"No! I don't want it!"

Two days later you were born.

"So, these were my friends..."

2006-04-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

Joe, Reese and I all grew up in the little town of Brownstein. We were like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, we all stuck together through think and thin. The three of us were at each other’s side from the beginning. People may say that three is a crowd, but we complimented each other so well that we didn’t even notice the odd number. There was never an odd man out or woman for that matter. We just included the other two no matter what the occasion.

My first memories include the two of them and I think I can say the same is said for them. We’ve been through a lot together, parents divorcing, girlfriends and boyfriends coming and going, marriages, births. I guess you can say we’ve seen it all in our thirty-five or so years. Each one of us moved our families away for one reason or other over time, but we all found our way back to Brownstein again. Even though our lives were different now, we still tried to get our families together once a week, whether it was for popcorn and a movie, a bar-b-q or a round of board games.

I would lay down my life for any of them, or I guess you can say I would have until two months ago. Before this point all of our children, ranging from the age of fourteen to three, got along splendidly and even became the best of friends, just as our little group had. My wife Chrissie and I loved Joe and Reese’s kids as our own. We would baby sit them when they were younger and we still carted them around with our two children, Russ and Sam. Between the three of us, we ended up having five children, three boys and two girls.

Several weeks ago, Russ came to me with a serious problem. He said that one of his friends who he wanted to keep anonymous had a problem. He wanted to help his friend but wasn’t sure how. I instantly thought of our little threesome and how I would have done anything to help one of them and still would. I also figured that being fourteen, how serious could the problem really be? That’s where I went wrong. Kids aren’t as innocent today as they were when I grew up. Kids didn’t ride their bikes to the liquor store to buy lollipops and ice cream anymore, they rode their bikes to the liquor store with a fake id to try and buy liquor.

The only problem was, Russ wouldn’t tell which friend had a problem or even the actual problem. It’s hard as a parent to play guessing games to try and help your child. My wife and I try to do the best we can as parents, but everyone falls a little short at times. I believe this was not one of the times that we fell short, but some in our small town of Brownstein, including my friends from birth believe we did. There is only so much parents can do to help their children and after that, it’s up to the children to learn from their choices.

Then came the night that would change all of our lives forever. Russ and a couple of friends, including Joe’s son Michael, who also happened to be fourteen, decided they were all going to go to the movies. They were to meet a few kids from school, one of them old enough to drive. Russ asked me if they could just get a ride home with Pat, the friend with the driver’s license and car. I had met Pat many times and he seemed responsible enough. I worked with his father and heard only glowing stories about him, I figured that it was safe enough. No harm in that. So I drove them over to the movies and agreed that they could just get a ride home when the movie let out at a quarter after ten. It was Saturday night and I figured they could stay out a little later than their 10 o’clock curfew.

As I dropped them off, I gave both Russ and Michael a quick hug to their embarrassment and slipped each a ten spot just in case one of their friends didn’t have enough for the movie and candy. Like I said, I treated Joe and Reese’s kids as if they were my own. I told them to have fun but to make sure that they stayed out of trouble and were courteous to adults and people around them in the theater.

That was the last time I saw Michael, or at least alive and breathing. I can’t tell you how many times I have looked back in the past two months and thanked God that I hugged him as if he was my own. Apparently Pat, the kid who was old enough to drive, the one that seemed responsible from all the stories I heard from his father was the kid that my son referred to when he said that one of his friends had a problem.

I’ve taught my kids right and wrong, not to talk to strangers, to look both ways, not to get into a strange car and not to get into a car with someone who shouldn’t be behind the wheel. Russ told me a few weeks after the accident that he didn’t know that Pat was high or that Pat shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel and I believed him. I not only believed him because I wanted to, I believed him because I know my son and know that he would have made the right decision if given the option.

A few weeks after the funeral, I tried to get our families together as we had so many times before to try and heal the pain we were all feeling from the loss of Michael. They blame me. Hell, they blame my whole family for what happened. I was not there that faithful night that Pat Naklas decided to drive our children home high as a kite and ran his old Buick into a tree. But, I was the parent that dropped the boys off at the movies and approved of their choice of a ride home. I feel as if I lost one of my children and will always hold a place in my heart for Michael. It turns out Joe can’t even be in the same room with me without bursting into tears and he now looks at me as if he wished I had died in that car accident instead of his son. As for Reese, I guess her family agrees with Joe and will not even return my phone calls.

That one night changed all of our lives forever, including our friendship. So, these were my friends for life…or so I thought.

restaurant

2006-04-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

Restaurants that come to mind:

The Bob's Big Boy (are there any of those left?) where we always took my grandma for Mother's Day. I'd order a shake, chocolate, and it would come in a tall metal goblet. That was always so special, because of the metal cup. My grandma - you can take the girl off the farm, but... She'd decline to order a beverage and then take the lemons from my parents' iced teas and squeeze them into her water. Add a couple of sugar packets and voila - lemonade. I'd bury my nose in the BBB comic book they always offered.

Another Bob's Big Boy, in college. My friend Kathie and I were always broke, always hungry. A day or two before payday we'd break down and "float" a check there (it was one of the few places in this college town that would take checks) and gorge ourselves with hamburgers and afterwards - a hot fudge sundae cake. Oh, God. Those were so good. Kathie would sigh and moan and say, "Food orgasm!" and I'd laugh every time because it was the best thing in the world and I was with my best friend and all was good.

After I was married, Bill and I would go to this old fogey restaurant every few weeks. It was smoke-filled, and the booths all had vinyl upholstery that squeaked as you slid across it. Bill would order chicken-fried steak and I don't remember what I ordered but it was surely fatty and bland and served with limp, canned green beans on the side. The "diet plate" was from the seventies and consisted of cottage cheese and canned peaches. The whole place was like stepping into the past and I'd watch the old people, so glad that unlike them, I had been lucky enough to be born young.

Now we often frequent a family-style buffet. The food is awful but there's lots of it. We go because the kids love it and so it's festive. They love picking out exactly what they want and I love how I'm so often surprised by their choices. "You like fish?" I'll say to my daughter, seeing her plate loaded with plain, pale, flaccid-looking fish fillets that I would never touch. And my son - he loves ribs. I had never even had ribs until a year ago. My kids demonstrate by their choices that they are entire people, apart from me, with their own preferences. And I feel bad saying this, but I feel pretty at this restaurant because it does tend to draw the... obese. I feel thin and I imagine people thinking as I walk by on my way to the buffet, "How does she stay so slim while eating so much?" But I don't eat that much. I take a lot, put a lot of different dishes on my plate, and then after a bite or two of each I am reminded once again that no, it still isn't good. But then I get two desserts.

Rededicating

2006-04-12T16:07:00.000-07:00

SL has done such a great job in making this place a pretty place to be! He's inspired me to get more involved in this project; I got it started and then sort of drifted away and I apologize for that.

I resolve to post here more frequently, and also to comment on others' postings. I was just in the process of doing that when the Blogger comments stopped working for me. Grr...

But I started by going back through and finding any posts that had never been commented on; if we all just took a few minutes to do this we'd soon all have lots of good feedback on our prompt exercises. Let's get some energy going here!

Father's Hands

2006-04-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

I stare at the hands.

My father's hands are just now beginning to show his age, slight wrinkles appearing, but they remain strong. They are permanently tanned after years of foreign holidays and a few months backpacking round Europe when he was a young man. The palms are near-smooth and a healthy pink. The fingernails perfect and well cared for.

On the middle finger of his right hand is a callous, formed over years of using a pen. My father writes - in a way - for a living and refuses to use a typewriter.

The skin whitens on his fingers as they wrap the thick leather belt around themselves.

I hold out my own, little hand, balled into a fist. Quickly and sharply he brings the tough leather down across my knuckles, once, twice, three times. Each time I try to take my hand away, but his strong hands are quicker.

Tears well up in the corner of my eyes but I don't take them away from my father's hands. He lets the belt unravel, drops it on the bed. His hands reach out for me, the fingers splayed and I flinch back. The expected slap doesn't come. Instead the fingers wipe away my tears and I feel the surprising softness of his skin.

His hands pull me to him and I go willingly, accepting the hug.

"You won't do it again, will you?"

"No dad, I'm sorry."

He hugs me tight and the childish anger and hatred I felt just moments ago dissolves into the strong love I have for my father - and his cruel and loving hands.

The Bar - With/Without

2006-04-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

He took a stool at the bar and ordered a whiskey sour. He sank it in a single gulp, ordered another and told the barman to keep them coming.

As he lit a cigarette a woman on the next stool leaned over and spoke to him. He took another cigarette from the crumpled pack and handed it over, offering a light. She took it, drawing the smoke into her lungs.

The barman returned with his whiskey sour and the man told him to get whatever the girl was having and stick it on his tab. She asked for a martini and thanked him. He shrugged, muttering under his breath.

The woman smiled.

---------------------

"Whiskey sour," said the man.
"Coming right up."
"Another, and keep 'em coming."
"May I have one of those?" asked the woman on the next stool.
"Sure. Light?"
"Another whiskey sour, sir."
"Thanks. Give the lady whatever she wants. On me."
"Martini. Dry. Thank you."
"Pretty lady deserves a drink," he shrugged.

Cooking

2006-04-03T07:02:00.000-07:00

For years after my father’s death my mother refused to set foot in the kitchen. Hers was not an act born of grief or mourning, not an act of silent loss. It was a celebration. She would never have to listen to his complaints, sit through his tirades while he chewed with his mouth open. She was free from the slavery of hours in the kitchen, alone with her resentments and her anger and disillusion. She was done with cooking.

So, as a healthy, hungry, teenager who had the need to eat more than just yogurt or cheese and crackers, I took up the culinary arts at home.

When I say my mother stayed out of the kitchen I mean it literally. No pausing to see if I needed help. No advice, no guidance, no comment. In the early days I ate a lot of eggs. I’d learned to make those as a kid. I would meticulously chop the onion into tiny pieces, add some peppers, some tomato, a little ham. My dad always praised me for chopping up vegetables so evenly and carefully, a habit that is still with me today. I would carefully warm the skillet, sautéing olive oil to the point of fragrance (I would have said till it smells good), before adding the gently beaten eggs. I would cook for two those days and my mom would usually eat.

I progressed to experiments in microwave cooking and the smell of red meat nuking still makes me gag. Not good. No flavor, no texture, no color, just brown stinkiness. But, I would not resort to eating microwave meals. I would not give up!

Still, no comment from my mother. She was just happy not to cook. She was just glad not to gaze upon the inside of a pot.

I learned to make rice, a staple of Puerto Rican cuisine. We don’t make rice in steamers like many Americans do, we make it in large iron pots and we add flavoring to it. It took me forever to get it right: not too mushy, not too sticky, not too undercooked. But, I finally did it. I sat down with the rice and beans I just made and I felt accomplishment and satisfaction at what I’d created. I devoured that meal.

To this day rice and beans marks momentous occasions: the first time a woman came over for dinner, first time we had friends over at a new apartment, before I had more than 1 pot and 1 pan to my name I was making rice and beans. I’ve improvised ingredients depending on where I’ve lived but there is always a sense of satisfaction whenever I make my most comforting of meals.

Bit by bit I built my repertoire, progressing on to roasts, curries, white sauces.

I am not a chef of any kind. I don’t want to be. But I am a good cook, and more importantly, I enjoy it. I am not an angry cook, a tight thin lipped cook, a crying into the sauce cook. Cooking brings me joy; feeding friends and family is a blessing.

Now, when people praise my cooking and my mom is around, she takes the credit for teaching me. And in a way she did. I learned from her example, learned how to cook and how not to live.

(Blank)

2006-03-31T03:44:00.000-08:00

“So, these were my friends…” he said, his voice trailing to silence. His eyes blank.

Those who didn’t know him called that look he sometimes got, “dreamy”—as if he was gazing contentedly into the future. A veil fell over his face and his eyes, now slightly hidden as he stared off…His friends knew, they would try and snap him out of it, more afraid of the emptiness than he was. They knew what it meant, and where it could lead. The look covered the despair he felt within and the distrust he felt without. It was the look of escapism that others—those who didn’t know any better—registered. But the reality was capture.

His friends knew this, and they used it. Instinctively.

“I guess this is all there is now…but, I suppose it’s better this way,” he said, more to himself than to the stranger across from him. More honest this way, he said, and that’s better, he assured himself.

They were all gone now; the ones that mattered at least. Funny how those who mattered, really mattered very little. Perhaps it was merely time, but something told him there was more to it. What was it about him that turned people away? Or did he turn them out all on his own.

There was one thing he had never understood—unfettered cruelty—how some people were capable of inflicting so much harm on others, for no reason whatsoever. He preferred masochism infinitely more to sadism.

So, these were my friends, he thought. These, these, people, always many, many people. Many nothings, whose smiles and kindnesses spoke unspoken obligations of neediness. Random acquaintances, friends, faces, they were a dime a dozen. As if the counting of them all was some silent competition, some denotation of wealth and status. Throughout his life he had been surrounded by them, as if that brought satisfaction.

But, after all these years, when it came down to it, the truth was unavoidable: time does not a friendship make. Neither does friendship imply any sort of temporality. It is indefinable as something, except for the fact that it is easily definable as not nothing.

And what was he left with now? They were my friends.

Nothing.

He constantly tried to fight the feelings that sometimes came to him at night or when he let his mind drift. It always threatened to overtake him. Loneliness. Emptiness. It permeated every aspect, especially his. Others hid it better, he had always thought. Tonight, strangers his only comfort, his only friends, he let it take him too.

Perhaps that was the secret to happiness: befriending loneliness and emptiness, enjoying blankness and numbness, and savoring silence—oh, to change the world, to make it yours again. To recapture loneliness and give it company.

The world had been lost long ago, when the superficial hordes, the uncaring masses decided to copulate and populate the Earth with their societal poison. A new world was born when sincerity and ingenuousness were reduced to mere fads of occasion.

When things began to fall apart for him, he knew it was all over. There was not much to stand on when his own foundation began to crack, when he lost his surety in his world. He knew it was over when he felt closer to a stranger than to his closest friends. It was a natural progression, and that bothered him.

But, at least he did not live in a state of denial. These were my friends. I will not let them abuse me. I will not let them disrespect me. I will not let them control me. I will not fall prey to their stupid superficial idiocy. I will not cater to their whims. I will not compromise my morals or let them degrade my sensibilities. I will not.

Ah, fuck it. He picked up the phone.

Welcome to the 21st century: where friendship means nothing.

***

“So, these are my friends,” he gestured, half-smiling at them, half-mocking himself. Defeated, and they didn’t even know they’d fought a battle. It didn’t mean a thing.

gravel

2006-03-27T19:53:00.000-08:00

I hated my job with a passion, but there were a few things about it that were really nice. One was Brian, my boss, who was also my friend. He was a native of Florida and a graduate of Duke University, which really made him stand out in Lewiston, Idaho, even more so than I did as a California native and graduate of a state college. He was startlingly handsome. I'd noticed that first thing during the interview and it made me even more nervous but after working with him for a few days it was clear that there was no troublesome chemistry between us. I say troublesome because I was married. But Brian was not at all my type; he was preppy-looking, with wire-rimmed glasses and expensive clothes. He was a real city person. So was I, but I was committed to becoming a true Idahoan and had thrown myself enthusiastically into this task.

One afternoon Brian and I had an errand to do. We were to drive up to Moscow and meet with one of our suppliers, a crusty eccentric engineer named Bill G. I'd always gotten along well enough with Bill G. when he brought the circuit boards we purchased from him, but he made me nervous. He didn't seem to like most people.

Brian and I drove separately because I lived just ten miles up the highway from Bill G. and it made no sense to drive back the opposite way to Lewiston after our meeting. Bill G. served us lunch, and then he took us on a tour of his house. He led us up some narrow, creaky stairs and suddenly we were in a library. There were bookshelves, countless tall bookshelves, and I roamed amongst them uninvited while sighing and exclaiming over the titles. Bill G. grinned to see me this way, like a kid, and he seemed to thaw. We walked around the shelves and compared notes on what we'd read.

It was memorable to me because I felt like such an oddball in Idaho at times. In Moscow, the university town, I fit in all right but in some of the small logging towns (like the one my husband had grown up in) I was really out of place and while Lewiston was a good-sized town, it was predominantly blue-collar. Yes, there was the transplant Brian who had graduated from Duke, but his atrocious writing skills betrayed the fact that his girlfriends had done most of his work for him. He might have been more open-minded and worldly than most of the people we worked with, but he was no reader. This trip with its unexpected revelation that Bill G. was a fellow misfit oddball bookworm gave me hope that there were more people like me out there, even in northern Idaho.

Why did the word "gravel" make me remember all of this? When Brian and I left Bill G's house, I convinced him to drive the extra ten miles out of his way (he lived back in Lewiston) to see where I lived. He followed me down the highway and when we turned onto the gravel road where we lived I slowed down. Brian had lagged quite a bit behind me and was closing the gap and as I looked in my rear view window I laughed to see him still driving highway speed on the gravel road. He was engulfed in a cloud of dust. I felt like I was of two worlds, or becoming so. I had always felt too "city" and "stuck up" among the people who'd grown up in small rural towns, but I wasn't as pathetic as Brian. I knew to slow down on a gravel road.

Write About a Dance

2006-03-27T17:55:00.000-08:00

When I was in the sixth grade, I went to my first dance. My middle school had a '50s Day when students (read: mainly girls) dressed up in clothes from that era, and at the end of the day, we had a "sock hop" in the gym. The best part of the day was sixth period. My friends and I had P.E., but since the gym was being readied for the dance, we didn't have to dress out or do anything that would cause us to break out in a sweat. We were able to sit around and talk for an hour.

Of course, I didn't have a date for this dance, and had I known it would be one of many dances I would go to without a date, I probably would have just avoided it, gone home, and immersed myself in black for the next six years.

Yet somewhere in my mind — warped by the escapades of Bo and Hope on Days of Our Lives (and later, Patch and Kayla), I actually thought that a guy would be there who would think I was pretty and have the guts to ask me to dance.

Madonna's "Crazy for You" would start to play, and our eyes would meet from across the gym. He'd stroll over to me in his Converse high-tops — with his light brown feathered hair and Izod shirt with the collar turned up.

Oh yes, people, I was that pathetic.

Of course, the dance turned out like your stereotypical early adolescence mixer. Hardly anyone showed up. The girls outnumbered the guys 10 to 1, and the guys who did show up came with their girlfriends. Basically, I stood around with my friends, goofed off, drank soda, and ate popcorn — which we actually did during sixth period.

What I had almost forgotten about was how I got in trouble with my mom because I lied and said my friend's mother was picking us up when really my friend's older brother brought us home. My mother didn't want me riding with a barely experienced teenage driver (especially a boy), and telling her the mother was my method of getting home was key to gaining permission to go to the dance.

Yet, as boring as this dance was, the experience didn't stop me from going to a bunch of others — even if I didn't have a date.

Shopping

2006-03-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

I hate shopping! Man do I hate shopping! How the hell did she talk me into coming with her? If she stops at one more bargain table, I’m going to excuse myself, go to the ladies’ room and slit my wrists with a nail file. It couldn't be any more excrutiating than this.

For gawd’s sake, she’s looking at wool. She doesn’t even knit.

“Mmm, yes, nice colour. Who’s it for?”

She'll probably get it anyways and stash it in the basement with all her other 'bargains'.

“I guess it’s a good price, I haven’t knit or crochet in years.”

Oh good, she’s putting it down. Please, please, let’s go. No, no, no not the ribbons. Phew, okay I’m heading to the door. Is she following? Yes, she’s coming. Good. Hand on door . . . . Wait,

“What’s that? No, I really don’t need anything. Yes, I know they’re great prices. But I really don't want them. No, I don’t know anyone who does.”

Let's go. Oh crap! She's seen the marked down Halloween candy.

"No, not me. I can't afford the calories."

Yep, she's getting a few bags. She just cannot leave a store empty-handed. Well, now we can leave.

"No, I'm sure. Really. The boys don't need anymore candy, either."

Finally, out the door.

She calls it retail therapy. I call it retail hell.

Gravel Drive

2006-03-23T08:02:00.000-08:00

An old 'beater' of a car in a nice tan color, the seats as big and comfortable as couches.
My father had bought it for me when I got my license and even though it was horrible on gas, I could fit all my friends inside it and never had to worry about someone opening a door into the side.
I lived on a gravel road for the first 3 years of my driving career and could navigate them at amazing speeds, avoiding wildlife, large pot holes and other vehicles that crossed my path.
The car was indestructible. I ditched it one winter, had to climb out the window to get out, and shelled out the *cough* seventy five dollars *cough* to have it dragged out by the tow truck, no damage done at all.
The best time of year to drive through the countryside was summer.
After class we'd pile into my 'Big Bruised Banana Boat' and flip a coin, heading in the direction it corresponded to.
After a day of adventure through forest, restaurants and music we'd head home.
How we ever found our way back after so many twists and turns and so much pot is still beyond me.
Every time I left a boyfriend, went to a party, left for school, did anything, I traveled down that dirt road.
I got so used to hearing the 'ping' of the rocks off the bottom of my car that when I moved into town, onto pavement, driving was horribly quiet.
I used to enjoy driving.
Maybe because it was always an adventure, maybe it was that I never knew where I'd end up and now it's work -> home -> odd trip to store -> work -> home..
I miss the old girl, and although my new car has more lights and buttons and bells and whistles, the laughs we had as we sped across the countryside were a far better feature than any dealership can offer.

2006-03-23T05:19:00.000-08:00

"Pull it! Go on, fucking pull it!" I screamed.

Sweat dripped down the bank robber's face. His eyes shifted nervously from me to the window.

"Are you going to pull that fucking pin and end this or are we going to talk some more?"

The robber's eyes shifted back to me. This was the make or break moment and we both knew it.

"I will, don't think I won't," he said, his voice quivering with fear and anger. A dangerous combination.

"Oh, I know you will. What I want to know is when. We don't have all day here."

I could feel the anger coming off him in waves but he was held in check by his fear. The guy didn't want to die and that was the only card I had to play.

"Look, I know you'll do it," I said. "But I also know you want out of here. Alive. Right?"

"You can do that?"

"Not right now. Not with you holding that in your hand. While you hold that I can do nothing for you. You'll be dead before you know it if you make the wrong move and you may or may not get the pin pulled in time. You want to risk that?"

"Don't you fucking threaten me!" he screamed.

"I'm not. I'm telling you how it is."

"I'll kill everyone in here!" he screamed again, his eyes sweeping over the terrified people huddled against the counter. They cowered back as if his gaze held weight.

I'd had enough.

"You want to die then get it over with. Pull the thing, blow us all up. You've got a 50/50 chance of succeeding. You like those odds or not?" I yelled back at him.

Straight away I noticed the change. It was in his eyes. As far as he was concerned he was already dead. All that mattered to him now was that he take me with him. I was to blame.

"Don't do it, Jimmy," I said quietly, already knowing it was too late.

