[imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis]
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Finishing Things
About 20 years ago I wrote the beginning of a short story called "The water carriers", and about 18 years ago I wrote the ending. I never managed to get the middle of it finished. Not finishing things is a deeply ingrained habit that I acquired long ago, and it is one of which I am not particularly proud. So my New Year's resolutions this year all surround the theme of finishing stuff that I have never managed to finish before. Finem imponam (optative subjunctive).
This story, in particular, is something I want to finish because it is the first thing I ever wrote with the idea that I was writing fiction because it was something I had to do, for myself. But because of this, I wanted it to be perfect. No surprise, I never finished it. I didn't dare. And now, it's old, twenty years old. Old enough to have survived infancy, childhood, being eleven, most of adolescence, and to have gone off to college. Old enough to be a Sophomore already. Funny, that's probably what I was afraid of, that it would be sophomoric. But now I don't care what it is anymore, as long as it is done. So here's the beginning, with little or no editing, and I'll finish the middle and post it, and then I'll paste on the end. And then it will be done. I could go on and on about what's wrong with it, but I won't.
Buckets, I just opened the file and remembered that this was just one of a bunch of stories I started, all of which were related to a passage from A Winter's Tale, Act IV. Perdita is surrounded by various admirers, and she replies to their compliments:
. . . Now my fairest friend,
I would I had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,
To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er!
The Water Carriers is for the primroses. What a grand plan. I have my work cut out for me.
The Water Carriers I
She sat at the kitchen table, facing the window. Her hair was white; her dress, yellow cotton, buttoned down the front. It had two pockets, one on either side, below a straight waist; she kept her Kleenex and her cough drop in one of them. It was a summer dress, an old woman's dress. In her closet upstairs hung several more exactly like it except for the color. Her nylon stockings were rolled down to her ankles; it was very warm, both outside and inside, and she felt more comfortable with them that way.
She sat, in her old woman's dress and rolled-down stockings, at her kitchen table and she pushed back her empty plate. With her left hand cupped, palm toward her, she brushed imaginary crumbs away from the table's edge. Then she brushed from her hand the imaginary crumbs clinging there, folded both hands on her lap, and drew a long breath.
--The flowers will need a drink, it has been so hot and dry still these past few days, so would you take me up cemetery to water them since now the sun is going down and it's cooler out.
It was a statement, not a question. The old woman did not look at her daughter after she spoke, but at her hands, unmoving, as if recuperation from that utterance of a single breath would require her complete concentration. They were not as she had planned, those words. She had no control over them as they rushed out. Worse, she feared that they had no authority themselves. She took another breath, and looked up at the window. No breeze moved the white summer curtains.
The younger woman turned from the sink where she had begun to wash the dinner dishes and pans, scraping, rinsing, and organizing them. She frowned, first at her mother and then at the colander, still in her hand, as it splashed delicate streams of water onto the counter top. She hastily returned the leaking vessel to the sink.
--Oh Mum, you've been up there three times already since I've been home. I talked to Tony this morning, and he said that you made him take you Sunday and again Monday when I was visiting Mary. You make me worry. Daddy would understand that this has been a terrible summer and you just can't keep going up there. He wouldn't want you to wear yourself out over a few geraniums.
A stubborn look appeared on her mother's face.
--If you won't take me, I'll call Tony again, or Margie. You're not the only one around with a car, Rosa.
Both women sighed. The silence that followed was amplified by the sound of the task of the exasperated dishwasher.
She had never liked washing dishes. She was impatient with jobs that became undone almost as soon as they were finished. Washing dishes. Making beds. Cleaning the bathroom. And watering dying flowers. Even if they didn't die from the heat, which they probably would, they would be dead soon, anyway. It was nearly September. Summer would end this year, like it always did, and autumn's frost would kill what summer's heat and drought had left. That was the way of things. That was always the way of things. She wondered, impatiently, why her mother didn't just keep a geranium in the house. Then she could water it to her heart's content. Maybe it would even last all year. If she didn't drown the damn thing.
Rosa collected the remaining dishes from the table.
--Do you want the rest of the sauce with the noodles, or should I keep them separate?
--Just put a plate on the sauce bowl. Tony said he might be over tomorrow for lunch. He likes sauce and bread, you know. Look at that, not even a breath of wind moving the curtain. It looks like I need to wash them again, though. I don't know how they get so dirty when there's no wind blowing dust in. That lacey stuff just catches everything, I guess.
Rosa returned to the sink. It was too hot to wash dishes. As far as she was concerned, it had been too hot to eat supper. Especially when supper had to be something hot and heavy like spaghetti.
Much too hot to wash dishes. It had been an unusually warm, rainless, summer. It made her dull, numb. She felt too tired to think, too tired to care that she couldn't think. A strong cold wind, that was what she needed, a hard mind rain. But there was no wind, no rain. Only hot and humid. And supper dishes. And taking her mother on a twenty-minute drive to the cemetery to water spindly geraniums in urns on either side of her father's grave. It all seemed useless.
As she stood over the sink scrubbing pots and plates, the beads of sweat on her forehead collected into a large drop that rolled down between her eyebrows and along the side of her nose. She quickly wiped it with her bare forearm, her wet, soapy hand scattering suds and water over the red counter. Too hot to move. She scrubbed harder, faster. Get it done, get it done. Now she felt a stream of sweat trickle between her breasts and down her stomach. Before she could stop it, her wet hand rubbed her belly. She looked down, slowly, at her soaking dress. Cranky. Sweaty and cranky. And too hot to think. Too hot to know why she was angry.
After she had finished drying the dishes and putting them away, Rosa picked up the red- and white-checked tablecloth, gathering it at its four corners, and brought it outside to shake it. She stood for a moment on the little landing of the back steps breathing the hot, still air, and looked at her mother's yard. It was a small, crowded yard, boxed in on front and back by the house and a separate garage, and on opposite sides by neighbors' fences. It was further divided by a narrow sidewalk which wound in a horseshoe from a door in the garage, to the house steps, and back along the other side of the yard. Clotheslines hung between garage and house completed the partitions. Much of the yard, other than a couple of feet that had been granted to a severely pruned apple tree in the corner, had been given to a garden, itself dominated by tomato and pepper plants.