With an agonised, angry wail he lifted the grenade, his finger through the loop and pulled. An instant later he was on the floor, blood pooling round his head, a bullet from one of the snipers on the roof opposite the bank entering his skull right between the eyes. I leapt forward, reaching for the hand that held the grenade before it could roll from his dead fingers.

I closed my hand around the cold metal, holding the firing mechanism in place. The hostages were crying and screaming. I pulled the hardware from Jimmy's hand.

"Shouldn't have pulled the fucking pin," I muttered.

A Blanket

2006-03-22T17:42:00.000-08:00

It was a quilt that I bought after he broke up with me. I got up one Saturday morning and stared at the bedding surrounding me in the bed where I lost my virginity months before. Soft cotton sheets and a thick blue comforter wrapped around us when he stayed over, and that morning I knew that I couldn't sleep in that bedding another night.

I went to Sears and wandered around the linens department. Luckily, the store was holding its annual "white sale," and I had a Sears credit card because God knows I didn't have the money in my bank account.

I didn't want another comforter. Comforters are too hot sometimes no matter what the season. I wanted something home-y, something comforting, and I found a quilt. It had a star pattern of light blues and pinks and peaches on a soft, creamy background. It was perfect.

I also bought a set of smooth, crisp cream-colored sheets, but that quilt was the ultimate purchase. I bought two other quilts after that one, but neither held up like "The Rock Hill Quilt" has. One quilt that I bought right after moving back to Greenville lasted less than six months. Another quilt I purchased when I moved back out on my own again has held up okay, but not as well as The Rock Hill Quilt.

It may be only bedding, but it seems as if the patches of material have been reinforced with my stubbornness to survive, to move on, to leave the past behind — where it belongs.

Perhaps this quilt will be the one that will last for decades. It will be the roof of the makeshift tent our future children will create in the dining room. It wil be what they drag out of the linen closet to curl up in on the couch on a cold Saturday morning to watch cartooons. Perhaps it will be what they fight over when the winter nights require extra bedding.

Perhaps I put too much emphasis on a thing made of scraps and thread and stuffing, but it was such an important purchase that spring morning. It became a sign that I would eventually be okay.

A Pin

2006-03-20T17:38:00.000-08:00

When I was a teenager, I loved wearing brooches. The bigger and more decorative (read: gaudy), the better. Of course it was the '80s, so everything was big and gaudy. I had this one heart-shaped brooch with all sorts of "flair" that seemed to be welded on it. It had a clockface with one moving hand, an eye mask, a couple of different buttons, and other little metal trinkets that I can't remember now but were equally likely to ask, "WTF?"

I wore the thing for at least three years — well into the early 90s, before everything went grunge and flannel and gaudy finally fell out of style (Can I get an amen?). Then the pin was retired to my jewelry box for ten years with a bunch of huge clip-on earrings (I let the holes in my earlobes grow over in the eighth grade because they kept getting infected. Gross, yes I know, but I didn't get them repierced until almost ten years ago.) and other brooches that were past their prime.

For Christmas 2004, Hubby got me a new jewelry box. My old one was overflowing with mostly junk jewelry, and I decided that at age 32, it was time for me to get begin a "grown-up" jewelry box. You know, one with fake stones and metals that I wouldn't mind being caught dead wearing.

But what to do with the old one? Enter my cousin's two daughters (then ages 4 and almost 6) who LOVE dressing up. One afternoon last spring, (y'all know I procrastinate, right?) I took the old jewelry box with all the old stuff to my aunt's house, and we sat on the back deck among the hummingbirds and yellow finches while my cousin's daughters rummaged through the new goods.

When the heart-shaped pin appeared, my cousin said, "Oh my God, I remember that pin."

"Of course," I said. "I wore the thing all the time."

"Where did you get all this stuff?"

"The 80s."

Blanket

2006-03-19T02:48:00.000-08:00

What is a blanket? It signifies warmth, security, protection. It's not just a piece of cloth. One's blanket can be anything.

When my brother was young, just two years old, he had an accident that nearly took his life. It was touch and go for a while and he was in the hospital for some time. While there, one of the nurses gave him a Snoopy. It was a very basic representation. Quite possibly home made. Just white cotton stuffed with cotton wool and black eyes, nose and smile sewn on. My brother came to love it and would not let it leave his side.

While in the hospital the nurses bandaged the doll in the same places as my brother. It brought a smile to his face. A much needed smile, and was probably done for the benefit of my parents as much as him.

For years after, the trauma now past but the scars still evident (as they are to this day), he kept that Snoopy with him. I can only imagine it symbolised his survival in his immature mind. By now it was a dirty grey-brown, no longer the pristine white, but he wouldn't let our mother wash it. The bandages had long since disintegrated. The stitching was coming apart and if I remember rightly stuffing leaked very slightly from the leg join.

Eventually, of course, my brother grew out of it and poor Snoopy was left to his own devices at the back of a cupboard. Until a couple of years ago when, cleaning the cupboards out for my dad, I came across him. He was exactly as I remembered him. Grey-brown, dog-eared, tatty.

I sat on the floor cross legged with the doll in my hands. I was only four when the accident happened. But the doll brought it all back. I remembered the confusion of the time, not knowing what was going on, only that my parents' focus was almost completely off me and that I was worried for my brother but not sure why. I remembered him coming home and the relief and happiness on my mother's face. I remembered my dad going back to his routine, free from the worry. I remembered the selfish happiness I felt that I had my parents' focus back.

A tear escaped my eye as I sat with the doll in my hands. Crying for the lack of understanding I had back then and from the guilt at the selfish thoughts I had. But I was four and it did not last long. After a moment the doll just brought a sense of happiness that I still held those memories in my subconscious.

I put the doll to one side and continued throwing out the childhood memories that were no longer required.

When my brother came home from work I showed him Snoopy and asked if he wanted to keep it. He snorted with derision and told me to bin it. I was surprised and very slightly saddened. But I did as I was asked.

My brother's security blanket for so many years, discarded like so much junk. I hope, in years to come, he doesn't regret that decision. That, perhaps, it was another symbolic gesture - that he was now free of the mental trauma the accident left him with. I like to think so.

On the eve of the funeral

2006-03-17T11:03:00.000-08:00

When I was twenty-four my grandma died. She was turning 90 that year so we shouldn't have been surprised, except we were, a little bit, because she'd had many strokes in the preceding years and had always recovered from them. So in spite of the fact that she was nearing 90 and, at 5'5" or 5'6" (she always seemed taller because of her ramrod-straight posture) she weighed less than 100 pounds, we still didn't see her as frail or sickly at all. We thought she'd live forever. Or, at least I did.

Still, when I got the news I took it in a detached way. I told my boss and co-workers that I would be taking time off to fly to California for her funeral and I brushed off the expressions of sympathy and condolence. She lived a long, full life, I assured everyone. No tragedy here. Her death means the end of her suffering, that's all.

I was living in Idaho. It was January and the middle of only my second winter as I had grown up in Los Angeles, which is where the plane I am on right now is headed. After an uneventful flight the plane descends upon LAX, which is only minutes away from my childhood home. It's about 5:00 and the sun is setting and low in the sky. I can see the ocean, the beach. The palm trees. The elaborate, complex patterns the freeways make from up above. I had lived in L.A. my entire life before moving to Idaho with my husband but I had never realized how beautiful it was. I lean my head against the glass of the window and my heart aches. I had really lived here once? I had sprung from such beauty?

Since I'd been married, all I'd ever heard about my city of origin was the disparaging remarks of my in-laws. Bill's parents had been truckers for ten years and had nothing but horror stories about the traffic and smog and general un-Idahoness of L.A. My husband also cited the traffic on the freeways and often said, "I hate L.A." I had let these cliches and generalizations wash over me for years, and I had also come to love Idaho in the brief time I'd been living there. Deep down I think I'd have sided with my in-laws and husband if I'd been forced to choose sides, but now, as I lean my forehead against the glass of the window and watch the sun fall into the Pacific Ocean my heart aches with pride and love. This was my home once. I'll probably never live here again but all of this, the sun, the ocean, the palm trees and the swimming pools in the back yards, the twisting cloverleafs of the freeways that are now beautifully lit up with the headlights and tail lights of hundreds and thousands of cars - all of this is in my blood and part of me.

On the Eve of the Funeral....

2006-03-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

I went shopping for something to wear. I almost called you for fashion advice, forgetting that there would be no answer, never again would you answer.
What else should I have done? If I had stayed at the funeral parlor, I would have lost my mind. I would have made a spectacle of myself and there were already enough people taking on this role. I am not one to lose control, to lose logic, but that whole day, throughout the viewing, having to see you lay there, your body, and try to keep it together.. it was impossible inside.
I went numb.

On the eve of the funeral, people streamed passed me, passed your mother and father and brother and sister. They tried to be strong for them.
I sat in a pew most of the day, fearing that if I moved I’d fall to pieces.
I sat with Shane and smoked and was angry that there were people here who wanted attention, this attention for themselves.
We all but growled with the media showed up in their bright yellow vans, vulture-ing over us, looking for someone to interview.

On the eve of the funeral, I went home to quiet, to my bed, to try and process.
My new outfit in the closet. I thought about the last time we talked, the last time we spent the day together, the last time I asked you for advice, the last thing you had asked I impart my wisdom for.
I thought about the fact that you wouldn’t get to go to the school you wanted, have the wedding we had planned since we were little, that we wouldn’t ever go for long drives in my old car smoking joints and laughing until we cried.
I missed you, but still could not accept this as being reality.

On the eve of your funeral, I buried my feelings and fears and panic and devastation so that I would be able to be there when they buried you.
My best friend gone.

You have stayed too long

2006-03-15T18:59:00.000-08:00

From lodgerlow, who has had numerous "issues" in trying to sign onto this blog:

I spend too much time inspecting my hands. In idle moments I look at my gnarled fingers. I turn my hand over and run the tip of my index finger down my Life Line, across my Heart Line. My Life Line is far too long for someone with such a faint Heart Line. "Fuck the God who creates a man to live without love." is what I've often said. Oh yes, I've said that often. Often indeed. Batesy used to tell me that my problem was that I didn't have a sense of humour. He's a fuckwit - there is no Humour Line. Anyway, there isn't much use for humour where I'm from.

"You gonna drink that?" The old boy across the aisle asks me, pointing to the bottle of water on my table. My reveree not fully pierced, I look at his pointing finger before I connect it with the words he'd just spoken. Impatient, he repeats his question adding "That bottle'll be getting warm and if it's not drunk it'll be nae use fae ye then." I say nothing. I'm still not with him. I'm still with the Humour Line thought. "How do we know that there isn't a Humour Line?" I wonder to myself. "My hands say I'm supposed to have had two children... boys. I don't have any kids. Perhaps they aren't children lines? Perhaps they are laughter lines? Perhaps I am to laugh twice? But twice? Twice what? Twice a day? A week? A lifetime?"

I must have asked the last few questions aloud because the old boy had interjected with "Some aff us ae built fae the laughin, and some aff us ae built fae the laughin AT." He was standing beside me now, struggling with the screw-top of the bottle. But there is no reveree so deep that my Anger is unable to awaken me. Seeing this old fossil helping himself to my water released the spring which extended my arm, snatched the bottle, and issued forth: "You fucking wrinkled fucker, I didn't buy that so that you could just piss it down your trouser leg." The old boy's bottom lip quivers, as he turns and shuffles to his seat.

I return to the inspection of my hands. Yeah, OK, Batesy was right. I don't have a sense of humour.

--lodgerlow

Strength

2006-03-15T06:55:00.000-08:00

The tip of my cigarette was the only light in the room. It burned brighter as I took a drag, my lips quivering around the filter tip. I felt the smoke fill my lungs, a satisfying, calming effect. My eyes never left the window, I sat perfectly still.

Why do I do this? Because I'm good at it. One of the best.

People milled around on the wet pavement below, coming and going from whatever events the night had in store for them. Cars drove by, bringing with them the pleasing sound of tyres on wet road. I kept my eyes on the hotel lobby entrance opposite.

Who am I? Nobody. I like to keep it that way.

There was movement in the lobby. Shadows spilling onto the street as someone - or several people - approached the brass and glass revolving door. As it started to turn I tightened my grip and leaned closer. A man emerged, checked both ways down the street and turned back to the door, nodding.

How did I become this? Nature takes its course. This is my nature.

Two more figures emerged, again scanning the street in both directions. The one in the middle. Wearing the expensive overcoat and carrying the briefcase. That's him. I shifted position slightly, getting comfortable. I sharpened my focus. And squeezed. There was barely a kick.

What am I? If you knew, you wouldn't know anything much longer.

The man dropped silently. It was a full three seconds before his associates noticed. Then all hell broke loose as one covered the man with his own body, too late. The other pulled a hand gun and adopted a practiced crouched position, his eyes darting around the street, windows and alleyways. I squeezed twice more. The man with the gun fell first, into the gutter, his face in the running water. The second man didn't move. He remained shielding his already dead boss, joining him wherever souls go. It's not something I concern myself with.

Where do I find the strength to do this? Well, it's true what they say. The dollar truly is almighty. And I am one of the best.

A familiar sensation

2006-03-14T21:36:00.000-08:00

She was in the next room. Idly chatting away. Exuding the newfound joy she felt in her life. Her disgust with me. Her distaste for our friendship--washed away like the tears that had poured down her face. And mine.

She saw me come in. Turned around in her chair. Face frozen in position, hands scattering over the keyboard, looking for the mouse, closing the windows, hiding the phone. I was an intruder. In her room. In her life. She saw me come in and closed all the windows.

I tried to speak about it to her. To open my heart and my soul--to explain it all. Deep friendship does not die easy. But the look was gone from her eyes. The investment elsewhere. Care worn.

I had stayed too long.

I Have Stayed Too Long

2006-03-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

I've learned how dangerous feeling comfortable can be.

I found a niche, and I clicked myself into place. I belonged there; I knew it. I was doing what I have known all my life I was meant to do, and I settled in. I could handle this. I could thrive, and I did thrive. My writing got better. I buried myself into researching and composing and editing.

I had a brief period when I thought that maybe I should leave. Maybe I was ready to move on. No, I thought, This feels good. This feels safe.

Being comfortable and relaxed blinded me to what was going on. I didn't notice whispers, rumors, and groups gathering. I thought I couldn't be touched. I was wrong.

Becuase I stayed too long, they knew what else I could do. They knew I was capable of the monotonous tasks I'd done before. I could do repetitive, and I was good at that too. So the comfort was taken away from me.

Now I choke and smother on the trite. I scour for ways to release the creativity. I gag on New Age business dogma as they try to force it down my throat. I abhor the thought of making their bottom line soar. I make no difference anymore.

I have stayed too long.

Thaw

2006-03-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

A little something to start my -hopefully- consistent experience with First Drafts:

Padding along the veranda, my bare feet reveling in the warmth of the wood beneath them, I settle onto the top step with a big blue mug of coffee.
The unusually warm day hits me, closing my eyes I tilt my cheek toward the sun, enjoying the rays as they dance along my skin.
I notice the birds, as if they came out of nowhere, their song sounding foreign at first, then familiar. I’ve missed their symphony, the sight of their flight from tree to tree, playing in the sky; I’ve missed the fresh air, the cool breeze, the feeling of everything being alive.
It lends me calm and it lends me peace.
If only for a few moments, the rest of the world is sleeping, but I am here sitting silently watching all of this take shape. I hear water running, snow and ice melting, the soft ground bubbling, my heart beating.
Behind the glass patio doors at my back is a noisy house.
It is filled with animals and housework and bills and a boyfriend that sleeps in the rays of sunlight filtering through the upstairs window.
There is comforting chaos in there, constant noise, carpets that need cleaning and something is always slightly out of place.
It is home though, it is my life, what I love, what I have helped accomplish and a space which always comforts me.
Sitting outside in this early spring tease is the brief change I need to revitalize, regroup and find new appreciation for everything behind those glass doors.
I am still a trespasser into this bright day, I am still watching although I was never officially granted access.
I take a final breath, my eyes closed, enjoying the smells and the sounds and the last sip of coffee.
For fear that I have stayed too long, that I’ll be noticed and somehow destroy the perfect day, I pad my way back through the sliding door and slip into my slightly altered perfection inside.

A Chance Encounter

2006-03-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

In college, I had a job as a telemarketer. I know, I was one of those evil people who called your house while you were eating supper to tell you about our $14.95 portrait special . I didn't know your name. I had to ask for "the lady of the house." But don't worry. I always took no for an answer. That was why I was a terrible salesperson.

I started working at this call center right before I left for my sophomore year of college. My boss was reluctant to hire me because I'd be leaving soon, but she was desperate — not exactly the most flattering way to get a job, but oh well.

I was lucky — or unlucky depending on how you view telemarketing — enough to go back there over Christmas break and that following summer break. I didn't mind the job because my boss was a great person to work for — probably one of the best bosses I've ever had. She was close to retiring, though, I knew when she retired, I wouldn't be back.

Winter break during my junior year turned out to be the last time I would work there, but those four weeks were monumental. On my first night back, I went in early so I could chat and catch up with my boss. As time came closer for the shift to begin, she mentioned that the only person missing was K, a guy. Of the other times I had worked in the call center, only one of those times had a guy also been working there. His name had been Dean, and he was a middle-aged guy working two jobs. For some reason, I had that image of another middle-aged guy when my boss mentioned K.

Mistaken was an understatement. When K arrived, I noticed he was about my age and two inches taller than me with curly brown hair and the most beautiful dark blue eyes I'd ever seen. I'd never really experienced the whole "my heart skipped a beat when I saw him" moment until that night, but it wasn't like seeing a cute stranger and thinking, "Wow he's/she's hot." The gaze felt deeper, more meaningful to me.

At first, I was scheduled to work in the call center for two weeks, filling in for a woman who was traveling for the holidays. During those two weeks K and I talked every chance we could when not calling. He was 22 and taking classes in the university transfer program at the local community college. At the time, he wanted to be a lawyer. He loved Pink Floyd and The Doors. He played guitar and wrote poetry.

He thought I looked like one of those porcelain dolls. "Someone should make a Carla Doll," he said one night. "Here, I'll draw you a picture." Drawing wasn't a strength of his. The "doll" was just a stick figure, but he asked me to keep the picture. So I tucked it away in my pocketbook. A couple of nights before my two weeks ended, he said, "It's too bad you're not going to be here the whole time. I'd bring in my guitar and play some Zepplin for you."

"I'm still in town for two more weeks," I told him.

He paused and I saw the wheels turning in his mind. He was dating someone. Should he ask for my number? "Well… give me your number," he said.

Then the woman I was filling in for quit (a frequent occurence in telemarketing), so I worked the other two weeks. During my last week at home, K called and so began the most complicated relationship I'd ever been in.

He kept me at a distance, telling me he was no good for me. He'd done drugs — was still doing drugs on occasion, I believe — and terrible things in his past. But then he'd tell me that I was the last person he wanted to talk to at night.

We'd talk on the phone for hours, reading our writing to each other. He played "Wish You Were Here" on his guitar. He was full of words and feelings for me, and I soaked it all up like a sponge. When I couldn't handle anymore, I'd cry it all out, and then call to talk some more.

Was he just feeding me lines? Possibly, but I think if he didn't feel something he could have just used me like he did so many other girls. I was willing to throw myself at him physically, but he always stepped back. It's an act that's kept him in my mind all these years and brought up questions such as "What did we really have together?" And I know if it had not been for that last stint in telemarketing, I would have never met him.

There's a song by the Indigo Girls, "Mystery," that I heard several years after he and I lost touch and it bowled me over.

Each time you’d pull down the driveway

I wasn’t sure when I would see you again

Yours was a twisted blindsided highway

No matter which road you took then

Oh you set up your place in my thoughts

Moved in and made my thinking crowded

Now we’re out in the back with the barking dogs

My heart the red sun

Your heart the moon clouded

I could go crazy on a night like tonight

When summer’s beginning to give up her fight

And every thought’s a possibility

And the voices are heard but nothing is seen

Why do you spend this time with me

Maybe an equal mystery

So what is love then is it dictated or chosen

Does it sing like the hymns of 1000 years

Or is it just pop emotion

And if it ever was there and it left

Does it mean it was never true

And to exist it must elude

Is that why I think these things of you

I could go crazy on a night like tonight

When summer’s beginning to give up her fight

And every thought’s a possibility

And the voices are heard but nothing is seen

Why do you spend this time with me

May be an equal mystery

But you like the taste of danger

It shines like sugar on your lips

And you like to stand in the line of fire

Just to show you can shoot straight from you hip

There must be a 1000 things you would die for

I can hardly think of two

But not everything is better spoken aloud

Not when I’m talking to you

Oh the pirate gets the ship and the girl tonight

Breaks a bottle to christen her

Basking in the exploits of her thief

She’s a very good listener

Maybe that’s all that we need

Is to meet in the middle of impossibility

We’re standing at opposite poles

Equal partners in a mystery

We’re standing at opposite poles

Equal partners in a mystery

Unnatural Light

2006-03-08T03:21:00.000-08:00

[I wrote this quite a while ago. Sentimental stuff, but I thought I'd share it.]

I waited patiently in the underground carpark. I’d been waiting – impatiently - for weeks for this moment and I wanted to make sure I remembered every last second of it. It’s moments such as these that define our lives, that provide the standards by which all other moments are measured. I’d waited so long for this. I wasn’t going to let it pass without savouring it, memorising it and, later, remembering it.

I watched as she drove down the ramp, looking around for a space. She smiled when she saw me and I couldn’t help but smile back. She reversed into a vacant space and I walked slowly over to the car from my own.

As I approached she was busying herself with sorting her things after a long drive. I stopped a few feet short of the car and again waited. She looked round and saw me standing there. As she did my heart soared, lifted by the love I have for her. Finally, eventually, she opened the door and stepped out.

I observed every movement, committing it to memory. Her denim clad leg stepping on to the concrete, her arm pushing the door open, her delicate fingers holding the handle, the briefest glimpse of cleavage as she leaned to get out, her slender neck as she looked up at me, her tender lips, curving again into a smile, her small yet perfectly formed nose crinkling slightly as she did, her dark eyes, sparkling, bright, deep and full, I was sure, of happiness. And her hair. Dark, so fine and soft, tossed back as she stood, at last out of the car.

I studied her a moment longer, hoping my smile and my eyes were conveying even a modicum of the overwhelming joy I felt at seeing her. We stepped toward each other as one and finally she was in my arms, where she belongs, where she should always dwell. We kissed, a soft, gentle kiss. Our lips met, the tenderest of kisses, her eyes closed, her arms around my waist pulling me tight against her, mine around her shoulders, my hands in her hair.

Reluctantly I pulled away to look at her. She looked up at me, expectantly, and there, in the unnatural light of an underground carpark, I gazed at a Goddess – my Goddess - and the image burned itself into my mind. No, I would never forget this moment.

Ladies and Gentlemen

2006-03-07T13:54:00.000-08:00

Welcome to your new home.