Her eyes moved from one thing to another, the brown edges of the lawn where the sprinklers did not reach, the peeling side of the white garage, the scraggly, yellowing tomato plants with their blood red fruit. She could smell their pungent bitterness from across the yard. She did not think of anything in particular as she looked; she just stood and looked.
The wetness of her dress returned her attention to the things of this world. She sighed, draping the cloth over her arm, and turned and stepped inside the house.
24-January 2008
# # #
Do I even remember how to do this?
She Ran
We ran errands yesterday morning, and one of them was a trip to the post office. It was just a quick stop -- I needed to mail a little package, and so my husband and kids were going to stay in the car while I ran in. As we pulled into a parking space in the snowy lot, an elderly woman parked in what we'd call my Uncle Bill's spot, the closest one to the door. It had a wheelchair sign, and so I assumed she had a tag of some sort.
As I passed the back of her car, she had managed to extricate herself, and had closed her car door. I smiled at her and she looked at me as she and I started across to the p.o. door. It was slushy and slippery, and I quickened my pace just a tad, so that I could get to the door first and hold it for her. She certainly looked like she needed it, flyaway hair, huge purple circles under her eyes, papery blue skin, and flesh, all over, that could only be compared to over-risen bread dough.
Damned if she didn't start running, her fat little legs motoring in her black little boots. She got there first, swung the door open, and dodged through, not even looking back to see how badly she'd smoked me. I said loudly Why Thank You! and then she turned around. She even kind of held the second door for me as we went to stand in the enormously long line of two people, for the enormously long wait of two minutes.
I would love to think that someone, somewhere, was watching and that somehow, someday, she'll get hers for being such a nasty old biddy. But I suppose that she's already getting it now. I finished my business and walked back to my warm waiting car with my warm waiting family, and told them my funny story. All she had was a beater in Uncle Bill's spot, no one waiting for her anywhere.
Happy New Year.
1-January 2008
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Date Checklist
My son is seven and my daughter is six, but the years are flying by, and that first date is only a couple of decades away.
- - -
State your full name, age, home address, social security number, IQ, blood type, and favorite color.
How frequently do you shower?
Do you brush and floss on a regular basis?
Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?
Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Republican party?
Do you eat crackers in bed?
Have you been tested for Hepatitis A?
Hepatitis B?
Hepatitis C?
Have you been to Haiti in the last 12 months?
Has anyone placed any items into your luggage without your knowledge?
Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
Have you ever committed a felony?
Have you ever considered committing a felony?
How frequently do you clean your bellybutton?
When you wipe, do you look at the paper? Why or why not? If so, what are you looking for?
How frequently do you trim your toenails?
Have the trimmings ever been DNA tested?
Do you smoke?
Do you drink alchohol?
How much?
Have you ever been arrested for drunken driving?
Should you ever have been arrested for drunken driving?
Do you drive a van? (if yes, STOP HERE)
Why is Planck's Constant important?
Define Grassman's law.
Do you know what sine qua non means?
What is your opinion on the Homeric Question?
Can you explain how a combustion engine works?
Can you fix my car?
If one traveller headed due east in an airplane from Los Angeles, travelling at 420 miles per hour, and another traveller headed due west on a motorcycle, travelling at 88 kilometers per hour, at what longitude would their paths intersect (to the nearest tenth)?
To how many places do you know pi?
"Ha! I like not that!" Name the poet, the play, the character, the act and scene, the import of the line, and reminisce, briefly, about your favorite actor in this role.
Can you sing an operatic aria?
Have you ever written poetry?
Is it any good?
Can you dunk?
Do you use an Apple or a PC (this is a very important one)?
What goes up a chimney down, but not down a chimney up? What goes down a chimney down but not up a chimney up?
Do you help with the dishes?
Do you want to have children someday?
Do you know how children are conceived?
Have you ever assisted in the conception of a child?
Do you plan to do so anytime soon?
Discuss the "immaculate reception".
"A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" This is an example of:
a) an oxymoron
b) a paradiddle
c) a palindrome
d) a hippodrome
Do you pick your nose?
Liar, everyone does. What do you do with the boogers?
a) wipe them on your pants?
b) wipe them on your shoes?
c) flick them?
d) roll them into a ball and discretely drop them?
e) God forbid, eat them like my kids do?
What do you do with old chewing gum?
Do you have a current driver's license?
May I see it?
Is there a goat living in your armpits?
Do you like animals?
Will you take my dog?
What are your intentions for the evening?
What are your intentions with my son/daughter?
What are your intentions for the rest of your life?
How long are your arms?
Who the hell do you think you are?
I'm sorry, you do not qualify.
22-May 2006
# # #
The three little pigs, sort of
Once upon a time three little girls lived with their mother at the edge of the wide world, and when they grew up, it was time for them to go out and find husbands for themselves. Trouble was, they knew nothing about men and each had only whatever common sense she possessed. Oh, and they had a credit card to share.
So they set out one morning on the road through the woods. As they were walking arm in arm, the first girl, who didn't like to worry about much, said, I want to find a husband with his own credit card right away, so that we can go dancing tonight. The second girl, who was a lot like her, said, Me too! The third one was a worry-wart and very careful, too, so she said, Well, that would be fun I guess, but make sure you find strong ones who have good credit. And watch out, because there's a rapist living here in the woods, and he's got the biggest dick you ever saw. When he gets a stiffy, there's nothing he won't do to make it go down. The other two girls just laughed, Oh, don't worry about us, we'll be fine!
Not much later, they met on the road a man who was tall and thin and blond. The first girl smiled at him and asked if he'd make her a nice home -- and if he had a good credit card. He said Sure, and VISA [and that he always paid his minimum balance], and off they went to his house. They chatted for a while and got married in the afternoon [they paid with credit], and the first girl was content indeed. That night, however, as she and the man were getting ready to go out dancing, the rapist came walking up the lane. He had a big stiffy, and he just knew that what he wanted was inside. He pounded at the door and said in a deep voice, Little girl, little girl, let me come in! And she looked at the trembling door and answered, with a squeak, No, no, you can't come in! Not by the hair of my . . . um . . . yeah. And the rapist said, If you won't let me in, I'll break down your door and kill your husband, and THEN I'll break down YOUR door!!
The first girl stood there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what this second door could mean. Her husband was in the back room when he heard this exchange, and as he had a few brains in his head, he crawled right out the back window and ran off into the night. The little girl was alone in the house and when it dawned on her what the rapist was going to do, she screamed for her husband to help her. He didn't come, of course, and the rapist easily broke down the door and spent the rest of the night abusing her, until he was out of breath.
Early the next day, the second and third girls, completely ignorant of their sister's fate, were walking along the road and met another man. This one was a bit sturdier, not quite so tall, and had brown hair. The second girl gave him a smile and asked him if he'd make her a nice home -- and if he had a good credit card. He said Sure, and AMEX [and it wasn't even maxed out], and off they went. They chatted the rest of the morning and all afternoon, and got married in the evening [they paid with credit, too], and the girl was quite content. They were just about to go out dancing when the rapist appeared at the doorstep, once again in full bloom [rapists always are, as we all know]. Little girl, he said in his deep voice, Little girl, let me come in. No, no, you can't come in, she said, with a shiver. Not by the hair of my . . . . um . . . yeah. And the rapist answered, If you won't let me in, I'll break down your door and kill your husband -- and then, BANG BANG on you!!
The girl looked a scared look at her new husband. The husband looked a brave look at the girl and stood with his back against the door, to keep the rapist out. But it was no use. One good whack, and the door burst open, flattening the brown-haired man against the wall. He crumpled to the floor, and the rapist laughed until he was out of breath. After he got it back, he spent the rest of the night abusing the second girl, as he had her sister the night before.
The next day, the third girl was still walking on the road, and she met a sturdy red-haired man. She gave him a smile and asked him if he would get her a nice cup of coffee, and if he had cash to pay for it. He said Sure, and sure [and he showed her his wallet], and they went to the Starbucks franchise that had just opened at the edge of the woods. They had a good time and decided to start dating, but very cautiously. They only went to places that were well-lit, and where other people were around, they always paid with cash, and the little girl always was sure to keep the fellow's hands to himself.
Meanwhile, her two sisters had found each other again, and had lamented their terrible fate. They figured that there was nothing left for them now but to give up on decent men altogether, so they became hookers and for extra money danced at the Wolf's Tail club, at the edge of the woods. After a couple years, they got some management responsibilities there, and having acquitted themselves well in those, eventually took over the club, became successful businesswomen, and established excellent credit ratings.
The third girl finally, after many months of courtship and all that stuff that parents like their kids to do [and none of the stuff that parents don't like their kids to do], got married to the red-haired man. They paid in cash. They moved into a nice house near the Starbucks at the edge of the woods, and the first evening at home, what do you know, there was the rapist beating at the door, growling, Little girl, little girl, let me come in! And she answered, strangely enough, just as her sisters had, No, no, you can't come in, not by the hair of my . . . um . . . yeah. And he said, Then I'll knock in your door, kill your husband, and THEN I'LL REALLY COME IN! Fat chance, she answered. Her husband gave her a smile and stood with his back to the door. He was built like a brick house, and though the rapist tried and tried, he just couldn't break down the door. After he'd banged and pounded until he was out of breath, he slunk off into the night, and the girl and her husband went out dancing.
The rapist didn't give up, though. He spent the night thinking of a plan, and by morning, he had one. He sent the girl an anonymous email saying that there were some delicious apples in a tree on the other side of the Starbucks and that they were ripe to perfection. The email said that public picking would start at 7 am, but that she had been chosen through a lottery as a lucky pre-dawn picker. The girl read the email and at first she thought that it had gotten past her spam filter somehow, but then she wondered if it wasn't a plot by the rapist. After all, she'd done some reading and knew that apples have an association with sex. So she snuck out to the tree late that night and picked a basketful of the apples by flashlight, and went safely home.
When the rapist found that his trick had failed, he did some reading himself, and decided that beets would be a good bet for luring the girl out of her house. Beets weren't as good as apples, but they were the best he could do. And then he took a crash course in ventriloquism and learned to sound a lot like the girl's husband. What a rapist won't do.
The very next morning, the girl was baking a pie with some of the apples and was boiling water for a spaghetti lunch with her husband. He was out working at the Starbucks [he'g gottten a morning job as a barista]. The rapist came to the door with a big basket of beets. He used her husband's voice, and said, Let me in, dear, I can't open the door with all these lovely beets in my hands. And he showed them to her through the window. The girl thought that beets were a weird thing to bring home for lunch from Starbucks, but she opened the door. In came the rapist with a wolfish look on his face. The girl was scared, but she kept her head. As he was coming at her, in rigore flagranti, she picked up the pot of boiling water and flung it at him, hitting him full on the . . . well, as the brothers Grimm would have put it, on the Schwanke. He howled like an animal and turned and ran as well as anyone could run in that condition, out the door and out into the woods.
And that was the last the girl saw of the rapist. She finished baking her apple pie and had her two sisters over for a little party that afternoon, and for dinner, she and her sturdy husband ate boiled beets.
As for the rapist, he was pretty well useless now, at least as a rapist. After he'd healed as well as he could, he thought to himself, Well, if I can't fuck them one way, I'll fuck them another. So he got a job in the billing and collections department of a major credit card company. Within three years, he was CFO.
29-March 2006
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Idioms, Epithets, and Partyware
V. Jack
You don't know Jack. You think you do -- everybody thinks they do -- but you don't. Neither do they.
You meet him. You talk to him. You listen to him. So you find out a little about him. Not everything, but enough for you to think that you kind of have him figured out. You know some stuff, and you think you can guess the rest. Well, you can't. It's not that easy. Jack's not that simple.
You hear it. You see it. You smell it. You might even taste it. You think you have it on him. You think you get him. Well, you don't. It's down deep, see? It's not what you think. It's like some of the stuff he says isn't really him, see? Some of the stuff he means, he doesn't really say, see? He's deep. He's got a lot going, and you just don't get it.
He's more than you think -- a lot more. He's this today, he's that tomorrow, but none of it is really him. He's more. A lot more.
You don't know Jack. I don't know Jack. Nobody knows Jack. Shit, Jack doesn't even know Jack.