I hope you feel comfortable and start to post more of your writing.

Follow Diana's prompts, but don't feel you can't post anything else you may wish to. Go ahead. The more the merrier.

There may be a few more aesthetic changes over the next few days and weeks. By all means tell me what you like or don't like.

Au revoir.

Impervious

2006-02-28T18:47:00.000-08:00

A bit more flash fiction. I'm not sure what's up with 'Lydia', but she keeps coming into my consciousness.

Lydia was sitting at her computer. Nothing was coming. She’d done a couple of writing exercises to warm up, but couldn’t produce anything else. At least nothing she wanted to keep.

She kept gazing out the window. The sun was out after weeks of cloud, snow and drizzle. The clear blue sky was inviting. Nothing better to do, she checked the weather channel - minus two Celsius – not bad. Better to be outside getting exercise than staring blankly at the computer monitor. - She was good at rationalization. - It was still early, not yet noon. There was time to take a short drive up the mountain and hike one of the short trails off Mt Seymour Parkway and be back well before Dr. Phil.

She put on her boots and ski jacket, looped a scarf around her neck and stuffed a pair of gloves in her pocket. She probably didn’t need the scarf, but you never know. Better safe than sorry, her grandmother always said.

In fifteen minutes, she was pulling over to park at one of the mid-mountain lots. It was a glorious day. She stepped over the roadside cement barrier to enter the trailhead. The snow was well-trampled with occasional dirt patches breaking through the most travelled parts of the trail.

Lydia knew exactly where she wanted to go. She headed for a jagged ridge just beyond the second bend in the trail. Following the ridge about thirty metres to the left, she came to a slight outcropping of rock that overlooked the water below. There was a panoramic view of the city across the inlet - the perfect spot for meditation and inspiration. She found her usual spot on a broad flattened boulder. - It had made her laugh the first time she saw it. The indentations on the surface mimicked the curves of her butt, literally begging for her to sit. It had become her special seat. - She eased herself onto the rock, bracing for the momentary icy-cold dampness through the fabric of her jeans.

This is exactly what I need, she thought, a chance to get away and clear my mind. Fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes later – she wasn’t quite sure – she heard a rustling below her. Strange. It’s usually silent in the winter. It’s too early for animals and there isn’t a trail down there, so it couldn’t be people. She heard it again. Curiosity got the better of her and she just had to look. Standing at the edge of the ridge, she peered over and thought she saw movement - something round and dark. Could somebody have gotten lost and fallen off the trail?

“Halloo! Is somebody down there?” No answer. But there was the rustling again. She eased her left foot over the edge to get a better angle. Yes, she was sure there was something moving. Grabbing hold of a branch from a nearby bush with her right hand, she slid her left foot a little further down the slope. - That’s when the branch snapped. - The sudden movement dislodged the loosely packed snow from under her boot and she found herself with legs splayed, half-straddling the lip of the snow-covered ridge and slipping downhill.

“Great.” She leaned towards her uphill leg, grabbing handfuls of snow and dirt, hoping to get a solid grip. It didn’t help. Instead, she felt herself sliding further downhill in a split-legged position until her right heel finally let go of the remaining lip of the ridge and she rolled, bumped and skidded down the slope, eventually coming to a thawumping stop and blackness.

By the time she woke, Lydia was too numb to feel anything. She was impervious to the cold. Lying in a snow bank will do that to you. She looked around to get her bearings. Straight in front of her she saw a dark green garbage bag snagged on a bush. It was ballooned out with trapped air, bobbing back and forth, and rustling against the loose branches.

At least, she thought, now I have something to write about.

Smoke

2006-02-17T02:32:00.000-08:00

Steve Harper stood by the large window of his apartment looking out at the panoramic views it offered.

Usually he could look out over the city to the mountains that flanked it. Usually at this time, as day bled into dusk, the city was just starting to sparkle as the lights came on, though the buildings could still be seen, golden in the setting sun. Usually at this time the mountains were coloured a deep purple, darkening to a black as they met the city skyline. Usually at this time the sky looked as though it was on fire, a fascinating mix of reds, yellows and oranges that Steve thought beautiful.

But not today.

Today it was not the sky that burned, but the city. Everywhere he looked buildings were alight, down at street level cars and trucks spewed thick, black smoke into the air. Dark specks that were people ran in all directions, sometimes alone, sometimes in big groups. Where they went, fire followed. A pall of smoke hung over the city like a shroud. What a fitting description, Steve thought.

The wail of sirens filled the air and every now and then Steve could see a police car or fire truck dashing in response to another outbreak of violence, looting or arson. The city’s emergency services stood no chance, they were powerless to hold back the tide of anger that was sweeping through the populace. In some cases, Steve was sure, the services themselves would be joining in.

The outbreaks were steadily heading from the south to the north and he knew it wouldn’t be too long before they reached his neighbourhood, his building. This wasn’t just a riot, not just a brief show of rebellion that would soon be quelled.

No, this is it. The end game. Tonight the city burns and tomorrow it will be nothing but a shell. The ice in the drink he held rattled as his hands shook. He took a deep swig of the amber liquid to calm himself.

The call would come soon. As a member of TRU - Tactical Response Unit - it would only be a matter of time before Steve’s pager went off, calling him to do his duty. He was surprised it hadn’t come already, but he supposed the Captain had his hands full at the moment. In truth, he should have headed to Garside - TRU headquarters and home of all the city’s enforcement teams - hours ago. Most of his team would already be there. Yet he hadn’t and he was beginning to wonder if he would respond when the call actually did come. He turned to look at the closed door at the far end of the room.

Behind it his daughter slept. He couldn’t imagine leaving her with Mrs Harman two floors down as he usually did when he was called in. Not today, not when he knew there would be no stopping this plague reaching his building, not when he knew that even those on the eighth floor, as Mrs Harman was, wouldn’t be safe.

He turned back to the window and saw more fires had begun a block closer. What was it now, thirteen, fourteen blocks away? It wouldn’t be long. Two or three hours at most before his own neighbourhood was beginning to burn.

The pager attached to his belt beeped twice. Steve Harper took another swig of his drink before looking down and checking it. It was Garside and the 911 code was tacked onto the end of the message. Urgent, it meant.

He looked back outside and watched the chaos unfold. The smoke drifted closer.

General Comment

2006-02-15T19:12:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't been posting anything here lately! I've been trying to get moving on my nanonovel from November and it's really so very rough and slapdash that it's almost like starting over.

But I wanted to point out something that I thought was neat. The last time I wrote something from a prompt ("river") I posted it here. Writing was not going smoothly for me that day and I was frustrated with what I wrote. I didn't feel that it conveyed the picture in my head very well. Well, it really didn't, but apparently it worked well enough that Rozanne got the idea of what I was going for and she commented to that effect.

I had been tinkering and tinkering with the opening segment to my novel. I wanted to show the main character as being on the outside of things, of her life, her relationships, her marriage... just a lonely onlooker in her life. And Rozanne helped me see that it was this that I was also taking a stab at with the river thing, where I described an episode of my own life where I'd felt like an outsider amongst the people around me and I decided to rework the river piece and see if it can become a beginning for my novel.

Who knows? Maybe I'll trash it all tomorrow and start again. I haven't a clue what I'm doing! But I've felt this week like I shouldn't waste time on prompt writing when I should be making progress on this novel writing and it turned out that perhaps the prompt writing and the novel writing were one and the same.

So I'll try to work in some more prompt writing. And thanks again, Rozanne, for showing me what I wrote with fresh eyes.

A wild-eyed dream......

2006-02-13T06:42:00.000-08:00

She picked up the phone after the first ring. "Hello......., is that you Tillie?"

"Of course, it's me! It's 8:30 in the morning.........I call at 8:30 every morning!.........ma, listen, I had this terrible dream last nite. I woke up sweating with a terrible hot flash to end all hot flashes!"

"So this was a "hot" dream?"

"Nooooooo.....it was not a "hot" dream. It just made me hot........oh forget how I felt. I was terrified! It was sooo real. I dreamed that I had twins ma! Twins. They kept crying & screaming. I tried to wake up, but I couldn't."

"How sweet. Twins. Was it boys, girls, a mixture? Dark hair, I hope!"

"Ma, who cares if they were boys or girls with or without dark hair. I'm 49 years old, I've missed 2 periods, feel lousy with nausea. I dream of having twins & you want to know about boys or girls! Ma. Don't you know how aggravated I am because of all this? It's terrible. I keep telling myself, it's the change, but then I remember Aunt Ida having a baby at 50! Ma, I can't stand it. What if I'm pregnant?"

"Oh shush! You worry too much. Aunt Ida had a baby at 50 because she was fooling around with her boss, that's why she got pregnant. Your boss is a kid so don't worry........ah, he is a kid, right......also gay? So, you're not pregnant. At least, I don't think you're pregnant. You said yourself that Sal sleeps in another room. Right?"

"Ma. Yes, Sal sleeps in another room.......but that's got nothing to do with the price of eggs in China. Once in awhile, he sleeps with me. You get that ma? Once in a big while.....he sleeps....."

Yeah, yeah. I'm a woman.........I get it! I guess pregnant is not what you want to be right now? Am I right or am I right? Did you tell Sal?"

"You got it! Pregnant is not what I want anymore.....like nada.......forever. And what? Are you kidding? Tell Sal? He'd love it. He could brag to everyone about his 'super, duper sperm!' Come to think of it, twins would be easier to take than his struttin' around, showin' off. He keeps saying that bald men are more virile. A baby, maybe twins. That's all we'd need. All he worries about is his virility. He could make one of those commercials except he'd have to explain why he needs a pill since he sleeps in another room or in the recliner & falls asleep after supper every night.!"

"So. Whadda' ya want from me? At my age I can't be sympathetic. I'm too worried about my arthritis & what to cook for supper. Don't act crazy. It's just a dream. And don't even think about Aunt Ida........rest her soul. Even if she did fool around with her boss! Maybe you should go to a doctor about those dreams. What's this? Maybe the third or fourth bad dream you've had lately? Except having twins doesn't seem like such a bad dream?"

"Ma! Don't you think I should see a doctor about being pregnant not about bad dreams? You think I should see a doctor?"

"Well whaddya' ya think I think? Sure, I think. Doctors can usually tell you if you're pregnant even tho' you aren't anyway. You should maybe see one to check it out. Do baby doctors take care of bad dreams, too? You could check about that too."

"Ma. I don't know why I tell you these things. You don't make sense sometimes. But I feel like I have to tell you, ma. I tell you everything. Maybe that's the problem..........why you don't understand. Maybe I tell you too much. But this is different. You're the only one I can tell. This is embarrassing at my age.I thought I was through with all this......babies & stuff. I'd rather have grandchildren, but we know that's out. Well, so far, it's out."

"What embarrassed? Lots of women are having babies later in age. I don't think all of them are test-tube babies. Maybe a few. Or some have other women carry their eggs, right? That seems dumb to me. But today, I guess nothing surprises me anymore. So age shouldn't embarrass. Not sleeping in the same bed with your husband is embarrassing. So is having a baby with your boss when you're 50 years old. Now that's verrrrry embarrassing! See what I mean? And besides, why is being a grandmother out, so far?"

"Yeah, ma. I see what you mean. I shouldn't tell you this stuff. That's what I mean! I guess I'll call Doctor Z. She's a family doctor, but she'll know about this. Probably about the dreams too."

"Good, see Dr. Z. And what about being a grandmother? Why is that out for now? You want to explain this to me. Me who doesn't understand, but listens anyway to her crazy, but beautiful daughter! Why no grandmother, so far?"

"Ma. You know. I told you that Vicki says no to having kids. She & her "significant other" don't want to bring anymore kids into this world. At least that's what they say."

"Right. Now I really don't understand. What if we all felt that way? Then they really wouldn't have to worry about bringing anymore kids into the world. Should we be ashamed.....we wanted families. You & me. We got married, we had kids, right? What's so bad about getting married. About bringing kids into the world? Yeah, I know what they say, but do they really think that way? I think they'll change their minds. They go down to city hall, have a wedding, have babies. I see it happen all the time."

"You see it happen all the time? What did you drink for breakfast? It doesn't happen all the time. At least not with our kids or our friends kids. They all have weird ideas. They don't want to commit. What does that mean ma? When I got married, I don't think the word commit came up once. Not even once. Now it's every other word Vicki says when she talks about not marrying her "SO".......that's what she calls him.........her "SO". I swear. When she says that I expect her to add a "B" to the "SO!" Ha! Wouldn't that be funny if she slipped & said "SOB! instead of "SO." Sal would split a gut laughing..........& I think I would too. But none of this helps me with this problem."

"So will you call Dr. Z for an appointment? Why don't you do that & call me back, ok?"

"Yeah, ma. I'll let you know. And ma, would you go with me. To the doctor I mean? You understand, right?"

river

2006-02-08T22:11:00.000-08:00

This was just a scene I wanted to capture. I want to overhaul it into a slice of rural Idaho life, with the poverty (both financial and of the imagination) and lack of movement or hope. This is choppy and is only a beginning; words felt like sludge today. I may revisit it and I may not...

I was sitting on the edge of the river, dangling my feet in the water while watching my children swim. Another wife was sitting with me, also watching her children. We were both "reunion spouses;" our husbands had gone to school together and were convened with the rest of their class at the 20-year reunion barbecue party by the river.

There weren't too many of us spouses, at least ones that hadn't also gone to the same school. This was a small town in Idaho and most of the couples had been couples back in high school, too. Or if the original couples had divorced, they had paired off with other former classmates, making complicated work of sorting out which children belonged to whom. Not that most of the children of these classmates were young, other than mine and those of my new acquaintance. It had been shocking for me to discover how many people my age had grown children and even grandchildren. But that comes with marrying one's high school sweetheart and settling down early.

My husband had ventured out. He'd joined the navy at 19 and though we met and married (I was a college student) only a few years later, at 22, we opted not to have children right away so that Bill could go to college when he got out of the navy. Although he ended up going to the university that is only about 45 minutes away from his hometown, it might as well have been a different state altogether. Or country. The few times he would run into a an old classmate during those college years, maybe two years after their last chance encounter, maybe even one, there'd inevitably be a conversation such as:

"So, you still up at the college?"

"Yep," Bill would say. "I'm in my sophomore year. Two years down and two to go!"

"That many?! How many years is this deal again?"

I still don't know how many people he went to high school with really understood that he was in college, and not training for some sort of certificate program. It was just a completely different view of life.

So at 38 we had the youngest children of the class and the woman sitting next to me at the river was someone I desperately wanted to get to know better, as she had the next-youngest children. Her husband had also ventured beyond the state boundaries of Idaho and that and the fact that we were both outsiders - she had grown up in Texas - was promising. There was another night of reunion festivities ahead of me this weekend and I was hoping to have an ally.

Mostly we were talking about how we didn't know anyone there. "We haven't been back here since we got married," she'd say. Since we lived about five hours away I had to resort to a more emotional distance.

"Well, we come back every year, maybe twice a year, but I never really fit in," I'd counter.

"Oh, my husband's family doesn't know what to think of me, what with the way I talk and all," she drawled. "But they just don't get that there are cities in Texas, too! They assume that I know how to ride a horse and drive a tractor but I'd just as soon spend the day at the mall!" she laughed.

Not one to enjoy shopping, I was trumped. For a minute. "Yeah, even the women in Bill's family hunt and fish. And I'm a vegetarian!" I produced this proudly, only realizing at the last moment that I'd be eating all weekend. While I had an on-again, off-again relationship with vegetarianism, I was currently off. Now I'd have to shun the meat all weekend or eat when she wasn't looking.

I was staring at the water and periodically mediating squabbles between my children when I suddenly heard a voice call out, "Aunt Diane?" Even after being married for 16 years most people in Bill's family get my name wrong. I was a little dizzy for a moment; I'd spent the past twenty minutes detailing what an outsider I was and then I was being recognized by a niece at the river. It was a little unsettling.

As we chatted - she was scoping the sites by the river for her upcoming wedding and Bill and I, and the kids, "should come" - I marvelled at her new height and poise. The first time I had ever met her was just after Bill and I had gotten married and were on our long honeymoon trip. She was about four and had settled immediately onto my lap. "I should have gotten you a present," she said mournfully. "Maybe a watch!" My heart had melted. I'd squeezed her tightly and assured her that no present was needed and just as I'd said this her father, one of Bill's older brothers, had growled at her. "You leave them alone! Go play!"

She'd slipped off of my lap and slunk dejectedly off, despite my stammering protestations that all was fine, that I liked talking to her, but Don would have none of it.

Looking at her now, with her toddler on her hip (she'd gotten pregnant high school, and the man she would be marrying was not the father) as she discussed wedding plans, I felt maternal, or whatever the equivalent for aunts is.

[segue to wedding] - This part is lifted in pieces from an old blog archive:

Ah, Idaho weddings. I fretted a bit on the way over there, thinking that I hadn't dressed up enough. On the one hand, I know Bill's family. They are casual, to say the least. But it was a wedding. I had chosen the only thing I could think of, considering the heat, a casual sundress sort of thing. Bill and the kids were also in "casual Friday" regalia. But as soon as we arrived, I was reasssured. Jeans. Shorts. T-shirts with topless bar logos. I was considered dressed up.

The bride was scheduled to arrive by boat, on the river. Everyone was milling around the folding chairs, drinking. Drinking? Isn't that supposed to be after the wedding ceremony? Oh, but I had forgotten that in rural north Idaho, you always byob. People arrive even at a wedding with their big plastic cups of "pop."

train

2006-02-08T10:15:00.000-08:00

From A Writer's Book of Days:

"Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance. Everybody thinks it's true." (After Paul Simon)

Kelly and I would be walking home from school, holding hands tightly the way first-graders do. If we were going to her house, we'd pass close enough to the train tracks to hear the rumbling and whistling trains and we'd clasp hands even more tightly, our nails digging into each other's palms.

Because the elementary school was fairly close to the train tracks, we had many assemblies with scary films meant to educate us about the dangers of trains and playing on or near their tracks. Kelly once almost passed out and I threw up at a particularly gory scene where the young heros get squashed at the end.

So the films worked. Even the sound of the faraway whistle gave us the shivers. We'd never dream of playing within sight of a train.

Sometimes we walked to my house and once along the way we came across some graffiti on a fence. We asked my mother what "fuck" meant and she reddened and told us to never say that again.

When Kelly got home she asked her mother, Jan. This was 1972 and Jan and Kelly's dad, Danny, were hippies. Jan told Kelly that it was another word for "love." For about a month Kelly and I parted ways at the end of our walks home by saying, "I fuck you." Someone must have put a stop to it, or maybe we just got bored of it.

The 'T'

2006-02-08T04:24:00.000-08:00

(so I wrote something yesterday that dealt with trains, and since the topic just happend to be trains I figured I'd share a portion of it...My trip on the T.)

She was on the T by 7:07 and on her way to the courthouse. Jennifer loved the T. People watching provided her endless amounts of amusement. That early in the morning about seventy five percent of them are reading. And ninety percent of those reading are reading the Metro, a small newspaper you can purchase for a quarter every morning. Of course the big news that morning was the Steelers winning it all. And some article about a man causing some trouble at a gay bar. The paper didn't much interest her.

She focused her attention on the people. She thought it was hilarious how people sat every other seat. They'd stand before they filled in the other seats. She wonder if there was being kept out of the loop or if this was just one of those days where crazy things like this happened.

The train was eerily quiet. No conversations for her to eavesdrop on. So she amused herself with the many ads posted around. The train was reaching the Charles MGH stop. Jennifer took a moment to enjoy being above ground. The sun was just peaking over the rooftops, and she caught a glimpse of the Zakim Bridge before the train shifted and the view was taken away. The next stop was hers. She had to switch lines to the Green Line then take the train all the way to the end to Lechmere. Then from there is was a brisk walk for two blocks in the crisp morning air, to the Cambridge Courthouse.

Train

2006-02-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance, but I wonder how many have been on a train and listened to the sounds from inside.

How many have experienced the rhythmic vibration that imbeds itself deep in your brain; the side-to-side kachunking jostle; the click, click, clicking of the rails; the bumping up and down in your seat; and the whoosh – silence, whoosh - silence as the train passes stationary objects. The experience reminds me of that school sing-along song, “The Wheels on a Bus”.

I love train sounds. It makes me feel like I’m really going somewhere -- that it requires work to get from point A to point B. None of the quiet hum of an air-conditioned car or drone of a plane for me. I like the rattle and clacking of a train.

When Lydia awoke

2006-02-06T18:30:00.000-08:00

Oops, I misread the prompt. Sorry. I'll post what I have anyway. It's a bit of flash fic.

When Lydia awoke this morning, she was filled with a mix of anticipation and apprehension. Janie was coming – arriving on Air Canada 211 at 11:40 from Calgary.

They’d known each other since junior high – inseparable despite radically different personalities. Janie was the wild child – extroverted and opinionated; Lydia - quiet and prone to introspection. From the outside, the only thing they had in common were their green eyes. What others didn’t realize was that they complemented and balanced each other. They were able to confide the deepest most intimate secrets to each other.

Their lives, not surprisingly, had taken different paths. Janie had moved to Toronto for university and Lydia had stayed in Vancouver. Not that they hadn’t tried to keep in touch. The first year, they wrote each other every month, then it gradually tapered off to a couple times a year, then only a few lines on a Christmas card. They completely lost touch after each had moved several times in the intervening years.

Lydia had married her high school, football captain sweetheart. She’d started dating Jeff in grade ten after he gave her a ride home from a fundraising event jointly held by the football jocks and the choir. They were another unlikely pair. After the wedding, Jeff went on to dental school while she worked as a teacher’s aide. When Jeff graduated, he set up his dental practice and they settled into the upscale neighbourhood of Kerrisdale. Shortly afterwards they had two children – a boy and a girl. How corny was that?

Janie, on the other hand, had lived the bohemian lifestyle of a student while getting a degree in Fine Arts. At some point, she decided her degree wouldn’t get her a job that paid enough to finance a love of art, travel and clothes. She went back to school and got a degree in business admin and marketing. Straight out of the U of Toronto, she got a job at a high-powered marketing firm in downtown TO. For four years, she climbed the corporate ladder - travel plans put on hold – as she lived the executive high life of expense accounts, fine dining and hobnobbing with Toronto society. It seemed she was being groomed for a shot at buying into the firm’s partnership. That is, until she met, and shortly thereafter, married the CEO of one of their clients. She quit her job and settled into a four bedroom executive home in Oakville. When Lydia heard about her friend settling into suburbia, she couldn’t believe it. No way would the Janie she knew want a house, kids and “suburban hell” (as she would not so delicately put it). Janie assured her it was what she wanted.

Anyways, they hadn’t seen, spoken or heard from each other in fifteen years. It was only by a fortuitous coincidence, they connected again on the internet. They’d both started weblogs - Lydia, calling herself, Deeyah - and Janie, now calling herself Jane. Independently following links and comments on various blogs, they recognized similar references to their high school. It was Janie, who first asked, “what year did you graduate?” It didn’t take more than a few emails to fill in the rest.

They corresponded and chatted back and forth for several months, catching up on their lives. Both were divorced – Janie twice. Lydia had remained in and around Vancouver, while Janie had moved from Toronto to Montreal to New York, back to Toronto then to Calgary where she now lived. Both had two children – all of them grown, moved out and independent.

Today, they would see each other again. What if they didn’t like each other anymore? What if they had nothing in common? What if this meeting was a big mistake? What if, what if, what if . . . . They’d both find out soon enough.

Waiting in the baggage claims area, Lydia scanned the arriving passengers. Janie said she’d be wearing a camel, mid-calf length coat with red scarf. Who knew if they’d recognize each other through the extra pounds, lines and years? Best to have something identifiable to avoid any embarrassing hugs with complete strangers. Lydia was wearing the West Coast uniform of jeans, T-shirt and jean jacket.

Lydia spotted the red scarf first, then the unmistakable long-loped stride of her friend. Peering through the people in front of her, it took Janie a few seconds to respond to Lydia’s frantic waving. With a flash of recognition and big grin, she strode straight over to engulf Lydia in a bear hug. They stood back, looked at each other and laughed. All the years melted away; the extra pounds didn’t matter; the extra lines didn’t matter; only the eyes mattered – they were exactly the same.

next morning

2006-02-06T17:35:00.000-08:00

"When I awoke the next morning..."

...I was still cold. I didn't have to remember what that pain in my chest signified; I hadn't stopped hurting even in my sleep. While my body rested and repaired, my heart and brain worked tirelessly to keep the wounds open and fresh so that even before my eyes opened I could feel the icy-cold shakiness of my hands and the ache in my chest and the knot in my stomach, and every morning was the same for several months afterward.

smoke

2006-02-05T18:49:00.000-08:00

A little nonfiction which fuses into fiction, maybe the beginning of something?

When I was little I would watch my grandmother smoke, fascinated. I'd run giggling through the cloud of smoke that surrounded her and for the entire rest of the day my clothes and hair and skin would smell like smoke. This fascinated me, how the scent could linger for so long. It seeped into the pores of my skin and hair, clung stubbornly.

Looking back later, I was incredulous - still am - about how this was allowed to happen. I was asthmatic - still am - and my parents were normally so careful about my health. They made my brother and me wear seat belts long before most people commonly did so. They were very careful about our safety and yet I was allowed to play in Grandma's secondhand smoke every weekend and that makes me wonder, now, why that was allowed to slip through.

But that clinging smoke, that stubborn refusal of the smell to leave makes me think of you and about how when I met you I ran giggling through your very presence and for years I haven't been able to get the feel of you, the smell of you out of my hair and skin and clothes. No matter how many showers or shampoos, no matter how many times I launder your shirt as soon as I pull it over my head I smell you again and I inhale deeply even as I know that the effects could one day kill me.

Stage Fright

2006-02-04T16:02:00.000-08:00

I was a shy child. I hated being the centre of attention and didn't like to do anything that would draw attention to myself.

I wouldn't even raise my hand in class when I knew the answers to questions. I'd scrunch down as low in my seat as possible in hopes of avoiding eye contact with the teacher. Most of the time it worked - at least I thought it did. Maybe it was just teacher's way of taking pity on me. I was a very good, geeky student otherwise.

In sixth grade, we were given an assignment for a short speech about an animal. At first, I was petrified. Then I convinced myself I could do it. After all, it was only two minutes - surely I could manage one hundred and twenty seconds. So, in typical obsessive fashion, I found myself a topic – the tree frog – and practiced and practiced.

Come the day of the speech, I was nervous, but confident. Probably too confident. I had little index cards with me as prompts and started with my memorized opening sentence. This was going to be easy, I thought. I continued on. Things were going smoothly, until at about the halfway point, I was momentarily distracted by a boy sitting at the front of the class. (He was sitting there because he was always getting into trouble and the teacher wanted him close to his desk.)

I was scanning the class, making eye contact - as we'd been told to do – when I came across Leo, with his finger up his nose. In that brief moment, I lost my train of thought. I blanked out. I stood there for an eternity, my face getting hotter and hotter. I looked down at my index cards. I looked up. I looked for the teacher. In a panic, I ran through the speech in my head, trying to find where I left off. I finally blurted out the ending and skulked back to my seat in humiliation.

It probably wasn't as bad as I thought. But at the age of eleven, it seemed horrendous. After that one speech in sixth grade, I battled severe stage fright for years. Any time I had to speak in front of a group of more than a few people, I'd be in a near panic. I finally got over it in university when much of our course work involved group presentations.

Today, I'm amazed at the aplomb with which my own children handle public speaking. Their school had them making class presentations at a very young age and it seems almost second nature to them, now. I envy them their self-confidence.

stage fright

2006-02-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

1. I have no idea why I suddenly decided to be in the sixth-grade talent show. I played the flute in band and was first chair, but I decided to sing. True, I was in chorus and had been for years. But anyone could be in chorus. All you had to do was have good grades and be able to keep up with your schoolwork. Could I sing? I don't think I ever gave it a thought. I'd been singing for years and I liked it well enough, so I figured, why not sing a solo?

And then the song I chose! I did get some help from Mrs. O'Kelley, who taught chorus and was in charge of the talent show. She pulled out a file of "popular" songs and started leafing through them. Most of the songs we sang with Mrs. O'Kelley - both in chorus and in the regular school music program - were medleys of TV songs and commercial jingles. Most of them were outdated, so it's odd that to this day I can recall the words to commercials from my parents' generation, commercials I've never seen. So when the theme song from M*A*S*H flashed in front of me I stopped her. "That one. M*A*S*H," I said. I had never known there were words to the song, and I imagined how impressed my peers would be at my knowing them.

"Suicide is Painless" is not really an appropriate song for a 6th-grader to sing, especially if she doesn't even sing all that well. I learned the words to the song pretty easily, and I was familiar with the tune from TV so I didn't see the need to practice. There was a rehearsal but the equipment wasn't set up. It was more of a run-through for timing. Somehow I still avoided hearing my voice.

When it was time for the show I confidently walked onstage. Even though I'd heard, after my name was announced, a titter of dismissal amongst the popular crowd I still held on to the idea that I'd wow them all by knowing the lyrics. (And I need to mention that while memorizing the words, I'd failed to grasp their meaning.) For the first time in my life I started to sing into a microphone and booming from the speakers was a thin, warbling, crackling voice. Was that really me? And that thin, warrbling, crackling voice was singing, "...suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, and I can take or leave it if I please." What? That kind of song is this? Then it launched into, "..without that ever-present hate, but now I know that it's too late..." This was awful! This sad, dark song and my terrible, sickly voice - kids were laughing and I could see their faces, their expressions of derision and contempt and there was nowhere to go. I had to just stand my ground and finish the song.

2. I was in Toastmasters in Idaho, when I was in my early twenties and new to the area. It had been a wonderful way to meet people and to stretch my writing skills. As soon as I learned that writing a speech was... writing, I was in love with the whole arrangement. I even learned to get over my fears of public speaking and I got to be fairly good.

When the annual contest came around I worked really hard on my speech. I wrote a cute little essay for the "humorous speech' category called, "How to Name a Cat." I worked in French writers, 80s TV shows and even my brother's regrettable method of having named his cat. I won at one level, and then another, The next level was a dinner to which I invited our best friends and my brother. I had been basically reading my speech, although I knew it well enough that I was not glued to it. I was getting good at eye contact and gesturing and could see that I wanted to take it to the next level. No papers in front of me. No podium! I would memorize the speech (which I pretty much already had) and move around a bit, really wow them with personality.

And I did great at first. I had them right where I wanted them. I paced, I gestured, I smiled and charmed. And then I came to the end of one sentence and my mind went completely blank. I just stood up there, staring at the audience. I saw the faces of my friends, turned expectantly and joyously towards me, poised for the next laugh. I saw my husband, my brother, all... waiting. As soon as I'd realized that I'd lost my train, I could feel an expression cross my own face, one of panic and horror. I couldn't stop it. It just pulled my features of its own accord, took over my face. As soon as the audience sees that expression, that fear - their faces change, too. From expectant, confident enjoyment their expressions change to ones of anxious pity. Regret. Expressions that say, Damn! She was doing so well, too...

It all passed in about five seconds and then the next line came to me. I pulled myself together and finished the speech as well as I'd started. And ended up taking second place, which I was happy about but the first-place speech hadn't been nearly as well-written as mine. But the audience really wants to trust the speaker to be in complete control and I had lost their confidence for five seconds.

lunchtime

2006-02-02T22:42:00.000-08:00

I've said this a hundred times (or at least four), but I'm going to try to jot something down here for every prompt! Most of the time it won't be anything complete or fleshed-out, but just a snippet or two or three that came to mind when I read the prompt.

Today's prompt about lunchtime made me think of:

High school lunches with the gang of boys who were my friends, my band-geek chess-club, D & D-obsessed cluster of misfit boys whom I loved with all of my heart. And how Maria, after I fixed her up with Roy, threatened to mess with the formula which, in my opinion, had been working just fine. (Find that section in my journal.) I love that story about jealousy even among platonic friends and the status I felt I had as only female...

I also thought of elementary-school lunches with the metal lunchboxes and the thermos that always smelled like sour milk. Once you put milk in it it was ruined forever. You just couldn't get that smell out.

And... that chicken noodle lunch my mom made for me whenever I was home sick. That and fried egg sandwiches. My mom is a terrible cook but I loved those "sick lunch" meals and I would then think of her being home every day while we were at school (because of course, I didn't think of this normally at all, because the world revolved around me and other kids, not moms and their mysterious lives) and I'd envision her eating like this, this feast of comfort foods, whenever she wanted...

That's all I got to today. I hope to write more in response to tomorrow's prompt, but I really plan to at least write something for each one...

zipper

2006-01-31T13:11:00.000-08:00

On my blog, I brainstormed a list of ten ideas having to do (some more than others) with zippers. This one was the second on my list, and the one I will elaborate on for this prompt:

The giggles and squeals had died down to hushed whispers after the third time that Tracey's dad had come out and barked at us to be quiet. Girls were starting to drift off to sleep. I wasn't sleepy, and my legs itched. I had flea bites all over my shins and ankles and no matter how many times my mom had warned me to not scratch at them lest they break open, bleed, and become infected I still scratched. I tore at them with my fingernails, shuddering at the relief that came with each scraping of my nails while trying simultaneously to not dig too hard. It was a fine balance, an art, and one I had a lot of practice with.

Lots of my new friends had pets, I'm sure, but for some reason their homes didn't seem to be overrun with fleas as ours was. We'd only lived in this house for a few months but already our two dogs and two cats had taken over the place. The cats took their meals on a countertop in the kitchen, which was something that had seemed perfectly normal to me until I started visiting the homes of my new friends. These sparkling suburban tract homes came straight from the screen where I watched sitcoms every night. These were Brady Bunch homes, Bewitched homes, Partridge Family homes. None of these TV homes were places where cats would jump up on the kitchen counter to eat from their bowls, nor were Tracey's or Colleen's or Caryn's homes. And if any of my friends' cats had caused a chronic flea infestation such as existed in my house, it would not have been tolerated, I realized at some level. Indoor cats would have become outdoor cats overnight but in our house, the kids would have been thrown outside as soon as the cats.

I scratched and scratched and suddenly I felt something warm and sticky on my legs. I felt sick. My mom had many times warned me ominously that if I were to break open the bites with my scratching they would become infected. That's as far as she ever went with this scenario. It seemed obvious that infection was not only guaranteed but also pretty much the end of the line.

As I felt the blood on my legs I tried to stifle my wails of panic. I had to go check out the damage in the light, in the bathroom. With shaking hands I grasped the zipper pull of my sleeping bag from the inside. It tended to stick. I didn't have a fluffy pink or floral sleeping bag that was meant especially for indoor sleeping, for slumber parties and sleepovers with girlfriends. I had my grandfather's old WWII sleeping bag. Khaki-colored, heavy-duty, and musty-smelling. I had always compensated for my embarrassment of it by reminding myself that my grandfather had slept out in the trenches in it! At war! But many years later I did the math and realized that he couldn't possibly have, a fact that was corroborated by my mother. "Your grandfather bought that sleeping bag in an Army-Navy store when I was a kid! I don't think he used it much..."

But the zipper was tricky and I was emotional and the panic was rising in my throat so when the thing finally gave a little bit the sound of the zipper tore out into the room of softly snuffling girls and if that didn't wake them, my whimpers from the hallway bathroom soon brought them running to my side. They clustered around me, peering intently at my bloodied and bumpy, swollen legs. "What is it?" someone asked, wide-eyed. The shocked silence affirmed for me that no, none of my friends thought it was normal to have so many flea bites. I waved off this unimportant fact. What did it matter about that when I'd likely lose a leg - maybe both! - to a ravaging infection that was so clearly inevitable?

Renee, the most practical and clear-sighted among us, was quiet at first. Then she shrugged. "Why don't you wash the blood off? It doesn't even look like that much."

I pouted a little, took the washcloth she procured for me from a cabinet and started to do just that. She was right. It didn't seem that bloody. But... what about infection? Shouldn't we call my parents? Or at least Tracey's mom?

The girls had started yawning and filing back to their sleeping bags. No one seemed too concerned about the possible, no, probable, loss of my legs to infection so I dabbed at the bites with my washcloth and eventually groped my way back in the dark to my musty old sleeping bag. This time the zipper was quieter as I tucked myself in.

Sky

2006-01-31T10:15:00.000-08:00

He sat cross-legged in the dirt, his back leaning against the wooden frame of a part-built barn off Main Street. His head was bowed, his sharp eyes staring at the guns he held in his hands.

The big six-shooters had well-worn sandalwood grips, bright sunlight glinted off the ammunition cylinder making him squint and the long, steely barrels pointed to the floor, forming an 'X' between his legs.

For quite a while he examined the weapons which had been with him for so many years. They had spilt blood, helped him dispense justice, committed crime, taken lives and saved lives. They had travelled many miles with him and he considered them to be part of him, as extensions of his hands almost.

His rugged face was shaded by the hat he wore, three days worth of growth adorned his cheeks and his lips moved soundlessly as he read the inscription on the barrels; "To my son. Keep safe".

He stood, head still bowed, placing the guns in the holsters that hung from belts slung around his waist. He brushed dust from the legs and seat of his jeans, kicked it off his worn leather boots and adjusted the heavy cotton shirt he wore. The badge pinned to the lapel of the long overcoat he picked up shone brightly. He put the coat on and walked out into the street.

For seven years he'd been sheriff of this town. For seven years he'd broken up bar fights, captured bank robbers, fought off gangs of rustlers and not once had he felt it was his time. Today was different. Today he felt could be his day. It was almost noon and he had an appointment. He walked to the centre of the street and finally lifted his head.

In the distance a cloud of dust signalled the arrival of the latest gang to try and take this town. He looked up at the sky, burnt almost white by the incessant midday sun. No cloud obscured it, only a flock of birds out in the desert - probably vultures, he surmised - circled lazily.

"Is this it," he thought. "Is this the sky I will die under?"

He rested his hands on the grips of his pistols and waited. The sky waited with him.

2006-01-30T18:52:00.000-08:00

The first time I wore my purple hat I felt beautiful, naughty, sassy and smart. I found it in a vintage store. One of those stores in Kensington Market. It was in a basket of other hats all jumbled about. It didn't look spectacular. It had purple velvet cloth over a pillbox like top and a brim. "Put this on," my friend ordered as she handed the hat to me.
"Well, I don't know. I don't really need a hat. What do I need a hat for?" I was very practical then.
"Just put it on. I think it would look pretty on you."
"OK." I put it on. The shock of seeing me in a purple hat startled me. I don't wear hats.
"Your'e right. It doesn't look that good on you," my friend said. She walked away to the jewellery at the glass counter. I saw her point to one of the rings in the glass display case.
Hmm. As I stared at my face I played with the hat placing it in different ways on my head. Then one angle made me stop. I didn't look myself anymore. I was a woman I saw walking down Queen Street. She wasn't particularly beautiful but she held herself in a way that showed she liked herself. When I looked in the mirror at that moment I was that woman.

Grey skies

2006-01-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

Lydia peered out the kitchen window, trying to get a glimpse of the sky and see what it might portend. Only the usual grey clouds – no sky to speak of. The same grey clouds for the last month. No, that's not exactly true. They were clouds alright and they were grey – but they were always different variations of grey. The light grey of a cool, maybe misty day; the darker grey of impending rain; the clumpy, lumpy grey of possible snow. Today, it looked like rain. Heavy rain.

She didn't mind the rain. Other people complained about it all the time. But she found comfort in it. She loved torrential rains best. She loved the sound of the rapid, staccato on the roof and the sound of overflowing gutters plop, plop, plopping outside her bedroom window. Bundled and warm inside, there wasn't a more secure feeling.

As a child, she loved walking in the rain. She'd have on her red rubber slicker, a pair of black knee-high gumboots and carry her favourite floral umbrella. She'd methodically walk through every puddle she could find. The deeper, the better. She liked playing a little game where she'd wade into a deep puddle and see how far she could get without the water coming up over the edge of her boots.

It was a wonderful feeling – the cold water on the outside of her boots, the pressure pushing the rubber against her bare legs. So wet and mucky outside, but dry and clean inside. That's what she liked. The contrast. A few times, the water did get inside her boots, but the game was still worth it.

Sometimes, she'd stop and stand very still, listening to the rain pelting on her umbrella. If it was raining hard enough she could feel the slight spray that managed to get through the umbrella and onto her upturned face. A cool mist.

Lydia doesn't walk through puddles or stop, face-upturned under her umbrella anymore. It would be unseemly for a woman her age. But she still looks forward to the grey skies that predict rain.

The other day, while sitting at her front window, she watched a young girl walk home from school in the rain. She was wearing a yellow slicker with matching gumboots and a floral umbrella. She stopped at every puddle and slowly waded through. When she thought no one was looking she tipped her face upwards under her umbrella and grinned a big Cheshire cat grin.

Lydia grinned too.

Imagination - a real pain

2006-01-27T11:37:00.000-08:00

I signed up for the writing prompts a few days ago and have been following along on my own blog. I wasn't sure if I was quite up to posting here, but I'm taking a deep breath and making the plunge. So here goes my first post:

Nursing 101

In nursing school, a large number of my classmates, myself included, became closet-hypochondriacs. It's almost a prerequisite to graduating.

As a nursing student, you're immersed in learning about the body and how it works. You're required to learn signs and symptoms; develop an inquiring, analytical mind; and most of all for a nurse, learn to be observant.

Now, the body is a wonderful and complex thing. It's amazing how it goes about looking after itself - most of the time, with little thought on our part. The digestive system keeps digesting, the heart keeps beating, blood flows, the brain synapses keep firing (well, usually), and all is well. Except when things go WRONG.

I went to nursing school quite a while ago, but certain things remain the same. You go through various rotations in different areas: medical, surgical, paediatrics, etc., and the instructors try to give you a good cross-section of experiences that you can apply to future patients. Each patient you get tends to be analyzed to death (figuratively speaking). You look up signs and symptoms and all the complications that could possibly occur; you hear case presentations from your classmates; you analyze and discuss those; you do a lot of reading about what's normal and abnormal. All of this is a good and necessary part of your training.

The problem arises when your imagination gets the better of you. You start thinking maybe the indigestion and twinge you felt in the right upper quadrant is a sign of cholecystitis. You suspect that the headaches you get aren't tension headaches – but a BRAIN Tumour! Every mole looks like SKIN Cancer; every chest and shoulder pain is an impending HEART Attack. But of course, you don't tell anybody of these suspicions because what if they're PSYCHOsomatic - everyone will think you're a nut case ready for the psych ward!

The weird thing is that the symptoms you think you have, coincide with whatever rotation and cases you're learning about. It's amazing how fast those symptoms disappear and change when you move from a medical rotation to obstetrics and gynecology.

In most cases, I'd say imagination is a good thing. It's necessary for problem-solving and creativity. Great inventions are borne of imaginative and creative minds. Where would we be without imagination? But in the case of hypochondriacal nursing students, imagination can be a real pain!

Imagination can be a pain...

2006-01-27T11:18:00.000-08:00

Hi guys! This is my first post. I just joined about 2 weeks ago and finally wrote something. It's a bit weird and was written during my lunch break so it definitely qualifies as a FIRST DRFAT. This isn't my typical writing style (in fact I can't remember the last time I wrote in first person) but here it is...

They were crawling up my arm and there wasn't anything I could do about it. My arms and legs were chained to the bed and about all I could manage was a little wiggle back and forth. It wasn't doing me much good. They just kept crawling, slowly inching closer. One of them slipped and their hairy legs grabbed into me. I could feel the hair scrapping along my skin, tearing tiny slashes through it. I decided right then and there to stop moving. I started screaming. No one came running. They were getting closer to my month. I knew where they were heading.

I screamed once more trying not to open my mouth wide, into this big black hole I was falling fast. I flung my hands out wildly trying to find something, anything to grab hold of. The further I fell the faster my heart beat. I was going to hit the ground any minute now and that would be the end of me. I could see the ground, I could almost reach out and touch it, yet I wasn't hitting it.

Suddenly there was a 'ker-splat'. I jumped back from the window and stared at the disgusting, globby mess dripping down the window. Not much was left of the abnormally sized bug, but what was still intact was moving, jerking haphazardly, the nerves still reacting to the pain of slamming into my window. A window that I'd now have to clean. I grabbed a cloth and some window cleaner and ventured out into the porch roof, just below my window.

I balanced on toes, swaying back and forth. The wind howled around me. The rain beat against me, stinging the skin like a hive of attacking bees. I was losing my balance. I couldn't fight the wind. I couldn't fight the rain. I jumped.

I landed on my bed, confused and disoriented. My heart was pattering faster than the rain pounding on the roof. My arms tingled with the strange sensation of spiders crawling up it. And I had this sudden urge to clean. That's when it hit me: some times it was a real pain having an imagination.

Imagination - what a pain

2006-01-26T21:48:00.000-08:00

(Continuation of yesterday's story - I'm blatantly using the prompts to get me back into writing this thing...)

She casually moved her head back to face in his direction and allowed her eyes to sweep over his face. He was looking elsewhere, absorbed in thought. Had he really been watching her? Was he doing like she had just been doing, pretending to not be watching? Well, whatever he was doing, she was going to go get a cup of coffee and warm up.

She entered the confusing maze of the self-serve cafeteria-style food service area. This was another annoyance. She was never quite sure that she was doing this right. It always seemd as if the clusters of noisy, laughing people all knew exactly what they were doing but she still wasn't completely sure how to negotiate anything beyond a drink from the coffee and cocoa bar. People seemed to be able to stride right up to the counters and give food orders but it looked like chaos to her. Is there a line? A pecking order? It just looks like a mob and she is never able to muster the courage to dive in and place an order. When it's time to eat lunch with the family she always volunteers to grab a table in exchange for Carlos tackling the disorder and crowds around the food counters.