25-September 2005
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Washing lettuce
Washing organic lettuce is a bit like playing Russian Roulette, only it’s not quite as deadly. For the washer, at least. The lettuce is a goner, and whatever is in it will be too, soon. You never know if you’re going to have a colander full of cleanish, if greenish, water, or if you’re headed for flea central. It’s one of life’s bummers to be using what you know is best [as Cascadian Farms will tell you, if you bother to read their blurbs] for you, for the environment, and for all those honest independent farmers who are struggling against the monopolistic international giant factory farms -- well, you get the drift -- and then to find that your dinner salad of lettuce, garden grown tomatoes, and lovely little carrots and onions is going to be minus the lettuce because you are so completely grossed out by the fact that your lettuce is so full of fleas [most, but not all, dead] that your skin is crawling and you feel that you have no alternative but to pitch the whole thing and call your $2.19 per pound a contribution to all that nonsense that you think is worth not buying the guaranteed clean stuff.
26-August 2005
# # #
Knitting in public
Women shouldn’t knit in public. That sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it? How about this: It really bugs me when I see women knitting in public. I saw another one doing it this morning at my kids’ music school, and I nearly said something catty to her. I remembered just in time that I’m no good at being catty, so I passed her in silence. I did give her a withering glance, though, which she didn’t notice. She was too busy fiddling with her yarn.
There is no gender bias here, by the way. Public knitting bugs me, generally. I imagine that there are men who knit in public, too. I’ve never seen one doing it, but I’m sure I’d be bugged if I did [though maybe not quite as acutely]. If I ever see my son, whom I’m teaching to knit, doing it in public, I’m not sure what I’ll do.
I know that it’s not their fault and I need to work on myself. They have the right to sit there and knit in public.
If only they did knit. They don’t. They always seem to be casting on. They’re beginners. They’re excited. Now there’s nothing wrong with being a beginner, or with being excited, but they never seem to get past it. They bustle around, getting their stuff out of their bags, and then they settle down, and then . . . they sit there and cast on. They always use skinny little circular needles. I’ve never seen one of them get past the first few rows. And they’re always knitting easy little things like scarves, and with either really lightweight pastel yarn or one of those new-fangled ribbon yarns or faux-hair yarns. But it’s hard to tell what they’re making, because, like I said, they’re only just starting their projects when they appear, knitting, in public.
This morning’s culprit must have been a Suzuki mom, waiting in the hall for her kid to have a lesson. She had a little ball of two-ply light blue yarn, the standard circular needle in a size four, 16 inches, and guess what she was doing? Yep, casting on. Believe it or not, she had two bike helmets on the table in front of her. She brought her knitting on a bike? OK, she had about 30 minutes, 45 max, to wait. It must have taken her hands 10 minutes or so to stop sweating [the temperature was about 95 degrees], and at the rate she was going, another 5 minutes to take her yarn and needles out. At the standard cast-on rate of public knitters, it would have taken her 5 to 10 minutes to cast on. That would have left her between 5 and 20 minutes to knit, which would have got her to between 1 and 5 rows. But then, she would have had to stop early enough to pack it all up, so if it was a half-hour lesson, she would have had about 3 minutes to do any real knitting. Now I ask you, what’s the point of that?
Private knitting is ok with me. My mom taught me to knit, in private, when I was eight years old. She used to make our hats and mittens and scarves, and my first project was a scarf, in garter stitch [knit every row]. I liked doing it a lot, and got pretty good. I made hats and mittens and gloves next, and I still remember my first pair of socks. The ankle parts were red and the feet were pink. I was very proud of having “turned a heel”, and I wore those socks until they had holes in the toes and heels.
I’ve since knitted many things, all in private -- sweaters, for myself, for relatives, for friends, and even a couple for sale. I’ve also made socks, hats, scarves, hand coverings [mittens, gloves with and without fingers, mitten/glove combos], rugs, blankets, purses, pigs, you name it. If it has dimension, I’ll try to knit a version of it. I have an order for ponchos as Christmas gifts for the three females in our family who didn’t get them last year. In other words, I’m as addicted a knitter as you’re going to find. I know enough about knitting not to need patterns, though there’s nothing like a new knitting book.
My real problem with all of this public knitting is that these neoknits seem to think that knitting is cool. The last time society supported much public knitting was over a hundred years ago, when public knitting supported society. Women would walk to the market to buy their oil or their fish, knitting madly on a pair of socks that they needed to finish by evening. This is because they had orders for the socks, and had to finish the knitting on time so that they’d be paid the full price for their work. They knitted the sweaters that the fishermen needed to wear next time out. Each family’s sweaters were different, so that if there was an accident at sea and a fisherman drowned, they could use the sweater to identify the body. Women wore their knitting pinned to their belts and their aprons. It wasn’t fashionable to knit. It was a way of life.
People don’t need to knit in public anymore. I think that that’s the source of the irritation, for me at least. I have no problem with beginners or the infatuated. We’ve all been there. But from what I’ve seen, public knitting only takes place anymore because the knitters want to be seen knitting. It’s become hip. Knitting in public is like showing everyone that you have the trendy pants that everyone else has, or wants. And casting on is such a Shibboleth: “here I am, see me? I’m a trendy public knitter!” How far do they get, huh, after they’ve got the casting on done? Once the fun’s over, all you’ve got ahead of you is . . . knitting. Do they take that home, and do it in private, or do they just go around publicly casting on?
Knitting isn’t about being trendy. It’s about commitment. You can’t just start knitting because it’s what everyone else is doing. You’re either a knitter or you’re not. Knitters don’t do it in public, and they don’t spend all their time casting on. They knit. This doesn’t mean that real knitters don’t get excited. I recently bought a new knitting book that I’d been eyeing up for months, and when I finally got it home, I took it to bed for a week, and when I got up, it went downstairs for coffee with me first thing every morning. The infatuation a knitter gets over a new pattern book or a new kind of yarn is very like getting seriously horny. You just can’t stop thinking about it, and you won’t be happy until you have it.
I tried to knit in public last winter. We spend our Saturdays at the local art institute, as the kids take classes there, and I figured, well, other women do it, and by gum, it’s hard to read something when there’s always a class-free kid with me, so why don’t I bring my knitting? Besides, I figured it might help me to understand these public knitters a bit better Ð the “in their needles” approach, so to speak. And so I brought my current project in my bag. We sat down for coffee. I surreptitiously brought out my half-finished project, and started knitting away, my eyes darting here and there, afraid that someone might notice me. I just felt so damned stupid. After about five minutes, I gave up and put it all away. The only glimmer of understanding I gained from the experience is that it’s easier to carry a ball of yarn and some empty needles than a half-finished poncho in your bag.