She dispensed coffee into the paper cup and managed to find the right-sized lid. She could feel the presence of a someone just behind her, standing almost too closely. She focused her attention on her cup and lid, willing herself to not look up. Was this the man who'd been looking at her before? Maybe he was going to offer to buy her coffee. What would she do if he did? Is it wrong to accept a coffee from a stranger just because you're married? It's not like she doesn't wear a ring.

She finally looked up and it wasn't him at all. It was a large, unhappy-looking woman who seemed to be waiting for Marianne to get out of the way. And when Marianne had finished paying for her coffee and gone back out into the general seating area she noticed that he wasn't sitting where he had been. She slowly cast her eyes around the room and then she saw him, headed towards the door with a tall, slim brunette who decidedly did not have hat-hair, and following them were three grinning children. She could see now that this was a family who skiied regularly. They had expensive and attractive ski clothes on, not all-purpose winter clothes and jeans as she did, and even the children had an air of feeling completely at ease in this element. A lovely family.

How stupid could she be? Marianne chided herself angrily at having entertained a fantasy that the man had even for a moment been interested in her. Her, with her plain and sturdy body and her hat-hair and glasses. She'd envisioned him as a fellow soul on the fringes, someone who would recognize her discomfort and share in it, but he was probably only noticing her to feel sorry for her. If he'd noticed her at all.

She was always doing this, building up simple interactions in her head until there was a story, complete with intrigue, drama, longing and always a sense that someone had seen through her unassuming and sometimes awkward exterior to recognize someone beautiful and extraordinary. When she was really nothing but ordinary. "God, I should write romance novels," she thought to herself as she drained the last of her coffee.

Broken

2006-01-25T20:48:00.000-08:00

This is long! I needed a jumpstart for the story I was writing for nanowrimo which didn't have a beginning. Now it does...

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Marianne muttered to herself. She was sitting in a wheelchair in a hallway at the emergency room of the town's only hospital. She'd fractured her tibia while skiing and was waiting to have a cast put on the lower half of her leg. Her husband and children were in the waiting room, hungry and tired, and probably cold and somewhat wet after their long day of skiiing.

Too long. As a beginning skiier, and one who was indifferent to the sport, Marianne knew better than to push past her limits. It's just that her limits were so low, who'd have believed her if she'd said that she needed to rest yet again? She spent these skiiing days with Carlos's family doing as little skiing as she could get away with. Most of the time she watched the kids, Mireya and Tony, as they barreled down the hills happily. When Carlos would glare at her in exasperation she'd airily wave the camera in his direction, reminding him that someone had to record these fun family times for posterity.

Carlos's family - his two brothers, his sister, and his parents - were all of them active and outdoorsy and assumed that she was the same. Even after 15 years of her being married to Carlos they had little to no understanding of how different she was from them. Carlos's father was a lawyer with a large firm and so his children had grown up with ski trips and tennis club memberships. All three boys had grown up athletic and competitive and while Marianne had hoped for an ally in Janet, the sole sister, she has as little in common with her as she did with Carlos's brothers.

And her mother-in-law? They were kind and cordial to one another but had very little to talk about. It got a little better with the arrival of Mireya and Tony, or Antonio (Carlos's family refused to use the Anglicised version of his name) but as the kids grow older and display some of Marianne's own introverted, daydreamy ways there is often tension about whether Marianne is encouraging traits in them which would be better stamped out.

She'd tried gamely to appear to enjoy skiing. Actually, she didn't hate it so much as lack stamina for it. It's fun enough to go down a small slope a few times but she lacks the confidence to advance to the bigger mountain and she can only handle a few hours on the smaller hill before she's bored. She'd go to the lodge for hot cocoa and a rest, but often the crowds in there were dense and there was nowhere to sit. After struggling with her skis and her coat, her gloves, her boots and her hat and then struggling to wipe the fog from her glasses and fumbling for a tissue to wipe her suddenly very runny nose - and then seeing wall-to-wall laughing, energetic skiiers and no place to sit down and enjoy a quiet moment - she'd become irritable and even unhappier. Marianne was not a person who liked crowds, either.

Actually, as she leaned miserably against the back of her wheelchair in the hallway of the hospital emergency room, she remembered her last trip to the lodge that afternoon. She'd unpeeled her wet, cold outerwear while trying to look casual and nonchalant, as if she did this sort of thing all the time and wasn't, in fact, nervous and awkward about where to put her coat and how to spread out her gloves so that they wouldn't be cold and clammy when she next put her hands in them. It seemed like everything about skiing took so much work, that's all, and she wasn't convinced that sliding down an icy slope was actually worth it. She was thinking these thoughts as she arranged her gloves on top of her coat and her hat on another corner of the little pile she'd made. She rose up, running her fingers through her hair to offset the dreaded hat-head effect and as she glanced around to try to find a place to sit down she noticed someone else who looked as self-conscious and miserable as she did, a man squeezed up against the wall with his coat and gloves still on. She smiled in noting his fogged glasses just as her own began to cloud. She snatched hers off and wiped them and when she put them back on she noticed that he was watching her. He must have seen her amused smile and, what? Thought she was smiling at him? Maybe flirting with him? Her face flushed and she immediately looked off into the distance across the crowded lodge, as if she saw someone she knew.

Sheets

2006-01-24T06:29:00.000-08:00

I sit and stare at you.

Your crisp whiteness stares right back at me.

I search your features, your subtle imperfections, trying to uncover the secrets you hold.

Your crisp whiteness stares right back at me.

I threaten to defile your perfect cleanliness in hope of forcing your revelation.

Your crisp whiteness stares right back at me.

I carve a black line across your skin, sure you will divulge what lies within.

Your crisp, dissected, whiteness stares right back at me.

I rip you from your base, crush you down and discard you. Turning back I see you remain.

Your crisp whiteness stares right back at me.

And I realise, it is not you that holds the secrets, not you that holds the answers, not you in which the words reside.

It is within myself I must look. You are but a sheet of paper.

I sit and stare at you.

Your crisp whiteness stares right back at me.

Bed

2006-01-16T20:37:00.000-08:00

"Take a picture of the bed," she said. Her voice was saucy but her eyes soft and dreamy.

"What?! You're kidding, right?" We'd only been married a few days and granted, the bed in question was our "honeymoon bed," but a picture? Of a pile of twisted sheets lying in a heap at the foot of the bed, half on the floor? "Anyway, the camera's in the car."

She sighed, and there was a hint of a pout on her lips, which I kissed. "There will be plenty of beds," I whispered, before gently sucking her lower lip into my mouth and then pulling away regretfully. The front desk had already given us a "courtesy call" once. We were supposed to have checked out ten minutes ago.

We gathered the last of our luggage and as I pulled the door closed behind me I glanced one last time at the messy bed. She was right, of course. It was a beautiful sight. And one I would hold in my mind ten years later when it seemed that all we did was fight in bed. Two kids running around all day doesn't bode well for privacy, and by the time they're all tucked in for the night I turn around and she is, too. Me, I'm alone for the first time all day and I relish the quiet house. I eat a little snack, maybe read a bit, sometimes watch TV. When I finally come to bed I end up waking her up, no matter how hard I try to be quiet and to not move the mattress much.

The angry sigh is what I hear first. "You know how tired I am after being home with the kids all day!" She has a point, I know. But I work hard, too, and I need to wind down a bit before coming to bed. We have this fight almost every night and it sometimes stops there with her rolling over in exasperation and turning her back to me, at which point I hardly dare to breathe until I hear her breathing become slow and regular and sense her body relaxing into sleep.

How can two people be so intimate and yet so far apart? In the dark I can tell the exact moment that she is officially asleep. She can tell even in her sleep that I am not in bed yet; her first sleep, the period before I come in and accidentally wake her, is tense and watchful. Like how a cat sleeps, one ear always alert for sound.

The nights that the fight doesn't end there are the nights when the entire bed, or even the bedroom, seem poisoned with anger and resentment. You never, I always, you always - all those phrases the therapists say to never use, they all come tumbling out upon that bed.

But not always. Sometimes I come to bed and remember that first bed, hold its image in my mind, and I calmly listen to her reproaches and hear only how tired she really is and how differently life has turned out from what she'd expected, and I listen and pull her into my arms and sometimes I think she can read my mind and see that sweaty and touseled bed, too, and she lets me finish that kiss from long ago.

2006-01-11T08:36:00.000-08:00

Unrelated to any prompts, but wanted to get it written...

Of course, they shouldn’t have more kids. Their housing situation had been downsized three times in five years, their two children now sleeping in one, albeit large, bedroom. They did not own a home, another consequence of their decision to have her stay at home while the kids were growing up. They were, in fact, living paycheck to paycheck; their checking account depleted at the end of every second week. They had no savings other than the meager amount that he was able to stash away throughout the year to defray his Christmas expenses. But they had love. And the object of that love was their children. The sole reason for his existence, his children were the motivating factor in everything that he did. And he wanted more of them.

They had agreed early on in the relationship that she would stay at home and raise the children. It was what they had both wanted. They knew that they would have to make sacrifices, but neither of them wanted to have somebody else raising their children while the two of them worked. They had both wanted children for a long time; in fact, they had written it into their wedding vows. “…And the father of my children.” And now he wanted more of them.

He was being selfish; he knew that. Selfish because he wasn’t able to spend enough time with the children as it was. He worked sixty to seventy hours a week so that she didn’t have to work, and it still wasn’t enough. He saw his children for two hours a day; a half hour before he went to work and an hour and a half before they went to bed. He tried to cram as much love and fun into those brief periods, but it didn’t feel like it was enough. It could never be enough, for those two wonderful children gave him a new lease on life every time that he looked at their smiling faces. He knew that it wouldn’t be fair to the two children that he had now to have another. The little time that he had available for them now would have to be divided into even smaller morsels of his attention for each of them. He knew that, and he still wanted more.

He looked at it objectively, logically, and pragmatically. His first child had made him feel like he could do no wrong. When he was with his baby he felt as though nothing else mattered but whatever was happening between the two of them. When they had the second, the feeling was multiplied. In a terrible funk for a year, he was hoping that another would change his life once again. But he also realized that his loyalties should not be to himself. Rather, he already owed a debt of time to the two children that he had, a debt that would take a lifetime of weekends to repay. He knew that there was only one way to do right by his children and that did not involve adding another. But he couldn’t help but want more.

And now he was feeling guilty. Guilty because he was starting to resent her for the time that she was able to spend with the children. Guilty because he had told her time and time again that she was a wonderful mother and he was willing to sacrifice his time at home so that she could be there for them when they needed a parent. And he was now wishing that he had made a different decision. It was, in part, her ability to stay at home with the children that enabled her to become the wonderful mother that she had become. He was beginning to wonder if marrying a woman whose life’s desire was to be a mother was the right decision. Maybe if he hadn’t married such a good mother, he would have had the chance to be a better father.

weather

2006-01-10T03:30:00.000-08:00

My husband's face looks like weather. I responded to that the first night I met him. Although he was no older than the other boys I'd been dating up until then - he was 20 - he had a weathered face that revealed his childhood spent outdoors.

In a journal I kept in high school I prophetically wrote about the man I would one day marry:

My ideal man has muscles, but not from vainly "working out" in the weight room in front of a mirror, obsessing over "symmetry" and "balancing opposing muscle groups." This man's muscles will be side effects of his active, busy life. He'll do things.

Bill came from a family of (unsuccessful) farmers and loggers. He grew up watching the sky and tasting the air for the slightest hint of change, and he always could tell when a storm was coming on. When we met he was a sailor in San Diego (I was a college student) and the consistently fair weather alternately amazed, thrilled, and bored him. It was lovely to be able to do whatever you wanted most days but there was nothing to track and monitor, either. He was restless.

My family, we didn't put much stock in the weather. Why go out of your way to watch the TV weatherman say that once again, it would be "70 degrees and sunny"? And if there was an occasional rainy or cloudy day, you could tell that by looking out the window. Out the window, yes, because inside was where life was lived. Inside was where the televisions were. And books and magazines, too, but most of the time we were in front of one of the several televisions we owned.

My childhood is peppered with television memories: Remember when Roots was on? Not the first time, because my mother thought I might be too young to see it and so she watched it after I'd gone to bed. But the second time. My mother had decided that it was all right for me to watch it and just as it was starting our TV blew out. That was before we had two TVs, or maybe we had two TVs but the main one was broken, too. Yeah, come to think of it - the TV I was trying to watch Roots on was the secondary TV, the backup one Mom usually watched in the bedroom, so when it blew out we had no working TV. I was brokenhearted. I had really, really wanted to watch Roots. I listened to it for the first few days, as if by radio, until Mom and Dad were able to get the TV fixed. So I suddenly jumped into the story visually midstream and had to close my eyes and listen to the voices to make out who was who.

Bill is baffled by these stories. He has no memories like this of his childhood. Instead he has stories about falling into creeks and wandering in the woods and hunting and fishing with his older brothers. His older brothers are the kind of men who wear long johns year-round, as well as long-sleeved flannel shirts. It can be 90 degrees on a summer afternoon and they'll be wearing black jeans (I've never seen any of them wear shorts, ever, in 20 years) and a black T-shirt with a flannel shirt. In deference to the heat they'll roll up their sleeves but that's as much skin as you'll ever see. If you go back to their homes on this same sweltering afternoon you'll find glowing embers in their woodstoves from that morning's fire. Building a fire in the woodstove is just something you do every morning, regardless of the season, because if you've ever been really, really cold you take pains to not risk that again.

I'd never been really, really cold. There was one stretch of colder-than-normal temperatures in L.A. one December when I was in high school. My feet were so cold I actually had a few toes go numb and I couldn't figure out why. I didn't have any "winter shoes" and boots weren't in style during those years so it made no sense to me why all of a sudden my toes were going numb. I didn't even recognize that as being cold. Bill wonders why I didn't glean from the weather report that it was probably twenty degrees colder than I was used to and I laugh to think of a childhood spent checking weather reports.

When we moved to Idaho early in our marriage we were both woefully unprepared for winters after having spent four years in San Diego. We didn't have much money, either, because Bill was in college and I was working for $7 an hour. That Christmas we didn't splurge on luxury items but instead showered each other with winter provisions. Hats and scarves and gloves, all given from the heart because we each hated to see the other one shivering with cold.

My most cherished Christmas gift ever came that year. Bill had wanted to buy me Sorel snow boots. "They're the best kind; no other brand will keep the snow out as well," but they were just too pricey. When I opened my box of Sorels that morning I was speechless. How could we have afforded them? Bill confided shyly that as he stood there looking at them, wishing and wishing they weren't so expensive, he happened to notice that the children's Sorels were less than half the price of the adults'. He also happened to spy a pair of children's boots that looked to be the same size as he adult size I wear. He took the adult size and held it up to the children's size and realized that a women's size 7 is the same as a child's size 5. Exactly the same. He proudly watched me try them on - a perfect fit - and I never felt more loved or cared for.

A Typewriter

2006-01-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

That's right... I've made it! My first post here!"

I was probably in middle school when we dragged the old manual typewriter out of the back bedroom at my grandmother's house. I kept it in my bedroom for the longest time. I imagined my fingers flying over the keys and creating those click-clacking sounds just like my mother and the women at her office could do.

Of course, they were typing letters, reports, official documents. I wanted to write a book, but my fingers flying over the keys resulted in an incomprehensible gibberish. Then the metal prongs tangled together like Christmas lights, and I had to gingerly push each letter one at a time back into its place.

I used the manual typewriter to practice being a writer. I can't even begin to count on how many pages I typed "Chapter One." I waited for stories to come to me. I tried to think of clever dialogue, but all of it was a bad imitation of what was said on Days of Our Lives. I should have been sitting on top of a dog house, banging out "It was a dark and stormy night."

I finally took a typing class during my sophomore year in high school, and I excelled in not looking at the keys while I typed — a trait that I'm proud to say I still have today. For Christmas that year, my parents gave me a brand-new typewriter. The ribbon was a cartridge that glided along the paper like a blade on ice. It had a one-line screen and could store 500 words in its memory and then print them out. (Hey, it was 1987 ok?) I use larger sizes, and I could make that "Chapter One" larger and darker than the rest of the text.

After high school graduation, I upgraded to a Brother word processor. It didn't have a silent cartridge, though. Printing documents from this contraption sounded louder than a regular typewriter, and the whole device shimmied, making the kitchen table shake as I printed out page after page of my poems that I had entered from my spiral bound notebook.

It never dawned on me to imagine what equipment I'd be working on in the future. My Apple iBook, my Epson printer, my Word software, my blog — all of that seems so otherworldly when compared to that clunky manual typewriter. Yet when I'm sitting in front of the screen and staring at "Chapter One," the excitement from my childhood returns. I'm closed up in that tiny bedroom, sitting under the window on a Saturday afternoon, wondering where my story will take me.

locksmith

2006-01-07T21:06:00.000-08:00

I tend to be absent-minded. Forgetful. The kind of person who forgets her keys often, only I don't. I am so afraid of this tendency I have to not be entirely aware of my surroundings that I have developed little habits that keep disaster away. My purse, for example, is always in contact with my body in one way or another. If I have to sit down, instead of simply putting my purse on the floor and possibly forgetting to pick it up again I wrap the handle of the purse around one knee. The physical contact of it comforts me, actually soothes me, because I know that as long as I can feel the pressure of that purse strap around my knee all is right.

If I don't take my purse with me somewhere, I'll put my keys in my pocket. Sometimes I forget which pocket, though - pants pocket, jacket pocket, right or left pocket, inner or outer pocket of my heaviest winter coat - there are so many pocket options that sometimes I spend a frantic twenty seconds patting at myself in desperation, afraid that this is the time I have locked us out of our car or our house.

Twelve years ago Bill and I were living in Idaho. I grew up in southern California so these Idaho winters were a challenge for me. But this was my third one and I was starting to get the hang of things. I'd get up early every Sunday morning for my volunteer job at the food co-op. I worked in the bakery. Three hours each Sunday morning spent kneading bread dough and running freshly-baked loaves of whole wheat bread down to the shop and lining them up in the bakery cases, being careful to leave the doors ajar so that the warm bread wouldn't steam up the cases too much. Even washing the dishes seemed more life-affirming there. Ken always kept a big empty yogurt container filled with honey which he plunged into the sink of hot water, to soften the crystallized honey. I'd be washing the knives, bowls, measuring cups and spoons and the honeypot would be bobbing away in the dishwater. I was always a bit wary that the sudsy water would leak inside the honey container and ruin it but it never did. It always bobbed just above the water line and I was the only one who ever seemed to worry about it.

Ken was exactly the kind of guy you'd expect to be making whole wheat bread in a food co-op. He wore his long blond hair in a ponytail. He was quiet and thoughtful. He had been hard to get to know at first because he took every comment and question to heart and treated it as if upon his answer rested the fate of something very important and very fragile. I had been going for at least two months before he started laughing at my jokes, albeit warily and cautiously. His wife Rachel was a doula. I'd only met her once but she wrote a column for the co-op newsletter wherein she prescribed varius herbal teas for whatever ailed a person. I'd been trying raspberry leaf tea for a few months. It was suppsoed to help ease menstrual cramps, along with increasing a woman's fertility. We were about to start trying to get me pregnant, so it was with great interest that I asked Ken questions about Rachel's doula work and her theories on homebirth.

This one winter Sunday there had been a terrible storm predicted. When our alarm had gone off at 6:00 am Bill had looked out the window and seen it, seen the stormcloud in the sky, and suggested that I skip the bakery that morning. But I couldn't do it. I would have stayed home from my paying job, an office job at the nearby university, without a second thought but my three hours in the bakery each week were like therapy. I loved the way I felt alive the moment I stepped through the doors. The bins of dried beans and grains all in a line, the earthy colors of peas and lentils and beans black and white and brown and mottled, they represented the kind of sustenance that the sickly fluorescent-lit aisles of the grocery store did not. There was no excess and garish packaging here, little packaging at all. It was no-frills food and that was calming to me. I needed my weekly bakery work more than Ken needed me, I'm sure.

I assured Bill that I would be fine and headed into town. By the end of my shift the snow had started to fall. I did my weekly shopping, having just earned with my work a 30% discount, and as my groceries were being bagged the phone by the cashier rang. It was Bill, telling me that the snow was coming down hard and that I should stay put. "But I just bought groceries!" I answered. "I have milk! Cheese! I can't just... not come home!" Bill was uncharacteristically insistent that I not risk driving in this snow (he himself will drive under any conditions), so I agreed to wait a bit.

I wandered the co-op. I read the current newsletter. I bought a muffin, one that I had made an hour previously and carried down on a big tray with dozens of others. Whole-wheat lemon. I leafed hrough the holistic magazines. I started to fret about my perishable items. Outside I could see that the snow was definitely falling, but it didn't look any worse than other snowstorms I had driven in. I decided to do it.

It really wasn't any worse than any other storm. There was no traffic on the highway. It was calm and peaceful and the swirling snowflakes always just ahead of me were mezmerizing, like driving into a snowy tunnel. At times it almost seemed that I wasn't moving at all but that the snowy tunnel was what was moving. At other times I couldn't see the lines on the road all that well, but I had driven this highway so many hundreds of times that I knew it by feel.

As I turned off the highway and into the little unincorporated little hamlet where we lived, the snow got deeper. No one had driven on these gravel roads, nor had the plow been through yet. I applied a bit more pressure to the gas pedal and forged on ahead. I was within walking distance of our house now; if I were to get stuck the worst-case scenario was that we'd have to walk a ways with our groceries, and then wait for the plow to unstick the car.

I approached the even smaller gravel road that our house lay on and turned right. The snow was really deep here. My little Ford Escort would have to really work to get through this, but I decided that every foot closer I got before getting stuck was one foot less to carry the groceries. I applied even more pressure to the gas pedal - it was almost to the floor - and gripped the steering wheel tightly and held on while my little car burrowed its way through. As I approached our house I could see Bill standing at the front window, his face agape with astonishment. I'd never seen him direct that expression at me before. It was part shock, part admiration, and a lot of, "You're crazy, woman!" Even as I swung the wheel jerkily to bring the Escort to a rest in our drive, I was smiling giddily, proud that I'd shown Bill that I was worthy of Idaho winters and didn't need to be coddled or babied. I felt I'd arrived, literally. I'd proved my mettle.

I lowered my head as I got out of the car, slammed the door shut behind me and ran into the house. Laughing, I announced, "I brought home the (veggie) bacon, now you can bring it in from the car!" Bill shook his head in surprise, still wearing that look of slight shock. "I can't believe you drove in this!" he laughed. "My GOD, but you're stubborn!"

"Yep. I can be." I feigned nonchalance, shruggung. "I've got stuff to do. I couldn't hang out in town all day."

"Ok, ok. I'll bring in the groceries. You're right; you earned it." He smiled at me and held out his hand. "Where are the keys?"