8-August 2005
# # #
To Both of my Fans
Well, I shouldn't call you fans, really -- all you say about yourselves is something like "devoted groupies" [is that what you wrote? I have a really bad memory, which is strange considering my reputation for languages [who started that rumor anyway?] but is not so strange considering that I spend my days the way I do [which is none of anyone's business really [so why did I mention it?]]] -- [did I get enough closed brackets into that one?] -- [and has anyone noticed that I use brackets?] -- [is ending a paragraph with dashes worse than ending a sentence with a preposition? [or a bracket?]] -- ?
Anyhooo [how is that spelled?], thanks to both of you, well, it was really just one of you who wrote, but I'm pretty sure that it was on behalf of both of you -- hang on for a minute, one of the kids says that there's a bug in the bathroom -- false alarm, thank goodness, but I'm glad that they have good imaginations --
Do you suppose that this qualifies as three paragraphs? I don't think that I can make it to four, though I can assert that [and [I must admit] this is including the trip to the bathroom for the bug inspection] I have managed to spend on the four side of minutes on this little thing, though it's coming out with remarkable speed [well then, one might ask, why doesn't she post more often?] --
And here I am, making it to four! Content? You're looking for content? Try daidala!
24-May 2005
# # #
Cover Letter
Dear Search Committee,
I would like to be considered for the position in your department, as was advertised in your recent, um, advertisement.
I completed some kind of degree in my chosen field, at some point. The fact that I did it after the birth of my first child and while I was gestating the second should prove beyond reasonable doubt that I am serious about what I do, and moreover, that you should feel really sorry for me. After a leave of absence from graduate school for an indeterminate amount of time, and for reasons which I do not care to disclose at present, I recently began work again with faculty in my department. I was delighted to hear of this job opportunity, of which I was informed only days after returning to my chosen field. I consider it a sign. You'd better, too.
As the enclosed curriculum vitae clearly demonstrates to anyone who has a clue, I have extensive education and teaching experience in everything, and I feel that I am more than qualified to teach not just your sorry-ass students, but your sorry ass itself. As a matter of fact, I'm probably old enough to be your big sister, which should scare you, a lot (j.k.).
My references speak for themselves, so there's really no reason for you to read the attached letters of recommendation. I know a lot more than any of my old professors can realize, and you just have to believe that I'm by far the best-qualified candidate for the job.
In spite of my incredible organizational skills, the teaching evaluations for nearly all seventy-eight courses that I have taught have mysteriously disappeared. All that is available is a document of questionable authenticity from the early 1990's, as well as two documents from 1998, concerning which all I can say is . . . you can't believe everything you read.
In closing, I can only say (did I just say that?) that I've exhausted just about every other possibility for employment, and you've gotta, gotta, gotta [note serial comma, a sign of my classical education] hire me. I've spent the last three years writing a novel that's going to be great but isn't really done yet, and have this pathetically fucked-up website that no one reads, and I have come to realize that I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of being a successful writer (read: a writer who can actually make a living at writing), and it's really not at all my fault. I just don't have the time!
In Sincere and Utterly Abject Precation,
Me
30-April 2005
# # #
Idioms, Epithets, and Partyware
IV. Violet
When she was little, Violet thought that everyone could do it. It was no big deal to her, after all. She discovered her ability when she was six, and had accidently broken a lamp -- she was taking her toy dog for a walk in the living room, with her baby sister in tow, and the dog was going pretty fast on its leash, centrifugally, about level to her head [ok, it was flying] when BANG! went the lamp, down went the dog, AAAAACK went the baby, and . . . where's Violet? She'd reduced herself to a height of mere inches and had hidden under the couch. Her mom ran in and saw the lamp, the dog, and the baby. Who can blame a baby? Violet got off.
It became quite a powerful thing, virtually to disappear in an instant. For a while, she played practical jokes on people, but then she started to feel bad about herself after she'd stolen some stuff, and besides, she nearly got caught once or twice. So she turned more inward about it, and started liking to read books like Alice in Wonderland, the Borrowers, and Gulliver's Travels. Though she thought the little people in the last one were pretty pathetic. When she got older, she started a collection of Shrinky Dinks, and now her house is pretty much decorated in them.
Not many people have found out that she can do it. She likes her privacy. But one year, at Halloween, she broke up with her boyfriend because he'd started to beat on her, and she did it by standing in the middle of the kitchen and yelling at him, going UP and down and UP and down and UP and down. It wasn't really on purpose. She just kind of lost control. But it was good and effective, and she never saw him again.
Over the years, Violet has made a little house for herself, from stuff she's bought or made, for those days when being big is just too hard. It's pretty nice. She rigged up a little electric light for it, and fixed up a hose that goes from a pot of hot water to her mini-kitchen, for tea and baths. She hangs out on squashy pillows and enjoys being small.
28-January 2005
# # #
Idioms, Epithets, and Partyware
III. Nick
Nick hates clutter.
Anything extra lying around freaks him out -- he can't even stand getting change when he buys stuff. He monitors his car's fuel use, and when he buys gas, he never buys enough to fill his tank. He stands there at the pump, squeezing the handle just so, so that he'll end up with either a $10 or a $20, exactly. It's usually a $10, because he doesn't like to go below a half a tank.
He has a sock drawer and an underpants drawer, and both of them have those little plastic organizers. When he does his laundry and folds it (right after it comes out of the dryer -- the creases come out easier when it's still warm), he puts the freshly washed clothes in the back, because he takes from the front and that way, there will be a complete turnover of underclothes and no mustiness or chance of bugs.
When he makes his bed, he tucks in the top sheet so tightly that he can't pull it back at night when he gets in. He has to move the pillows aside and climb in from the top, like he's getting inside some weird kind of sandwich, and he lies there on his back all night, sleeping without moving, so that in the morning he can just slide up and out, and not have rumpled the sheets any. One night, he got an erection in his sleep, and he woke up with an extra wrinkle. It ruined his day.