That was when I realized that I'd locked them in the car. I'd been in such a hurry to get in from the snow that I'd slammed the door behind me before going through my pocket-patting routine and the keys had been left on the passenger seat, right where I'd tossed them after shutting off the engine so that I could grab the muffin I'd brought home for Bill.

Locksmith

2006-01-05T10:44:00.000-08:00

"So how did it happen?" asked one of the men as he strolled round the pool table, lining up his next shot.

"How did she do it, you mean?" replied the other man, leaning against the wall, pool cue held idly between his hands.

"Exactly." The man took his shot, missed.

"I'll tell you. This is exactly how she did it." He took aim at the 9-ball and began to speak.

She crouched in the darkness, examining the complex lock before her. Her fingers reached out and traced the numbers on the dial, getting a feel for the job at hand. She knew just by looking that no dynamite or heavy handed tactics were going to get through this door. It was too solid, too well prepared, too strongly defended. No, to get at the contents would require finesse.

Carefully, she pulled the black roll-bag from her pack and laid it flat on the floor. Unhooking the small penlight, she turned it on and placed it between her teeth, allowing her to see more clearly. Once more she caressed the door with her fingers, outlining the dial, stroking the handle. She loved this part. She loved what was inside more, but she loved the defences as well. Getting through them was almost as good as the reward.

She removed the stethoscope from its holding place and put it in her ears. Placing the round metal disc to the safe, just to the right of the spindle she spun the dial. Good. She could hear the clicks as the right numbers passed. Slowly and gently, she turned the dial. At each click she reversed the turn. After an hour or so of hard listening and trial and error she heard a louder click and knew the lock was finished. Excitedly, she yanked the handle on the door. Nothing. She knew it wouldn't have been that easy, she didn't know why she was surprised.

Standing and stretching her stiff legs, she walked around the sturdy safe, examining it from every angle. There didn't seem to be a chink in its armour but she KNEW it must exist. Using the penlight she looked closer at its edges. There! A small raised panel. She was sure it hadn't been there before.

She pulled away the cover with a small hook from the roll-bag and was faced with a series of complex tumblers. She sighed. This was going to take some time. She unpacked her picks and tension tools and set about unlocking each of the nine locks.

For hours she sat cross-legged in front of the panel. Sweat dripped from her long hair, her shoulders ached and her eyes became weary but she would not give up. She blew a stray lock of hair from her eyes, rolled her shoulders to loosen them and went back to work.

After what seemed like days she made it to the last lock. Her hands were trembling with tension and effort and she took a moment to calm herself. She was so close now. She feared discovery, feared that she would be locked out for good but she pushed the thought to the back of her mind. Placing the penlight between her lips once more she leaned in and pushed the tension bar into the lock. She felt every edge of the lock through her fingers, knew just what was required. Selecting the right pick, she worked it in beside the bar and began to unpick the lock.

More than once she nearly slipped and reset the whole thing. Eventually though, the last lever gave way and she heard a louder click. She exhaled heavily, excitement coursing through her. She crawled round to the door and placed her hand on the handle. Holding her breath she turned it.

The door opened and she was bathed in light. Lookng into the safe, her eyes sparkling, the most beautiful smile spread across her face.

"That's how she did it," the man said, sinking the 9-ball and turning to face the woman who had just entered. She was 5' 1", long dark hair, olive skinned. The most desirable woman he had ever seen.

"That's how she unlocked my heart and won it for herself. Isn't it, darling."

I Lived on this Street.......

2006-01-02T09:02:00.000-08:00

from the time I was born to age eighteen when I left home for college. I really lived here. Amazing........everything looks shabby, not at all as I remember. My grandma's house seems terribly small & yet the kitchen's been remodeled & is by all accounts larger. There's a big picture window looking out onto a large back yard that was once a huge vegetable garden with a chicken coop off the the right. Behind the chicken coop was an outhouse with only one huge seat. Now it's just one green yard with a nice shade tree. These days Uncle Mario has a picnic table under the tree where he sits to have his lunch.

I lived in this house until I was 5 years old when my parents bought a house 6 doors away, up the street toward the center of town. The house was old, run down from years of neglect. The prevailing story was that the old woman who lived there had closed off all rooms except for the 2 she lived in. The kitchen & sitting-bedroom were the only ones that had electricity. Rumor had it that she had closed off the rest of the house to save on coal that she burned to heat the house. She must have not been able to get to the cellar to fire up the furnace those last few days. Someone found her dead in bed one cold winter morning. It seems that neither she nor the house had temperatures compatible with life.

What was left of her house was good enough for my folks. It was dirt cheap! Twenty-five hundred dollars. They put down $500 borrowed from someone & my mom says she didn't sleep until the mortgage was paid for about a year later. I remember my dad actually using a huge scythe to cut the very tall weeds around the house while my mom removed all sorts of junk from the indoors. And I see her belly, huge with a baby soon to be my brother Frank. They worked long days to get the place ready for our family. No one took notice of the time & energy it took to make the place into our home. But I noticed & remember my beautiful mother, her face glistening with sweat as she scraped the floors clean & washed layers of dirt from the windows.

The neighbors on the south side seemed old to me, but as I think back they must have been only in their forties. They were quiet neighbors & kept mostly to themselves. I remember being very curious about them because unlike my family, their faces seemed without expression & I can't recall them ever laughing. Beulah was a very large woman, not fat but as mom liked to say, built like a "farm girl". She had very broad shoulders, narrow hips& long slender legs. Her flowered house dresses were always neatly pressed & on Sunday she added a strarched lacy collar to the neckline. Her pewter colored hair, she fingerwaved to her head emphasizing the flat face with round eyes & small prim lips. To me she looked like Stuart's portrait of Washington. Completing the picture in my mind's eye, is Henry her husband, the image of Abraham Lincoln!

As I got older, I realized that I was probably their only visitor. Occasionally my folks would talk to them about the weather & ask about their garden, but they never visited to chat or have a glass of tea. When Beulah hung her clothes on the line in the side yard next to ours, I'd often wander over to spend some time with her. She listened to the incessant chatter that was my trademark & once she asked me to "recite" a poem for her. She seemed to enjoy my company & when I admired the small basket that held her wooden clothes pins, she told me about getting the basket for a doll she had as a small child. She told me the basket was very old & precious to her. I truly believed she hinted that someday it could become mine.

When I sat with them on their small porch in the late day heat, I 'd notice that Beulah continually wiped beads of sweat from her very red face. She'd use a huge cotton man's handkerchief which she'd carefully refold & replace in her dress pocket. Henry always dry as a bone, was never to be seen, no matter the temperature, in anything but a long sleeved blue denim shirt. It was always buttoned precisely under his huge adam's apple. I found that mysterious & intriguing. At age 8, I often pondered his appearance & lack of sweat! I can plainly see them both sitting with straight backs in their wooden rockers on that small porch. Somehow I knew that I was never to ask what they drank from the huge white mugs they kept at their sides. A few times, dad asked me if I had met the boarder living with our neighbors. He said his name was Jim Beam!

On the other side of us there was a very small house. It was quite literally a doll's house. The interior was totally white with splashes of color from needlepoint & embroidered scarves that covered all surfaces. We were not allowed to wear shoes or touch anything. The family only slept there, they lived in the basement where it really was quite cozy. According to my mom, Mrs. Kay "ruled the roost" in that house. Opinions in our huge family about the Kay's ran the gamut. Some of my older aunts considered it the ultimate home. Everything cleaned daily. Everything exactly placed as Mrs. Kay wanted. In the other camp was mom. "No allowances made for living", she would mumble to my Grandma. "Her kids eat in the cellar! Terrible!" she'd say to her sisters. But I always had fun there. There were 3 Kay kids, 2 boys & a girl my age. We were classmates & walked to school together. All 3 were beautiful blondes with splarking blue eyes, except for Pauline. She had a one eye that was blue, the other was a greenish color with a brown dot. She was considered very special by all the other girls in the fourth grade because of her unusual eyes. If you were nice to her, she'd let you have a good long close look at the brown spot.

Mrs. Kay was not only fussy about her house, she was a stickler about good grades. She would have me over sometimes in the evening after supper to do homework with Pauline. Mrs. Kay said that Pauline had trouble "with the numbers." Even at that young age, I loved "numbers" so I agreed to help her whenever asked. It seemed perfectly natural to sit around that huge old oak table quietly doing homework while while Mrs. Kay cleaned a chicken for one of her customers. She kept a large coop of chickens behind the house & sold eggs too. She seemed to me a very smart woman because she carried a leather pouch heavy with coins & bills in her pocket. Most of the kids at school & in the neighborhood were scared of her. I suppose she looked stern wearing her rimless spectacles & I remember an occasional remark about her "thin lips."

There was a chow-mix dog tied outdoors in the Kay's backyard to keep "nosy kids out of my garage." Well, nosy me wandered too close to the garage & that dog sure did keep me out. My mom sent someone for Doc Stevens. He came by the house a short time later to have a look at the bite on my thigh. Doc Stevens pinched the bite edges together with small metal clamps. I thought my dad was every bit as good as Doc because 5 days later he removed the clamps & I never felt a thing. My dad said I was "very brave."

The days I spent living on that street always seemed to exciting to me. I remember days being such fun & so full of great things to do. All the women were home during the day so that there was always someone out & about who knew where every other child or person was. I knew that whatever I did or however I behaved would get back to either my mom or my Grandma. Grandma knew that every Thursday I visited Mrs. Sorvino to ask if she was making spaghetti for supper. "Sure, I'm making spaghetti tonight for Tom & the boys. You come back later & I'll give you some." Sure enough, she'd save me a small bowl every Thursday.

Stopping the bleeding

2005-12-31T12:43:00.000-08:00

[I am aware this is a tenuous link to the prompt.]

I've read up. I know what to do. I have assembled the tools to do it. I'm ready.

I lie back, bare-chested, and pull the trolley closer. Reaching out, I take the scalpel in my left hand. Closing my eyes, I place the blade against my skin at the correct point for the first incision. The metal is cold, goosebumps appear.

Gritting my teeth I cut. There is pain, but it does not compare. I move the blade deftly and after the first few inches find myself able to open my eyes and guide my work. I cut the perfect 'Y', just as the book described.

I place the blade back on the trolley. Next I take the saw. I flick the switch and the circular blade begins to turn, reaching full speed quickly with a whine I find distasteful but appropriate. I position the saw an inch above my chest, between my collarbones. I have to close my eyes again. This won't require guidance. Just...strength. And determination.

I force the saw down and feel it cut into my breastbone. There is a loud crack. The pain is white hot and I cry out, but it soon subsides to the other. As quickly as I can without moving off course or snapping the blade I split my breastbone in two, quickly turning the saw off when I deem the job done and dropping it to the floor.

I lie still for a moment, panting with exhaustion and pain. I open my eyes. Forcing my fingers between the two halves of my breast I feel sick. With my bare hands I prise my rib cage open. I won't describe the sound. It is awful. Awful. My blood runs freely from me, soaking my fingers, the bed, dripping to the floor. I look down.

There it lies. My heart. Beating steadily but somehow weakly. It looks unhealthy, damaged. Grey. Doing its job but no longer really interested in it. Carefully, I slip my fingers around the flesh and lift the organ from its home, bringing it up to my face, to my eyeline. I look hard at it. And whisper to it.

For about five minutes I whisper, telling it what it needs to hear, what it must be told. I didn't know if this would work. But it seems to be. With every passing minute, almost wth every word, my heart responds. Beats stronger. Grows healthier. When I have said all there is to be said I bring my heart to my lips. And kiss it gently.

Blood coats my lips, runs down my chin. But my heart responds, quickens and pumps strongly. Gently I return it to its rightful place.

I put my head back and with my blood soaked hands force my ribcage closed. To my surprise and relief it knits itself shut almost straight away. There is no pain while this happens. Quickly, just in case my body realises this isn't possible, I take the needle and surgical thread from the trolley and sew the 'Y' incision closed. The blood that ran from me stops.

I am exhausted. I rest for a while. My body heals itself amazingly quickly while I do. When I have the strength to do I so, I sit up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. The trolley is blood spattered, the floor red, the bed soaked. But my body is clean. My chest feels normal. There is no pain. And I realise...there is no pain!

I weep with happiness. Looking down, I see not everything is perfect. But I will carry my scars proudly. They came from a worthy place. They will remind me of that. They do not bother me. But...

The 'Y' that is emblazoned across me...I wonder...should I take the scalpel once more...and add a question mark...

'Y?'

Movie

2005-12-29T13:39:00.000-08:00

The first movie I ever saw without my parents was The Goodbye Girl. I was eleven years old. I was with my friend Tracey. We bought popcorn and a candy bar each and pop. Mine was Dr. Pepper, and to this day whenever I drink that I am back in that movie theater, feeling grownup to be without an adult and watching a romantic comedy as opposed to a Disney animation. I'm sure I didn't really understand it but it nonetheless thrilled me.

Tracey was sweet and got good grades. She was my first friend when I moved to town in fourth grade, the first girl to invite me to her house. Her mother was also sweet and kind and wore an apron. She saved all of Tracey's school papers and had them filed away in a closet, neatly. My mom may have saved my papers; I had no idea. If she did, they were in a messy heap somewhere. I had never even thought about the concept of saving schoolwork but as Tracey hauled out file after file and we pored over her kindergarten scribbles it suddenly seemed like the most adorable thing in the world.

When we were eleven I started to get greasy hair and pimples but Tracey's beauty problems were dry skin and hair. That seemed so sophisticated to me. So glamorous. It was, of course, a lot more aesthetically pleasant to apply silky creams and lotions than to be always stripping one's face with Stridex pads and using noxious-smelling ointments. And if I didn't wash my hair daily (I didn't), it was oily and limp. Tracey washed her hair every Saturday and it always looked exactly the same: just right.

Even her voice was cute. It was high-pitched and feminine, and she had a tape of her at around the age of two or three (her mother had carefully stowed it away with the schoolwork files) that we used to listen to over and over while squealing with laughter over her elf-like voice. My voice was, and is, nondescript. Not high or low or pretty or cute.

But the movie... I watched Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss fall in love while drinking Dr. Pepper and feeling the heady freedom of future movies with friends and trips to the mall. It was all so exciting and full of possibility. I could grow up to be like Marsha Mason, or at least more like Tracey. Anything was possible.

Swing

2005-12-29T13:11:00.000-08:00

One of my earliest memories is of a swing. I was in first grade, maybe second, at a birthday party. We were all in the backyard playing and I was swinging, going way up high. The mom called us in for cake and ice cream and I suddenly realized my dilemma: I was going too high to stop in a timely fashion, and too fast to risk ruining my white patent Mary Janes by dragging my feet to slow me down. I started to feel panicky. Would everyone go in and eat cake without me?

Then Patrick stepped up. He gently reached out and grabbed the chain nearest him. In just a few more arcs of the swing, each one becoming smaller and smaller, I had slowed down enough to step out of the swing, which I did in a ladylike and graceful way. "I wouldn't want you to get your shoes all dirty," Patrick murmured.

I liked Patrick, but I wasn't in love with him like I was Gerald. Gerald, who had rushed in for cake the moment the hostess announced it. Gerald, who a few months earlier had tossed an invitation to his own birthday party carelessly onto my desk while saying, "My mom said I had to invite everyone."
___________________________________________________

Twenty years later, another swing memory. We've just moved to a new town with a four-year-old and a two-year-old. Moves are always expensive, so I've agreed to watch the two-year-old daughter of one of BIll's new co-workers. She's a terror. I'd thought that she'd fit right in with my two children while we read books together and watched kids' shows on PBS. But Kirsten is an only child of a workaholic mother who spoils her rotten to make up for the amount of time they spend apart. She's a brat.

My kids and I enjoy going to the neighborhood park to feed the ducks and play on the playground equipment. There's a small swingset there for kids their age; they're not old enough yet for the big-kids' swings, but there are only two seats in this swingset. The first time we ever went to this park with Kirsten it became clear that she would not tolerate taking turns and watching one of my children take a turn on a swing. Two swings and three toddlers seems to not be a good mix. Privately I have explained to my kids that with Kirsten there we won't be swinging. I'll bring them to swing when she is not with us. Having both witnessed the screaming-kicking tantrums that Kirsten throws when she is not getting her way, they both have solemnly agreed that this is wise.

I know no one in this new town so one day, as I watch the kids playing in the cedar chips underneath the playground equipment, I am happy when a woman strikes up a conversation with me. She tells me that the six or eight kids that she is there with are her charges in her home daycare business, and that it is actually her last week in this business. She asks me if I would be interested in taking on any of these kids, as I have told her that I am watcing Kerstin for pay. I vehemently decline. Perhaps I was a bit too vehement, but I'd spent the last twenty minutes watching Kerstin boss my four-year-old around and try to derail the perfectly nice pretend-store game that my kids had started by demanding that they play HER game and I was weary. I honestly didn't know how much longer I would be able to stand this babysitting gig, but we had had to take out an emergency credit-card loan when we'd moved and the interest was unconscionable. We had to pay this off before I could even think of sending Kerstin packing. Also, I am absolutely terrible at quitting things. Taking a stand and just admitting up front that something isn't working for me. I tend to drag my feet and ignore the situation until it finally gets so bad that the other party calls things off.

But I must have conveyed my unhappiness with my situtation because when Kerstin's mother arrived that evening to pick her up, she took me into my kitchen and said, "I got a call this afternoon that disturbed me..." Apparently the woman I'd been talking to in the park recognized Kerstin because she had previously gone to her home daycare, and she interpreted my abrupt refusal to run such a daycare myself as proof that I disliked children in general. She had warned Kerstin's mother that I was unfit to watch her child.

At the time this hurt me deeply. This woman had been the first person I'd spoken to, other than Kerstin and her mother, since moving to this town and she had turned around and betrayed me. I also replayed the entire episode over and over, looking for clues as to how I had appeared to this woman. I had been a little depressed since the move. I had left friends and a home I'd loved. I had lost control of my life with my own kids because Kerstin was so domineering and high-energy and attention-starved. Gone were the quiet afternoons of reading books aloud because Kerstin hadn't the patience. A simple errand such as the grocery store, never simple with young children in any case, became unbearable with the addition of Kerstin. So, yes - I was no Mary Poppins. Even I could see that. But was I really a menace to these children? The one thing I had any confidence about at this point was my relationship with my children and suddenly this was shattered after one brief exchange with a stranger at the park.

One Swing

2005-12-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

My biological father and I never really connected until I was fourteen. He had little interest in his kids until we were old enough to play the games that he was interested in. He wouldn’t be caught dead playing a board game with us, but as soon as we were old enough to play hockey we were on skates at the rink with him before his men’s league games. When we were old enough to hunt we got shotguns and rifles for our birthdays. As long as our presence didn’t mean that he had to give up one of his hobbies, we were welcome to be there. We just learned to not expect him to go out of his way for us. Our mother had remarried; a man who made us his life and did everything with us. We were not lacking a father figure by any means, but still yearned to have our biological father in our lives, despite his hesitation to be in ours.

I didn’t really resent him for his selfish attitude. It took me years afterwards to fully understand him, and by that time, I had accepted him for what he was. As I grew older, I found myself taking up the same hobbies that he had. Most of them I did with Jeff, the man that had married my mother and legally adopted my sister and I so that we could bear his surname. He was a lot like my biological father, Ron. He had been a teacher and a coach. He hunted religiously and fished with a passion. Still athletic, he played in men’s’ leagues to quell his competitive urges. He was and is all the father that a boy could ever ask for. He has been my best friend since I was ten. Yet I was still missing the knowledge that my father, Ron, accepted me and loved me. And I worked for that over the next fifteen years.

As I grew into a man, Ron and I became much more similar. I had been told by my grandparents, who passed away while I was in my late teens, but who had lived fifty feet from me for my entire life, that I looked exactly like their son, Ron, did when he was my age. Hearing that made me proud. Despite being slightly overweight, he was still a very handsome man. When I was able, I grew a beard to match Ron’s. Our dry wit was often misunderstood by everyone but ourselves, a sardonic way that I had cultured to better communicate with him on his level. While I had always loved baseball, I became an ardent fan of the Red Sox so that we’d have something to talk about. I tried. God, I tried. Yet there was still a distance between us that I could neither bridge nor understand.

Things changed for us on a cool fall day at his house. I was twenty-five and Ron and I had become close friends. I had come to think that friendship was all that I would ever get from him and had come to terms with that. He had called me at my apartment to ask me to give him a hand with a leaky roof. Deathly afraid of heights, I was the only person that he knew that would climb the steep pitch of the roof to patch a torn shingle. He and my sister had had a falling out, not speaking to each other at all. I knew better than to get in the middle of it, but was willing to be a sounding board or a shoulder to lean on.

As I was on the roof and he was in the driveway watching my progress, we started a conversation that made me stop my work. He wanted to discuss himself and his shortcomings. Obviously, this was the perfect time to do it, as neither of us were given to physical displays of affection and did not want to be caught in a place where hugging, if called for, was possible. The twenty-five foot vertical distance between us was ideal for both of us. The conversation changed from his inadequacies to his strained relationship with my sister, to the relationship between him and I. I sat on the edge of the roof, my feet dangling in the air, listening.

“I know that I haven’t been a very good father.” And he paused, as though trying to grasp the significance of what he had just said. As his eyes welled-up with tears he continued, “But I like to think that I’ve been a good friend to you.”

I wanted to be on the ground then; to be within arms reach and to touch him and hug him. The only times that I had seen him cry were when his mother and father, my grandparents, had died. We had hugged then and I had felt as though he wanted me to be there in his arms to help him through. I regretted not being on the ground right now to be there for him to help him through this.

“Dad, you’ve been a good father”, I lied. “But more importantly, you have been a great friend. I am what I am because of you. And I think that I’m all right, don’t you?”

He acknowledged that I was all right, and the conversation returned to its origins, witty, meaningless banter that revealed no emotion. But the words had been spoken, however briefly, and we never needed speak of it again. It wasn’t an apology. It was an admission of being less than what he wanted to be. And I accepted it as such. We grew as friends from there.

When I was twenty-eight he asked me to join his baseball team. Having not played since I was nineteen, I was hesitant to play with this group of former college, semi-pro, and minor league players. I knew that I’d be overmatched and probably see little playing time, but I was still trying to relate to him on his level so I agreed. He was a player-coach, by far the oldest on the team. His knees prevented him from running like he used to and his shoulder kept him from throwing like he used to, but he was still living his dream, playing baseball. I knew that he was a great baseball player in his youth. He had captained his college baseball team for two years, one of them including a trip to the college world series. According to family legend, had he not gotten my mother pregnant, he could have played professional baseball. I hadn’t seen him play since I was old enough to understand the game and was anxious to be involved in his passion, to share a dugout with him.

The apparent leader of the team, nobody questioned his decisions or his skill at the plate. Yet when at a crucial point of the game he had me pinch-hit, I heard the players grumble amongst themselves. Good guys, all of them, but competitive. They wanted to win and didn’t see me as their best chance to do so.