19-November 2004
# # #
Idioms, Epithets, and Partyware
II. Steven
Steven is a level-headed kid. Really. His head is flat on top. When he was little, his parents used to tell him, Wow, Steven, I can eat soup off the top of your head! and they meant it. He can carry anything he wants to, up there.
Steven's peculiarity makes certain sports tough. They have to make special helmets and caps for him, and soccer is a real bitch. His soccer coach thought he'd be great at headers, but the physics of aiming a obliquely angled ball off of a flat surface have so far eluded him, and he usually ends up rocketing it into the crowd. His parents got him into a swimming class, but that was a flat failure. The wake he created once he got going with the crawl sent all the other beginners to the edges of the pool, and all the other parents got mad and complained, so Steven had to finish his lessons privately, and he doesn't like swimming anymore.
Steven's peculiarity also makes him useful around the house. His parents don't need to keep a level. One year they bought six shelves from a catalog and they hung them all in no time flat by having Steven stand with them on his head (he sat for the low ones and stood on a box for the higher ones) and marking the lines that way. Picture hanging is also a breeze, with Steven around.
Steven wants to go to law school someday. He would like to be a judge. Failing that, he thinks he'd be good at being the table for the gavel.
09-November 2004
# # #
Idioms, Epithets, and Partyware
I. Susan
Susan sits and spins. She sits and spins and spins and spins.
Susan is just so lazy. She never gets off her chair, if she can help it. She took a work chair home. It has wheels. She spends most of the time in her kitchen, sitting and spinning at the table. Her tv is on one side of the table and her microwave is on the other side of the table, so first she spins one way to get her her food, and then she spins the other way to watch her shows. Then she spins to the dishwasher. She doesn't run it very often, and it gets full and the dishes pile up in the sink after a while. When she runs out of plates and cups, she runs the dishwasher. She likes to hear it spin. When it's done and the dishes are clean, she uses it as her cupboard until it's empty, and then she dumps the sink dishes into the dishwasher and runs it again. Every year or so she runs the dishwasher three or four times in a row, and gets her stuff back into the real cupboards. But she doesn't like to work that hard very often.
At work, she sits and spins at her desk. Then she spins to the vending machines and to the bathroom. Sometimes she spins to the fax machine or the copier, but she doesn't like to do that very often. She used to be an administrative assistant, but she didn't like to work that hard. Now she's a marketing director. She likes that job. Her desk is very messy, so that when people look in her office and see her spinning with a messy desk, they think that she's getting lots done. It's really messy because she uses her file drawers and her desk drawers for her garbage. They're full of cans and candy wrappers and food bags, and sometimes dirty clothes, so there's no room for her papers. But nobody knows that. They look in and see her spinning. Susan, sitting and spinning. She sits and spins and spins and spins.
27-October 2004
# # #
Paying the fine
Some things just never change.
We have a great new library in our neighborhood. It's part of a huge complex, attached to a courthouse and a county service center, and from the outside, it's all glass windows -- very modern and friendly. Inside, things are pretty cool, too. The floor in the entryway is inlaid with a starburst that my kids like to jump on, and the book return isn't just a door in the wall -- it's a sliding door that opens when you put a barcode up to it, and it even talks to you, thanking you for using the automated return service and explaining that the door will shut and the conveyor belt will stop moving when you're done putting your books and stuff into it.
As it's a new library, they're still getting books for it, but it's already jammed with check-out-able materials of all sorts -- books and CDs, DVDs and videos, and even puppets from the children's section. This section is probably the coolest of all, with a big kiosk painted like a castle, hollow inside and full of windows for puppet shows. It has a big purple dragon that does double duty as a climbing toy and a bookshelf (for the fairy tales), and a large plaster sculpture that we saw being created, of a bunch of jungle animals, all larger and fatter than life, piled on top of each other and painted in monstrously bright colors. By the way, it also has about seven copies of every book, so you can be sure of getting what you want, when you want it.
Now, I'm not that much of a public library person. I used to use the main downtown library when I was too poor to buy my own books, and I still don't have enough money to buy whatever I want, but I did get into the habit of visiting B&N and Borders rather than the Brookdale branch. But this place is just too great. Free stuff, and high quality, and a pleasant atmosphere, and the kid-librarians are friendly and wear hip clothes and funky haircuts. We'd walk in empty-handed (or with old stuff), and walk out with our favorite old books, some new ones, music, and movies. Where else can you get, at no charge, as long as you return it on time, books on knitting, oil painting, linguistics, and Abiyoyo, along with Singin' in the Rain and Marian Anderson?
The "as long as you return it on time" has occasionally been a problem for us (well, me), ever since we became heavy users and life got busy in September. Usually, I'm pretty good about renewing stuff, but occasionally, I'm a day or two late. No big deal, I figure, because the fines are only about $.05 a day. I mean, what's the big deal? Well, today, I talked to a real-live librarian, as a couple of my videos weren't running through the express (= automated) checkout right. All was well -- she checked me out and thanked me, and then I made the mistake of saying, Oh, and I think I owe a few dollars in fines. Where can I pay? She became severe immediately, and said, Oh. I didn't even think of checking. She looked, and said with a deeper frown, You Owe Seven Dollars And Forty-Eight Cents. I said, OK. I guess I returned a few things a day or two late. She showed me her computer screen and growled, You Returned Twenty-Seven Items Late. I said, OK, and handed her a ten-dollar bill. She seemed surprised, You Want To Pay Now? I smiled and said yes. She gave me my change with a scowl and I smiled again, even more sweetly, Thank you.
I wouldn't, for the entire world, big as it is, have dared to tell her that she and I are sisters, or at least kissing cousins. No wonder I hated being a librarian.
12-October 2004
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Flying with the parakeets
This is a good time of the year for bird watching. Every spring, I try to make sure that I plant a few big sunflowers -tall ones with large faces (maybe 14 inches in diameter) - in my yard so that I can attract the blue jays and woodpeckers in the fall. During the summer, we always have lovely yellow-and-black and red-headed finches, and an extended family of cardinals, and of course there are the house sparrows, gray-brown and noisy. Our neighbors have a three-storey bird house on top of their garage, and the sparrows have lived there for ever. There's a good-sized cloud of them. They sweep back and forth over the yards and roofs, even more of them than could fit into the three rooms. They must have a system for taking turns in the house, or maybe there's another house around that I don't know about, and the little fellows just get together to do their hunting.
In spite of the summertime company, I still look forward in the early fall to seeing the jays and the woodpeckers, and the occasional nuthatch. I suppose it's consolation for the imminent loss of all the other colors, seeing those bright blues and whites and blacks among the ruins of the garden. Saturday was the first of the cold, sunny days. We had our first good freeze the night before, and the world was hovering between summer and winter. The basil had turned black overnight, but the cosmos was blooming magenta and maroon, and the squashes and pumpkins were burning orange among their rapidly wilting gray-green leaves. I was looking out the window and saw a bird with brilliant yellow-green wings shoot across the back yard, from the garden to the bushes that separate our yard from the neighbor's. At first, I thought it was a strangely-colored finch, but then I noticed that it had a short neck and almost no beak. It was a green parakeet.
I told my husband I was going outside, as I had seen a parakeet. The neighbor kids across the alley have birds - they hang the cage outside in the shade on warm days. I noticed the cage over there now, and they were outside, playing with skateboards. I walked across the alley. Seymour, I said, did you lose a green bird? Yes, he said. He looked excited and relieved and worried all at once. It's in my back yard, I told him. He and his little sister and buddy immediately dropped their stuff, grabbed some birdseed, and headed over to my yard.
The bird was still in the bushes, and it sat still until the boy's finger was about three inches away. The bird hopped sideways, and immediately, the fifteen or so sparrows which had been sitting hidden in the bushes flew up. So did the parakeet, a green speck amidst the brown, against the blue sky. They boomeranged back into a tree, about ten feet out of reach. This was the signal for the hunt to begin. For the next three hours or so, the same scenario was repeated, I don't know how many times: The bird landed within reach, the kids screamed (not a great idea) and ran after it, and just as they got close, the bird and its buddies flew up and away, to a roof or a tree. More yelling from the kids. The bird sat up there, chuckling and chirruping at them, as if it had never seen them before in its life. The kids occasionally got bored and went back to their play, until the bird decided to dart over their heads again, and then off they would go - into our front yard, into the back, into the neighbor's yard, into the other neighbor's yard. It was good exercise for all of them, including the bird, but it was pretty clear to me (though surely not to them) that it was not going to end in capture and reconciliation.
The closest they came to success was when Aaron, the friend, snuck up on the bird as it had its head in a feeder (three houses down). He grabbed it, but it turned around and pecked him on the hand. He screamed (so did the others) and let it go. Off it flew, into a 60-foot pine tree, and off they ran, laughing and talking about how It bit him.
During the course of the hunt, I learned some details about the bird. Its name is Coco, and it flew away (I was delicate enough not to ask why the cage was both outside and open) with its blue brother between one and two weeks ago. Blue boy seems to have vanished immediately, and the children had no illusions about the likelihood of its survival. As the little girl elegantly expressed it, He dead by now. Green boy, however, seems to have shown more adaptability, and be not dead, yet. It must have liked the neighborhood and decided to hang around for a while. It found friends, food, and a place to sleep. Who needs more, after they've just been sprung? And then, as little Jasmine said, He fat. There are a lot of tree-hugging animal lovers on our road, and it seems that every third tree is hung (humanely) with a bird feeder. The parakeet must be very content, and if it doesn't want to go back to Seymour's house and live in that cage again with (or without)its nearly identical twin, I can hardly blame it.
I don't suppose that it will survive, now that the weather is turning truly cold at night. But then, maybe that's okay. It wouldn't look good for all the other captive songbirds to be gazing through their bars, out the windows, and seeing a bright green parakeet (it has a bit of dark blue on its tail) sitting with its feral brethren at the feeder, free as a ... well, you know. It would engender a fowl discontent, and the next thing you know, all kinds of house birds might be trying to make their escape, and we'd have them flying all over the place, their owners creeping silently after them with nets, or singing alluring chirping songs to them, seed in hand.
On the other hand, I suppose that wouldn't be all bad.
07-October 2004
# # #
House Pain[t]
So we've been painting our house this summer. On the outside. It's not a very big house, but it has two stories, which means that we had to get a decently long ladder, and then actually use it. A fear of climbing a ladder, with a paint bucket in one hand and a brush in the other, to a height of over twenty feet is a reasonable and sensible fear, I tell myself. It is a fear to be embraced and never, ever, overcome. After two months of work, we have now scraped, primed, and painted nearly all of the lower level of the house. This has required only excursions of three, or maybe four rungs up the ladder. This was manageable, but the easy [hah!] part is done now, and we have to address our fears and the ladder. The neighbors are painting their house too - they chose a much nicer color than we did, and all our work is going for looking second best, dammit - and the "he" of the couple says that he wants so badly to cover his old paint [it's yellow] that he's willing to climb the ladder. He even says he'll do our upper six feet or so. [I won't use any pathetically morbid idioms here, however sorely I am tempted. I'm going to be cremated anyway.] We told him we'd be ok with that. I'm a bit worried now, though, that he's going to back out. He did his house, and left the top three feet "for later".
The weather has not been very nice for house painting. The first half of the summer was mostly cool and wet, which makes it hard for paint to stick, and so far, the second half has been mostly dry and hot, which makes me stick. The worst day so far was an 85-degree, sunny day on which I scraped the south side of our house. This is the side with the border garden in which the mums keep dying. Because we have lead in our old paint, I had to cover everything with the standard 6-mil black plastic, which turned out to be a bad thing for me and for most of the plants, even though they were only covered for a little while. The mums wouldn't have made it through the suffocation, even if they had survived my other tender loving care. I had to wear the sweaty goggles and the sweaty big orange chemical resistant gloves, and I stood there sweating and scraping away in the blazing sun, on and off the sweaty ladder [not too high], the black plastic soaking up every bit of sweaty sun that came into northeastern Minneapolis and radiating it right back at sweaty me. You might wonder why I didn't pick another day or time to do this, but then you might not have one spouse, two homeschooled children, three violins, a dog, a house and yard, a part-time college teaching job, an embryonic writing career, and only one afternoon a week to have fun painting your house.