Ron was coaching third base, a position that allowed him to flash me the signs. As I watched him go through the signs, eventually getting a “swing-away”, I realized that he was entirely comfortable on the baseball field. This was his element and this is how he knew how to communicate. Subtle signs that I had been missing all of my life. A baseball player to the core, he never would come out and say that he loved me, but let a pat on the back speak for itself. All of the times that he had rubbed me on the head had meant that he was proud of me, and I’d missed them all. All of the high fives were a sign of unity. Every time he chattered at me, it meant that he was behind me, rooting for me.

I watch the first two pitches go by me for strikes. These guys threw hard and I wasn’t sure if I could even make contact, much less catch up. Yet, looking down the third base line to where my father was standing, giving me signs to open my stance, keep my head in, turn the wrist over, I wasn’t very concerned about hitting the ball. I had already succeeded by being with my father.

So as the third pitch came, I swung freely and perfectly, making solid contact that drove the ball out over the left-center field fence. I held my posture for a moment, reveling in the flight of the ball. And as it easily cleared the fence I started trotting to first base, looking down. By the time that I had reached second base I looked up and saw my father jumping with his hands in the air and knew that his joy wasn’t for the team, rather, he was happy for me and proud of me.

It’s inappropriate to stop running the bases for a tearful hug. But running past him, getting my high-five, I read his unspoken language perfectly.

“I’m proud of you, son. I love you.”

A Street I Lived On

2005-12-22T08:20:00.000-08:00

Before we moved into the house that I still live in, we lived in a half-double next to the paper mill on Logan Avenue.

One of the best things about the house on Logan was the large parking lot in which the trucks used to park their trailers between the loading and unloading of recycled paper. My brother and I used to ride our bikes around the lot with other kids in our neighborhood, circling the trailers. For a gift I was given a bicycle odometer to keep track of the many miles that I pedaled around that asphalt lot.

There was also a weighing station, and if you looked in the booth that was attached to the truck-sized scale, you could see a red LED gauge of how many tons your bike weighed. A certain truck had once dropped a large bundle of colored paper chits that were likely due to be recycled. We found these pieces near the scale, assigned them all some value, and called them "Moon Money".

The lady on one end of the street had a pear tree in her back yard. If not for the swarms of bees it drew every year, the pears would have made a great harvest. As it was, she was a bit old and didn't bother picking any of them. They all fell to the ground and on the sidewalk to her back door, leaving a terrible mess that the bees loved, and keeping away many kids from snatching the remaining low fruit. This was probably her plan all along.

In our back yard, there were only a couple of bushes in addition to the separate garage that we used for storage. One year, my brother and I insisted upon the building of a treehouse from some plans in a book. My dad obliged by constructing some artificial "trees" with 4x4s and cement anchors. The little A-frame treehouse was very cool when it was finished.

In that house, I learned how to program computers. I recall a specific image in my mind of sitting at a table in my room in the attic, my Timex-Sinclair 2000 on a table in front of me hooked to a small black and white TV. The sun reflected off of the neighboring house was coming through my small attic window. I spent far too much time there.

I remember some mornings with Cathy Draper, the girl from across the block. Her mother left early for work, so she came to our house for breakfast and to catch the bus. She never sat down to eat. Abby reminds me of her in that way.

Cathy and I explored the abandoned house near hers. We always said it was haunted, and both had said we saw something strang emoving around on the second floor.

Inside the house was a wreck. There were huge holes in the uncarpeted wooden floor, through which you could see the basement. The stairs were rickety, and although I refused to even step foot inside, Cathy wasn't afraid to get to the stair banister before turning around and running for fear of a noise from the haunted second floor.

Our immediate neighbors on the unattached side were the Reeves. They were as close to hillbilly as I ever want to live next to. The boy that lived there - I'm not sure who's boy it was, really - was always playing in the dirt in the back yard with that Dukes of Hazard car. His name was Boo. I'm sure his momma shot his daddy with a shotgun at some point. Their front porch stairs had a metal sign that said, "No Solicitors".

Across the alley from them lived the Browns. Mrs. Brown was always very nice to us, and her and her daughter, Angie, babysat for us now and then. I remember eating oatmeal cream pies at her house while my parents visitied my grandfather in the hospital.

Next door to the Browns lived Becky and Alicia. Becky was a bit older than me, maybe a school grade. Alicia was more my brother's age. One afternoon we played a kissing game in one of those collapsible plastic tunnels in Mrs. Brown's big yard. I didn't even realize what was going on when Alicia kissed me.

We moved away from Logan Avenue when I was 10. It was October. I don't remember much about the move, other than we were moving the last boxes into the house when the trick-or-treaters were walking the street.

The Bar II

2005-12-21T02:45:00.000-08:00

While he waited, Michael watched Summer go about her business. She was fairly tall, around 5' 9", and had long, curly dark hair which she kept away from her face with a cotton headband tied around her head. Her face was pretty and he thought her name suited her. She wore a light blue cotton shirt thrown over a darker vest top and a long white cotton skirt that flowed around her legs as she moved. Her hippy comment also suited her, though in a good way.

Michael had to admit he was attracted to her and under different circumstances - and in a better state of repair - would have asked her if she'd like to go for a drink. As it was, he contented himself with watching her.

Some 15 minutes later Ricky strolled in. A squat man carrying too much weight, his eyes too close together, a fat nose and a rapidly receding hairline. Michael took an instance dislike to him but he needed information and this was all he had.

Ricky had a few words with Summer, casting a glance over at Michael every few seconds. Eventually he joined him at the bar, pouring himself a coffee of his own. He perched his oversized behind on the stool opposite Michael and looked at him.

"I hear you're after some information."

"Yeah, it's an odd question, but I want to know if I was in here last night. And if so, who with," Michael asked.

"Summer told me you were having some...problems. You were in."

"Any idea what time, who with?"

The bar owner looked into the distance, remembering.

"Came in around 9. Two guys with you. Sharp dressers. Suits, you know? Looked silk. High rollers, I guess you'd say."

"What time did we leave?"

"Don't know. We were busy, can't say as I noticed."

"You must have some idea."

Ricky looked at him impatiently. "Look, I have a bar to open and a lot to get done. I have no idea what time you left. The guys you were with, they left before you. You had another drink afterwards. After that, I got no clue. I can't help you more than that."

"One last question. Was I drunk?"

"Nope. You have a good day."

Ricky finished his coffee in one swallow and walked round the bar and out back. Michael sat for a few moments, considering what he'd been told. Who were the men he was with? How could he find them? If he wasn't drunk, how the hell did he end up in an alley with a bruised skull? He'd obviously been attacked. But why?

He made for the exit. "Thanks for all your help, Summer," he called.

"Michael, wait."

He stopped at the door, turning. She walked over to him.

"The guys you were with," she said. "I didn't like them. They seemed...dangerous."

"I'll bear that in mind. Thanks again." He turned to leave but she put a hand out to stop him.

"I'm working from 8 tonight. If you want to call in and let me know how you are, I'd like that," she smiled.

"I might just do that," he smiled back. "Oh, does the name Kelso's mean anything to you?"

"It's a restaurant on the other side of town. Corner of Jackson Street and Carrington."

"Thanks. I might see you later."

Michael walked out into the mid-morning sun

The Bar

2005-12-20T06:31:00.000-08:00

The man sat that way, his head in his hands, eyes closed, for 20 minutes. He desparately tried to remember something about himself. His name, any family, friends, a job - anything that would ground him. But nothing came, he remained anonymous to himself, left floating nauseatingly in a world he recognised but no longer felt part of.

It suddenly occurred to him that he didn't even know what he looked like. Raising his head, he looked around. The windows of the bar were mirrored. Shakily, the man stood and walked slowly over to the building. He peered at himself.

Dark brown hair, worn fairly long, parted at the side. A day or two of growth on his cheeks. Green eyes. A thin nose. A silver earing in his left ear. None of it meant anything to him. He turned his head, trying to determine the extent of the damage there. The motion itself caused a dull ache to pulse through his skull. He winced and turned away from the window. He had to do something.

"Ok, think. You woke up in an alley, across the street from a bar. Makes sense you've had too much to drink and maybe had an accident, got mugged or ended up in a fight."

It was the only lead he had. He banged on the front door, peering through the smoked glass it held. The lights were on and a woman moved between the tables with a mop. She looked up, mouthed "We're closed" and went back to her mopping. He banged the door again, harder this time. Looking annoyed, the woman dropped the mop and walked over, calling through the glass.

"I said we're closed."

"I don't want a drink, I just want to talk," he shouted back.

Reluctantly, the woman unlocked the door, pulling it open a couple of inches.

"Seriously, I just want to talk. I need your help," he said.

"Help with what?"

"Well...this will sound strange, but...was I in here last night, do you know?"

She opened the door wider, getting a better look at him. After a couple of seconds she said: "Maybe."

"Maybe I look familiar or maybe, now go away?" he said, smiling. She smiled back.

"Maybe, you look familiar. We were busy last night, but I have a feeling you were in."

"Would anyone else know?"

"Ricky might. He owns the bar. He'll be in at 10."

"May I come in and wait? I promise I won't get in your way."

She eyed him again, assessing what trouble he might be. Deeming him safe enough, she nodded.

"Ok. I have to finish cleaning up, but I can make you a coffee if you like. You look like you need it."

"That would be great," he replied. "Can I use the bathroom and get cleaned up a little?"

As if noticing for the first time the dirt on his hands and face and the state of his clothes she took a step back. Her surprise was short lived. "Yeah, go ahead, I'll have your coffee ready when you're done."

The man thanked her and headed for the restrooms. Turning on the faucet to get some hot water he took a better look at himself in the mirror. Apart from the dirt and the holes in his jeans, he didn't look too bad. The leather jacket was ruined. He had no choice but to keep it for now.

He washed, slicking back his hair with the water, cleaning up his face and hands and doing what he could with the jacket and jeans. He removed the traces of dried blood on his neck and was able to get a better look at the wound. Nothing major, but he'd definitely taken a blow at some point. Already the pain was subsiding.

He walked back out into the bar and saw the woman sitting on a stool at the counter. He walked over and she handed him a cup of hot coffee. He thanked her and took a sip. It was strong and he immediately felt better.

"Thanks, uh..."

"Summer, and I know, hippy parents," she smiled.

"Thanks, Summer."

"And you are?"

"I don't know," he said, looking at her.

"You don't know. Must have been some night?"

The man told her all he knew. It didn't take long.

She stared at him for a few moments. Wondering if he was telling the truth. She saw no lie in his eyes.

"You need a name, friend. What do you fancy?" Summer asked.

"I have no idea! What do I look like?"

She laughed, before studying him intently.

"I think...I think you look like a Michael."

The man thought about it. Michael. If, by some stroke of luck, that was his name it didn't click. But it was as good as any.

"Then I'll be Michael, Summer, pleased to meet you."

"You too, Michael. Or is it Mike?"

"No, Michael. I prefer Michael."

"Ok, Michael. Ricky should be in soon and I have to get finished up. Help yourself to the coffee, it's just behind the bar."

Michael watched her return to her cleaning. Reaching over the bar he grabbed the coffee pot and poured another cup. He'd need to eat soon. Settling back onto his stool, he sipped his coffee and watched Summer polish tables. He put a hand in the pocket of the leather jacket and felt a slip of paper. He took it out, turning it over.

Kelso's
8.30

Again, it meant nothing but he felt that if nothing could be learned from Ricky he had something else to work with. If he could find out who or what Kelso was. He put the paper back in his pocket and waited for the bar owner. Summer carried on cleaning.

Unexpected

2005-12-19T18:25:00.000-08:00

Write about finding something unexpected...

I wonder what his face will look like when he opens that envelope to find the money order for $10,000. He won't have any idea that it was from me; I made sure of that.

We broke up six months ago. I'm almost over him, but I still care. Probably too much. It's just that he had always seemed so needy; I worried about how he was getting by without someone to love him. Take care of him.

It seemed innocent enough at first. He'd lived in my apartment for three years and we'd shared everything. We'd had a joint bank account even though neither of us was ever very good with money. That was probably one of the things that broke us up.

When we'd first met I'd loved his insouciance and sense of fun. Everyone I'd ever dated before had been so stuffy and obsessed with details, but I guess that comes from dating bankers. I work in a bank, and though I'm not naturally the "banker-type," some of that practicality has rubbed off on me through the years. And thank God for that. My dad used to always say that I needed to marry some old rich guy who'd take care of me and tame my wild side but that hasn't happened yet.

So when Matt walked into my bank and flashed that devilish smile as I handed him his cash, I was a goner. I could see his bank balance right there in front of me; I knew that he was taking out his last $100 and was leaving behind a grand total of $3.71 but he didn't even flinch or look anxious a bit. This is a wonderful quality in a date, but it gets old in a live-in boyfriend.

In the beginning it was all about going out for coffee and pastries on Saturday mornings. Or out for Chinese food on Thursdays. And if I brought home some expensive French wine one night just because I felt like kicking back and softening the edges a little bit, he never once made me feel that I should have economized, no matter how low our balance was.

But he was like an overgrown little boy. He'd rush out and buy some gadget that he "just had to have," like an iPod or a recordable DVD player or a flat-screen TV, even when our old MP3 player worked just fine and we hadn't even been using it for months, or when our clunky DVD/VCR combo worked just fine (even if it wasn't as sleek and sexy as the new machine) or when we already had two, albeit round-screen, TVs in our tiny apartment and how could two people possibly watch three TVs?

But he was fun. We were happy for awhile, before the stress of always being down to our last few dollars got to us. He'd decided that he wanted to finally live his dream and go to massage school, but we had neither the money or the credit to py for that. He became more and more depressed and frustrated because he couldn't do what he wanted to do with his life, so as compensation he'd buy his new toys and his daily lattes, further ensuring that he couldn't afford to do what he dreamed of. Then he started drinking. That's when I kicked him out.

It broke my heart for a few months. I still hurt, but it's getting better every day. Then I had the idea of looking into his bank account at work and I started monitoring his expenses. At first it was a sick need to try to figure out if there was someone else in his life yet. I knew him so well that I could tell by the Friday-night video rental charges and also by the amounts of his daily (especially Saturday morning) coffee purchases that he wasn't in a new relationship yet.

I knew that this was sick (and totally unethical as well as illegal) but I couldn't stop myself. And after I'd been doing this for some time it didn't seem quite so appalling when I took it further and peeked one day into his email account. It was the account that we'd used to share but I had gotten a new one. Actually, I can't believe it took me so long to think up this idea. Here I'd been doing it the hard way, trying to glean from his expenses whether or not he had moved on romantically when it was so easy to read his correspondence with friends and family.

What I read there made me worry. He was still drinking too much and depressed. He was still despairing over being able to afford massage school. I read several messages from the school which clearly stated that he did not qualify for either a loan or financial aid of any sort, and I read his increasingly despondent reactions to these messages as he kept people updated.

Now, this whole time I'd been getting my own act together. Oh, obviously not my mental or emotional one, you don't need to tell me that. But my financial house was in order. I'd tightened my belt, stopped splurging on indulgences. Since I'd taken to nagging at Matt in our final weeks together, I guess I wanted to prove that I'd really had something to nag about. I wanted to show that without him, I was capable of saving money.

I read that the tuition for massage school was just shy of $10K. I happened to have just that much. I probably shouldn't be giving this man my entire savings, but I'd loved him. Still love him. And I'd proven to myself that I really could save up this much money! This could be looked at as a temporary set-back; I'd be able to save up that much in another six months.

And yes, I suppose that deep down I was thinking that once Matt got his life back on track, went to massage school and was doing what he wanted to do and making good money at it, maybe we could try things again. Seems so wide-eyed and delusional now but I really didn't even admit this hope to myself.

I made out a money order at work and then slipped it into an envelope. I'd arranged to send it first to my sister in Texas, who would then send it from there. Matt would have no idea who in Texas could be sending him this money. My sister had only just moved out there the month before, and even if he had somehow gotten wind of it through the grapevine, he'd never think that she would do that. And he'd never expect me to have that kind of money.
____________

He gets the money. Does he figure it out? Do they ever get back together? Does he waste the money? Does she find out that he has found someone new? Does he find out that she was basically cyber-stalking him? Is he mad?

Bar

2005-12-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

"Hey, honey! That's the bar we use to go to when we were young & foolish!"

"Sure that's it. Player's Square......what good times! Like those St. Patrick Day parties!"

I can remember one St. Patrick's day party that wasn't much fun. Even with the green beer.......did Hank really drink that stuff? I didn't. That's when I could still drink Johnny Walker red which was about the only thing that didn't have a green hue on Pine Street that night. Some people had green hats or green crepe paper strips drapped around their necks. I remember green lights behind the bar & booths. Even the thick smokey air had a green tint.

I remember rushing to the bar along Pine from the bus stop. The sidewalks were full of loud people. Most of us were young marrieds. Some just getting off work earlier than usual so the clubs in town could increase profits because of a revered Irish saint. And there I was with everyone else feeling keyed up with excitement. I wasn't excited because of that revered saint, but because I was meeting the love of my life.

We talked that way in the '60s. We were looking for love. Our mothers were hoping we'd get good jobs in a bank so we'd have something to fall back on if another depression hit. Some of us managed to find good jobs, but we were seeking our security in a man & were positive love would be there too. We didn't think much about a depression. Mostly we thought about husbands. I was one of the ones looking for a husband who wore a shirt & tie to work. Someone to have fun with. Not only did I get the book keeping job, but I found me an educated husband. A nice guy from Minnesota who sold office supplies to several large businesses in the city.

It was a nice wedding on a very hot & humid September day. We found an apartment in a small, shabby, but elegant building near downtown. A 6 month old baby girl slept in a crib at the foot of our bed. When I rushed along the street to meet daddy she was with the sitter, my sister who knew I was between feedings. I'd have to return in about 3 or 4 hours or stains would appear on my snug blouse. I didn't know it would be our last St. Patrick's Day at Player's Square.

I saw him across the jammed lounge at the bar. Handsome, grinning! I managed to get to him & join the the fun. He was with friends he worked with. A few were young, but Dave was older problably around 50 years old. He seemed a nice man, but Hank & I thought he drank too much & spent far too much time away from home. But tonight he sipped his green beer & was more subdued. He wanted to know all about the baby & how the hunt for a bigger place was going. I always enjoyed talking with him since he usually liked telling me things about his own wife & their 2 boys. I can't remember much else about that evening except that soon after I arrived I found myself walking down a dark hallway toward to ladies room. I was passing the back foyer leading to a hotel lobby when the door opened & someone from Hank's office stepped in from of me. "Hi mom," he said. "How's baby doing?" He said the word baby in such a way, that I still remember that I felt scared. He'd been drinking & he was standing much too close. I clearly remember backing away & feeling the wall against my back. "Hi, Larry." Big smile on my face. Girls raised in the '50s smiled big in the '60s. "The guys are at the bar......." While I was trying to speak, he placed his hands against the wall on either side of me. My mouth was very dry. I felt trapped. I wanted to cry. There was sweat was between my breasts. I'm not real clear about what happened next, but I do remember him telling me that my blouse looked like it was stained. Then he lightly traced a circle around a small spot over my nipple. I couldn't move. Things shifted to slow motion as I looked up into that handsome face. I recall someone speaking too loudly & laughing. "Larry! Pick on someone your own size!" For a moment I couldn't move. His head turned to the voice & laughter. I had moved away toward the ladies room, my eyes blurred with tears. When I found a place to sit in the ladies room lounge, the woman giving out hand towels & keeping things tidy said, "Are you crying or you got somethin' in your eye? Let me look at that eye......." She patted my back & soothed me me her "my, mys."

The rest is mostly hazy. Eventually, I made it back to Hank & his friends. He winked & smiled at me. Everyone was talking. The noise level was awfully high & someone put a glass of green beer into my hand. I felt angry. Hank knew I didn't drink beer & that sipping wine was my limit. I just stood there feeling very ticked off. Now Hank was caught up in conversation with someone at the bar. I'm sure it was a woman.He wasn't even looking my way. Then I heard a voice in my ear. It was Dave. Older Dave who was quiet tonight. " 'Bout time for you to be heading home, Susan? That little girl probably needs her supper. Hank said you couldn't stay long. Maybe I can walk you out the door." Without another word, that's what he did. I assured him that the bus would be along soon & that I'd be fine on my own. I was back to the apartment soon after. As I came through the door, I could feel the baby's dinner fill me. It felt good to take her from my kid sister. "She's such a good baby. I love to sit for you.....maybe next week? Just let me know........" Sure, I'd have her sit again for me. But at this very moment, I wanted nothing more than to hold & feed my baby.

Hank got home around midnight. He was happy. He'd had a nice time........" Why'd you leave so quickly? I didn't even get a chance to say much to you. You ok? You sure you're ok?"

Lost

2005-12-17T16:41:00.000-08:00

He rose to consciousness slowly, as if rising to the surface of a deep lake. Blurry images cleared gradually. A wall, a fire escape, a dumpster, boxes surrounded by trash. On the wall somebody had spray painted the words "Will you make it back?". It meant nothing to the man.

He sat up, aware of a dull ache at the back of his skull. He reached back, felt dried blood and a sharper flash of pain. Looking down at himself he saw he was wearing jeans, ripped at the knees, dirty with alley water. On his feet were sneakers, once white, now a muddy brown. The shirt he wore was comparitively clean, just a few buttons missing but the leather jacket was filthy and torn. These were not his clothes, he was sure.

Wincing, the man rose unsteadily to his feet and took a better look around. Clearly it was an alleyway, but he didn't recognise it. Walking slowly to the street he noticed the sun was bright and still low. It was early morning. Yet he had no recollection of the previous night. He reached the street and scanned the area.

A bar - Ricky's, a 7-11, a Denny's, a gas station, a jewellers, a pawn shop, two clothes shops and a laundromat. This wasn't a street he was familiar with. There were very few people around. He guessed it must be no later than seven.

Turning right he walked towards the bar, crossing the street and stopping at the entrance to the parking lot. He stared at the sign, trying to connect the name with something. As he stared he was startled by a voice behind him.

"Mister, are you ok?"

He turned quickly. A middle aged Hispanic woman was looking at him curiously.

"You ok?" she repeated.

"Uh, I don't know," he replied.

"Are you lost?"

He opened his mouth to respond but was hit by a sudden realisation. He wasn't just lost. He had no idea who he was. His entire memory was lost. He staggered, feeling faint. The Hispanic woman moved quickly on.

"Drunk." she thought.

The man sat on the wall surrounding the parking lot, his head in his hands. Lost.

Bar

2005-12-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

"Bar pics are the worst!" exclaimed a voice from the table directly across from hers. She glanced up from her book at the rowdy group of mostly boys, young men in their early twenties, and girls about the same age. They were college-aged, but she didn't take them for college kids. The girls were dressed up from jobs at sales counters and reception desks. Some of the boys wore casual office-type clothes while others were in nice jeans and neat T-shirts.

They were sending each other text messages on their phones, laughing riotously at what she could guess were obscene comments, perhaps about the other coffeehouse patrons, perhaps even about her. A few of the guys put their heads together, apparently examining a picture that was sent to the phone of the exclaimer, a photo of himself it seemed, that everyone was laughing at.

Bar pics are the worst. That phrase made her pause. Bar pics. It made her see this group of young, energetic, carefree people living the kind of life where you are so happy to be where you are with you you're with that you start snapping pictures of each other, just for fun. Kids like this probably have so many pictures that they have to designate them by location, such as "bar pics," or "park pics," or "weekend at the beach pics." Her heart hurt a little to think of how much affection lay in this group of casual young people, such that they wanted to immortalize their lives and each other.

Of course, it was easier now, with digital everything. When she was their age, people were more frugal with film. You tried to save it for special occasions, or at least occasions when you felt pretty sure that the subject being photographed would turn out looking pretty good. You didn't just go snapping pictures any old place. Kids this age must have more pictures of themselves already than she would probably have in her entire lifetime. She searched her memory for a single picture of her in a bar, young and tipsy, flirty, loud. Like these girls. Was she like this once?

There was one picture taken of her in a bar about twenty years ago, when she was 21 or 22. She thinks of this picture and remembers it being a good one, one where she looked happy and pretty. She wore contacts then and was a little thinner. Maybe a lot thinner.

Another burst of laughter erupted from the table and she could see that the object of this teasing laughter, the young man who had bemoaned the whole category of "bar pics," was flushed and embarrassed.

"Dude! I could not BELIEVE when you did that!" said the guy sitting next to him, slapping him on the back. The girls squealed and giggled, as a phone was passed around.

"I think you should take that picture off your phone, Sara," the flushed young man said. His jaws were clenched tightly, his face still flushed but unsmiling now.

She ducked her head so that she'd appear to be reading her book but she was completely focused on this drama. What picture did he want Sara to erase from her phone? And why?

The girl, Sara, giggled and waved her phone in the air triumphantly. "No WAY! If you're stupid enough to strip in a bar, you can't whine because I snapped a few pics!"

Just then she noticed that one of the young women wasn't laughing. She was sitting quietly, her face pale. There was a dignity on her face that was transparently arranged and deliberate.

It reminded her of the naked, raw expression she had once worn when she herself walked into a bar, looking for her married lover. She'd been about the same age as these young people, and she never tells anyone now that she had let herself fall into this trap. No one would believe that someone as sensible and level-headed as she would have ever been walking hopefully into a bar, expecting to meet up with the married man she'd been seeing for a little less than a year. But there she was, and as she scanned the faces in the dark and smoky bar, her eyes fell upon her lover. She could feel her features light up in recognition and excitement and then she looked at the woman sitting next to him. His wife. In those few seconds she realized that at the last minute, his wife had insisted on coming out with her husband and he'd not had a chance to contact her.

The wife had seen her face light up. She'd undoubtedly taken in the excitement and hope and perhaps even the sexual way that her ### (something her body did inadvertantly) when she'd seen him. When she saw the wife's face, and saw that not only had she recognized the raw hope and beauty that had appeared on her face but that she'd seen it before, in the many other women who'd wanted her husband, she had turned around abruptly and run from the bar, crying.

And this girl now, would she stnd up and run? Because her face, it so clearly showed that she had not been present when her boyfriend had done the strip-tease in the bar, and that she was extremely hurt that the other girl had not only been there, but had felt familiar enough to take pictures.

At the table behind her book, she watches the young man and finally knows how she had appeared that night in the bar, that night when she had known how it felt to hurt someone else when all you'd thought you were doing was having a good time. The guy feels his eyes on hers and they lock eyes, fellow conspirators in the contest which neither, in the end, had won.

Bar

2005-12-16T10:14:00.000-08:00

I worked for a different company, four years ago. I was a Regional Manager in Development, meaning that I was responsible for four to nine stores at any given time, as well as my own. We had a meeting in Vegas in February for all store managers and up. I traveled with Carl, my supervisor, and eight store managers. I had hired and trained most of these managers, and they knew me fairly well. They knew that I was a "work hard, play hard" kind of guy. They just didn't know to what extreme. They had never really seen me in action. It's not that I played some role just for them, but I was guarded and careful of what impressions they were getting of me. They were my employees. I needed them to respect me. That was going well until our second night in Vegas.

The setting: New York, New York. A Dueling Piano bar. 12:30AM.

I'm there with Carl and the eight managers. Everyone's having a great time. We're singing along to every song, dancing with random strangers, but keeping the group close together. One woman with whom I'm dancing lifts my shirt up a bit and rubs her belly against mine. Nothing serious, just dancing. Carl witnesses the event and comments on my abs. (I should mention that I'm not exactly "ripped", but am in good shape.) His thought process somehow leads him to wonder who would make a better stripper, him or me. Now, I'm by no means modest. In fact, I'm a bit of an exhibitionist. Not to the point that I walk around flashing people, but close. Carl wants to have a stripping contest right there in New York, New York. Knowing that he's shit-faced and would regret the decision, I politely demur. I, too, would regret it if we had a stripping contest in front of eight people who thought of me as a strict professional. Carl calls me a chicken-shit. I bring the request to the attention of a bartender. The bartender apparently hasn't had a lot of requests like this one, so he hands it off to his manager. The manager tells me to bring my request to the musicians, as one would a song, and they'll get to it. He wants the bar to clear out a bit more before they allow anything that risque.

I return to where Carl was being held up by the bar table and explain to him that it'll be a while. He buys me a beer. All of the managers, intrigued by what is about to go down, buy me beer. Somewhere after 1:30AM and eight or nine beers later, one of the piano players beckons for Carl and I to come up to the pianos. We go. The female pianist tells the crowd what is about to go on. The music starts.

Unsure of how much I should be removing, I watch Carl and follow his lead. I am acutely aware that the eight managers are dumbfounded as we start dancing. Having a bit of experience at stripping (nothing professional, I assure you), I'm comfortable doing my thing. I am getting a couple of women in the crowd involved, and have removed my shirt as I look over my shoulder to see that Carl is up on a table unzipping his pants. I'm way behind, at least as far as clothing removal goes. I can't have that. In a flash, the pants come off. Two ladies who have been following me around putting dollar bills in my pants collect the money that has fallen out, mostly donated by them, and stuff it back into my underwear. They then encourage me to remove the silk boxer-briefs. Their encouragement is not verbal. It's physical.

Underwear now down to my ankles, the music stops. I pull up my shorts and am looking for my pants when a security guard jogs over to me. Apparently I took it too far. As I'm being led out of the bar to the cheers of most of the crowd, I see Carl being redressed by one of my managers as they're following me out the door.

The security guard tells me that he doesn't want any trouble. I just need to leave. A guy in the bar had complained that, on top of my nakedness, I was hitting on his girlfriend whilst naked. Apparently that was where the line was crossed, I guess. No charges pressed, just leave and don't come back right away. Like this year.

I'm going into the next bar when my group catches up to me. They insist that it'd be a good idea to head back to the hotel, since Carl's dance ended with him falling down over a chair and not having the strength to get back up. I concur and we head back. Two of the managers are holding Carl up, while the other six give me a play-by-play of everything that had happened. The two women managers seemed to be impressed with my pole-dancing skills. Even the guys appreciated the grind that I had done with the redhead (I was still mostly clothed at that point, I think).

But something had changed. I was their buddy now. They spoke to me as a peer, not their supervisor. The dancing and stripping was not something that they would have dared do and were surprised that I would. They had never seen me even drink more than one beer prior to tonight. Then I've got my clothes strewn about a bar, exposing myself to all of them, as well as a hundred or so other people. What must they be thinking?

The next afternoon was an awards banquet. As I walked from our table to the stage to accept my award, I thought about how my employees' impression of me had changed overnight, how they now thought of me as a real person, like them, not the stuffed suit that they had come to know. That wall that I had built up is gone. The boundaries nullified.

When I went back to work the next week, I stopped wearing suits when I visited the stores. Khakis and Polo shirts. But that's not why they treated me differently. The managers now knew that I had another side, a side with which they could personally relate. They liked that. I learned a lot more about my managers after that because they were comfortable opening up to me.

We're all fallible. None of us are perfect, no matter what face we try to wear. And not having to be perfect feels good, doesn't it?

Something Lost

2005-12-09T10:36:00.000-08:00

Write a story about an object that has been lost:

"What's this?" Colleen asks, pulling a keychain out of my jewelry box.

"It's from New Zealand. My uncle lives there. It's a Maori emblem," I reply.

She's about to toss it back into the box, unimpressed. I don't want her to be unimpressed. For starters, my New Zealand uncle, whom I have only seen twice in my twelve years of life, seems exotic and fascinating to me. I want her to grasp this.

He had been in the Coast Guard when he first travelled to new Zealand. While there, he'd met his now-wife, Claire. She is a dignified, icy-cool blonde English woman. I adore her accent. Though she isn't much older than my mother, if at all, she has old-world, European skills like needlework and knitting. My mother knits, but she makes gaudy afghans with acrylic yarn in ugly colors. Claire knits wool sweaters. The kind that handsome men who smoke pipes model in the knitting magazines she reads. She makes heirloom baby layettes for pregnant women. My mother stitches plastic canvas boxes and Kleenex-box covers. Claire embroiders linen pillowcases and sheets.

The last time I saw her, many years ago, she had sat me down and shown me how to embroider. She'd patiently taught me different stitches. I'd sat with her for hours, soaking up her gentle ways and her refined, lovely accent. It's hard to believe Uncle Ernie's story that he met her at "a three-day party, under the dining room table." I won't even begin to understand the concept of a party spanning three days for years to come. Let alone one where people are under tables. But this thrills me nonetheless, that people could have such different selves tucked away. Claire bends over her needlework and tries to hide a smile when Ernie tells us about their meeting, and I know that she has secrets. What about my mother? Does she have secrets? A private, younger side that I would be shocked to know about? I am sure that she does not.

But also, Colleen is exotic and fascinating to me. We've been friends since fourth grade, and now that we're in seventh it's becoming even more clear that she is going to be a star in life. She's beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed, and has perfectly straight white teeth that dazzle when she smiles. She wears strawberry lip gloss and the slight reddish tint of it complements her fair coloring perfectly. We all have our signature flavor, each one of us. Tracey's is Grape Jelly. Caryn's is Vanilla. Mine is Watermelon. I like it, but the slight greenish tint makes my lips look odd in certain light. My favorite flavor is Strawberry, but Colleen got it first. And I have to admit, it's perfect for her. She deserves it more than I do.

Colleen was the first in our group to slow dance with a boy. Then she was the first in our group to kiss a boy, the same boy, during the same slow dance. Then her mother found out and forbade her to have anything to do with the school dances again but we still hold her in awe. She has felt a boy's arms around her waist, and she has felt a boy's lips on hers. I'm not even sure I want to do either; the boys I like make my heart race and my palms clammy but since they never even look at me, my imagination has not progressed very far as to what I would do if one did. The Strawberry would be a total waste on me.

So I don't want Colleen to think I'm some stupid kid who keeps cheap plastic keychains in my jewelry box for no reason. "There's something... a little weird about that keychain," I tell her.

"Yeah?" She sits up straighter, still holding it in her hand. "What?"

"Well," I start, hesitating. No one knows this about me, but I am a pretty good liar. I'm considered a goody-goody by most because I get good grades and never get in trouble. But part of why I never get in trouble is because I'm a good liar. "I've had it since I was really little. Like, five."

"So? So it's old," she says, disappointed. She's about to toss it back in the box when I interrupt her.

"I have thrown it away a dozen times!"

"Thrown it away? Then how - "

"That's what I mean! I keep throwing it away and it always ends up back in the box. I can't get rid of it!"

"Your mom is probably finding it in the trash and pulling it out. My mom always looks through my trash."

"But I've thrown it away at school, too." I say. She looks at me, her big, blue eyes glittering.

"Are you serious? At school? And it still turned up here?"

My heart swells a little because I know I've hooked her. "Uh huh. And once I threw it away at the mall, and once I threw it down my grandma's trash chute at her apartment. It keeps coming back."

We look at each other and when our eyes we meet we both shiver. "That's spooky," she says. I'm at that point where I believe my lie. That's why I'm so good.

"Well, there's GOT to be a way we can make it go away for good," Colleen says, standing up with the keychain in her hand and casting her eyes frantically around my room. Her eyes alight on my window.

Now I'm scared. I had ben getting into it, but I suddenly remember that the whole thing was fake, and that if she throws that out my window, I'll probably never see it again. My parents call the side yard, the one directly outside my bedroom windows, "Neverneverland" because they never take care of it. The weeds are taller than I am. The whole area is fenced in and it's almost impossible to open the one gate that opens up to it because the dense growth impedes it. If a ball is thrown over the fence we buy a new ball. I never open my windows.

"Er - I dunno," I say, trying to stall. "The whole thing kinda creeps me out and I just want to leave it in my box," I say, reaching my hand out to get the chain back.

But Colleen's eyes are still glittering and she igonres my outstretched hand. "I'll bet if we threw out the window into that weed patch, it'd be lost forever!"

I really don't want it to be lost forever. I don't have very many things to remind me about my uncle and aunt. I still have the half-finished embroidery project tucked away somewhere in my closet. I will never finish it, but I don't know this yet. I think that one day I will take it out and become like Aunt Claire, classy and graceful and accomplished. Perhaps I will take on an English accent.

And my keychain reminds me that I have in my genes a tendency to wander, to explore. To take risks and live wherever I want to. I don't see this in any of my family members who live with me. We're all a timid, careful lot. We would never go to a three-day party. We would shrink from that much mayhem and chaos. I already know and fear this about myself, but I have hopes that when I grow up I will be like Uncle Ernie and have adventures. I know that Colleen will, and that she takes this for granted. It's not fair for her to jeopardize my chances for some silly story I told.

"Colleen, don't!" She has started for my window and is tugging at it. It sticks, so as she tugs I try to reason with her. "What if it doesn't come back? I've decided that I want to keep it now," I plead. "Because it kept coming back."

"Oh, it's just a plastic thing! Who cares?"

The window unsticks with one violent tug and as I gasp in horror, Colleen tosses the keychain out the window. She calmly closes the window and turns to face me. "There. Now let's see if it comes back!"

But I knew it wasn't coming back. And I tell myself it was just a stupid plastic keychain. And that I can at least think of it being just outside my window, somewhere, even if I can't see it. The important thing, I reassure myself, is that I'd seemed momentarily interesting to Colleen. I perk up.

Twenty-five years later my daughter's Girl Scout troop is studying New Zealand and she brings home a picture of the Maori symbol that had been on my keychain. My parents have just months before cleaned out Neverneverland so that they could put the house on the market. I wonder if they came across it but if they did, no one mentioned it. It would be long gone by now.

Animal

2005-12-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

Tell a story about an animal:

When I first saw her, she wasn't very friendly. I had to coax her for a few weeks to trust me enough to come close, but by the end of summer she'd sit in my lap on the delapidated old lawn chair on our front porch. She'd purr while the sun set over the farmland across from our rented house and I'd never felt happier.

I had just finished my degree in French Literature a few months before, and while I was happy in Idaho and loving the change from city to country, beach to farm, I was also feeling a bit at loose ends. I hadn't found a job yet, or met any friends. I felt without moorings. As the cat purred on my lap I remembered a passage I'd read by Colette, something about her cats (Colette had a great love of animals and cats in particular) which had made my heart swell up with love for every cat I had ever owned as I read it and so I named this cat Colette. As a way to connect my old life and my new.

She rewarded me with her batch of kittens, certainly not her first, judging from the ease with which she left them on our porch that day. "Here, now you take them," she seemed to say. And I did.

Charlie was the funny one. The ham. He and Bill had a special rapport that started the day that Bill picked him up by the scruff of his tiny little neck and he hissed ferociously at him. He was so cocksure of himself, that his hissing would scare the crap out of this man, that Bill about fell over laughing and they were fast friends from then on.

Hillary was the smartest one. She was also vocal, the way some cats are, "mow"-ing and "mrrp"-ing conversationally, almost constantly. Hillary Clinton was making waves at the time as the "I'm no stand-by-your-man Tammy Wynette-cookie-baking woman," debacle so I named this cat who never seemed to know when to shut her mouth in her honor. It wasn't an insult. I admired them both.

And Darryl, she was the oddball. The runt. She had probably not developed completely in the womb, and even now outside of it she was too timid to compete for milk and food and merely took whatever was leftover. She was half the size of the others. She was also the shyest. Her shyness went beyond simple meekness and bordered on the neurotic. Long after the other two had come to trust us and let us play with them and hold them, Darryl shrunk into the shadows and hid under cars, refusing to let us get close to her.

Eventually the other two learned how to pull open our sagging screen door by its corner on the bottom and run inside our house. Inside was where there was always food and warmth (or cool shade) and kitten toys. Darryl wanted no part of it. One day, though, as I held back and out of her sight, she tentatively followed the others in and instantly regretted it. She looked trapped. Cornered. She tried to figure out how to get back out but before she could I had latched the screen shut, and since I had her trapped there, between the screen and myself, I dared to risk alienating her forever by taking advantage of the proximity and touching her. As I crooned softly, "It's ok, you'll be ok..." and lowered my hand slowly and gently to her she cringed and cowered and trembled. When my hand stroked her fur her eyes popped open in surprise and just that quickly she decided that this touching thing, it wasn't so bad. Purring loudly, she rubbed up to me and greedily demanded payback for all of the barren, love-starved months she'd endured until now.

It wasn't long before word got out that we were hosts of an unwed-cat-mother facility. The next mother to deposit her offspring on our porch was a bedraggled white cat I named, simply, Mama-Kitty. I feel bad now that she never had an identity beyond her parental role. She left us three fluffy white kittens. I managed to give one away to a co-worker (I had found a job by then), and the other two we named Buster and Oliver.

Buster. He was the quintessential kitten. When you think of kittens and their funny antics, the chasing of tails, the batting at pieces of yarn - you think of Buster. He played the role to perfection. I couldn't help but love that little guy with all of my heart, as if he were my child. I thought of him while I was away at work, wondering what he was doing.

His brother, Oliver, was the complete opposite. Gloomy. Shy. Timid. Cynical. If Buster was the guy who was always the life of the party, Oliver was the "emotionally complex" one. And yes, I adored him. I loved Oliver with less of a physical, grabbing-up-and-smooching kind of love than I did Buster, but in addition to loving him I respected him. I understood him. We were peas in a pod.

Oliver trusted very few in this world, and while I was admitted to this esteemed circle it was Buster who received the best of Oliver's love. They curled up together to sleep every night. If Oliver ever, ever came at all close to "playing," it was because Buster was poking at him relentlessly until he finally gave in and started to swipe back. Buster was good for Oliver. He was going to show him how to become more free.

And then he was run over by a car, Buster was. I grieved noisily and openly, sobbing at home, at work, at the laundromat. It felt like a part of my body had been torn off. But I could only imagine the heartache that Oliver felt and in time he and I pulled together and became even closer. We had several connections now, and we shared the kind of grief that you never really recover from.

He trusted no one but me now. When my parents visited at Christmas, Oliver managed to squeeze himself underneath the refrigerator, so convinced was he that these people meant him harm. I wrung my hands and worried a lot because I couldn't see how any creature could fit themself into that small of a space, underneath something so solid and heavy, and survive. But when my parents would leave the house to do Christmas shopping Oliver would sneak out, dazed and traumatized, and huddle next to me on the couch.

Lie

2005-12-05T09:05:00.000-08:00

Write a story about a lie:

This time when he looked at her she saw it differently. Gave her a weird feeling, almost creepy. For years she'd known him as Lori's husband, the father of Kylie, who was a school friend of her daughter's. Kylie and Toni had been friends since first grade, six years ago. Kylie's mother, Lori, was completely the opposite from her. She was large and brassy. She seemed to not notice that she was overweight and wore short-short skirts. She bleached hre hair and wore too much makeup. She and Karen would never have been friends if their daughters weren't.

But Karen had grown to like Lori. She enjoyed her over-the-top enthusiasm and her tendency to say exactly what was on her mind. As she did the day she blurted out that her husband wasn't really Kylie's father at all. Nor her husband any longer. Karen had stared uncomprehendingly at her. For years she'd seen the two of them at school plays, soccer games, all over town. They'd seemed to be a happy couple.

But as Lori'd explained, "Mike never could keep it in his pants. All the time we were married he was sneaking out, staying out all night, lying to me. He was so bad that his own family was telling me to divorce him! So I finally did." Karen didn't try to figure out why they'd been living in the same house for as long as she'd known them; she'd think about it later. Because Lori wasn't done with the story. "And then I was so lonely and unhappy - Karen, it was hell to be with this man who didn't love me for so long. We're great friends, always have been, but he always wanted other women more than he wanted me. So then I met this man at the bank where I was eorking and..."

Karen tried to look casual, as if this wasn't shocking. She looked over at Kylie and Toni where they were eating popcorn from a bowl on the counter and giggling loudly. She blushed when she remembered how many times she'd said that Kylie looked so much like Mike.

"So, Mike knew all along?" she finally ventured.

"Yes, he knew. I guess he knew that he could hardly play the victim after all the women he'd been with. he agreed to raise Kylie as ours, together."

"And this other man, the real father - " Karen said, hesitating.

Lori sighed drmaatically. "He said that if he couldn't have all of me and the baby, he didn't want nothing to do with with either of us. It'd be too painful." Lori looked soberly down at the floor.

"And he still lives here? In town?"

"Yeah. Last I heard. I haven't seen him since we broke up, right after I told him that I was pregnant."

Karen was trying to absorb all of this, but she'd have to think more about it later. Why didn't she break off her marriage to be with the father, if they loved each other as much as she said they did? And why would Mike agree to raise this child as his own?

"And Kylie didn't know about any of this until recently?" Karen asked. That was what had brought the whole issue to the front; Kylie had loudly and with great flourish announced that she hated Mike and he wasn't even her real father and so she didn't have to do what he said.

"No, we'd agreed to never tell her," Lori said sadly. "She was never supposed to know. I could just kill that Mike for getting ugly about this. He didn't mind raising her as his own at all - he LOVES Kylie! As far as he's concerned, she is his daughter. Until we decided to finalize the divorce and child support payments came up."

And it was since they'd started official divorce proceedings that Mike had started to drastically change. He started to dye his hair. He was often wearing a leather jacket. And the last several times that Karen had seen him, when he'd be picking Kylie up from her house or shed run into him around town, his eyes had lingered on her. Now that she knew what a womanizer he'd always been, he seemed like a different person. She'd be talking to Kylie as she stood next to Mike and although she never stopped looking at Kylie as she spoke, she'd feel his eyes on her. Why all of a sudden? She'd known him for years. And Karen was happily married, besides. Why was he suddenly leering at her?