********
Update
The second worst day so far was today. My job was to scrape the last side, the north side of the house, which is mostly shady. I thought that this would be the "reward" side, and started work with a right spirit and a strong arm; you know, save the easiest one for last, it's all downhill from here - that sort of crap. I'd also begun to get daring with the ladder. After a couple months of climbing up and down, after all, six or seven rungs isn't that big of a deal anymore. Well, the north wall is nice and cool, but I made the discovery, when I was up higher on the ladder than I ever dreamed I'd dare go, that a fairly large family of wasps, or hornets, or whatever sort of stinging insects they are, has taken up residence in the vent at the top of the wall. This was an unpleasant discovery, both for the piquant family and for me. I don't know how they found out that I was there, but I found out about their existence when they started stinging the backs of my poor legs as I was thirteen feet above ground, scraping sturdily and blithely unaware [until then] of the discomfort I was apparently causing them. I recall saying Ow! Ow! a couple of times, and keeping my balance, but I dismounted quickly, and my enthusiasm for the job was pretty much gone. The duration of my scraping term could fairly be described as lame. I stayed low and scraped timidly.
I've made two decisions thus far, as I've been moving gracefully along my house painting voyage. The first one has to do with hell, believe it or not. If I ever do make it there, and the big guy in charge is pondering what form my eternal punishment should take, I'll be sitting there, like Harry under the Sorting Hat, muttering Not house painting, Not house painting. The second decision I've made is that if ever we end up buying another house, it's going to have maintenance-free siding. I'm never doing this fucking thing again.
07-August 2004
# # #
A dream
Another dream, another house.
You come to me.
You have no beard, and are not wearing your glasses.
You in the doorway, your face sweet and smooth.
You want me to help you find ... what?
I will help you.
We climb a narrow staircase in the house.
A long, thin window at a landing. It confuses us,
this house.
Doors that open into one room also open
into another.
A door closed behind us vanishes, or becomes a stairwell,
leading up, or down,
or into a hallway leading to more doors.
Sixth floor. The top?
No floor, really, just slats covering, barely, the skeleton of a floor.
No walls, just skeletons of walls.
But it is the same room, our room, that we've been climbing past.
Same white cupboards,
same peaked ceiling,
long rectangular room,
same double window at the opposite end.
And now you are gone, and I am alone.
I see you
in another doorway, in another room, in another house.
You sit with Her, as I imagine She looks.
Clutter all about you, on the floor.
Unmade bed, clothes, towels, books, socks strewn about.
White.
It is mostly all a dull, bluish white.
You talk with each other, convincing each other, reassuring each other.
(This has to be ok.)
I look for contentment, for honesty, for strength.
(It is not here.)
I see fear, feeding and fed by fear.
I ought to cry out, no, this is wrong, you must not do this!
But I have no right. I am not involved.
I am not weak. I am strong.
But I am numb.
I am wood.
I sit at a piano in my room.
My sister sits next to me. We play a duet.
You and She walk into the room, holding hands.
You stand beside the piano, listening, smiling.
You look at each other and kiss.
You walk away.
# # #
This website is just taking up too damn much of my time. How am I ever going to get my book finished when I'm slaving all my time away with this thing?
MFK and me
I'd been working away for, well, not that long, on a bit about MFK Fisher; she was the food critic and author who wrote with such vividness and humor about food and eating. I waxed about how her essays made my own food preparation and consumption so real and wonderful, even days after I'd read chapters from her books. The act of baking bread became symbolic of creation, potatoes became a connection between my family and the dirt we all come from and the dirt to which we shall all return, and the idea of making every single meal a celebration of life seemed like a pretty peachy idea.
I wasn't exactly happy with what I wrote about her, mostly because I kept tending to write stuff that made me appear to think that I knew her or was like her because what she wrote appealed to me. This is the sort of thing that kept coming up on the computer screen:
MFK did not write lists of recipes in her books, and from what I can see, they are not arranged in anything like alphabetical order. Just about all of her books, and just about all that is in them, have to do with the ways in which she satisfied her hunger. Most of the hunger she discussed in her books has to do with the physical kind, but it is very clear that she had a lot of other kinds of hunger, and it is also clear that in the ways she found for satisfying that most basic kind of hunger, she had a fair amount of success in dealing with the other kinds. She did this in a lot of places, and in a lot of ways. She described meals as events. She described the cooks and chefs, her fellow diners, all of the circumstances with passion and in vivid detail, and then and only then did she sometimes put in what we'd normally call the recipe. Even when she got around to the recipes, you realize that they were not of the antiseptic variety one finds in regular cookbooks. If all you do is take a glance at them, they look the same on the page, with the ingredients listed first and then the directions on how to combine, cook, and consume them, but when you read them you find that the humor and the passion are still there. Her description of how Addie slaps the dough for her bucket bread as though it were a Bad Boy is not something one will find in the standard issue.
Well, there I was, not happy with it. The remedy seemed to me to go back to the source, and see what else I could find for inspiration. So, I looked again at The Art of Eating, and alas, found what I was not looking for. She actually admitted to firing a cook for using her best olive oil for cooking eggs [was it frying or scrambling?]. She didn't really admit it, she just mentioned it as an aside, as though it's something that everyone has to cope with, those pesky cooks who can't keep their hands on the right bottle of oil. I don't have a cook, and while I do have two different bottles of oil, I wouldn't think of firing anyone for using the better oil to cook eggs. I'd throw myself on the floor in gratitude for the help.
So here I now am, realizing that, other than the existence of our mutual hungers, MFK was not like me and that her ability to enjoy fried rabbit, blue trout, and calves' brains was not just an anomaly. I like how she wrote, but she was really quite a bit different from me, and not always in a good way. So there. I'm not going to write about her.
# # #
The ghost writer
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there lived a young man in a city. The city was always full of busy people, but the young man lived quite alone. He spent most of his time in his apartment, which was on the third floor of a building, and he spent most of his time in the apartment writing. He did not have a lot of things, because he did not have a lot of money. He had a table and a chair and a bed, and a closet for his few clothes, and some books in stacks on the floor. In the winter the apartment was usually cold, because he didn’t have the money both to keep it warm and to feed himself. He usually spent enough on heat to make the room bearable, and was hungry most of the time but not starved. He didn’t drink coffee and smoke and wear a scarf around his neck like writers should. He couldn’t afford it, and besides, he didn’t write because he liked it or because he wanted to make money doing it, although both of these things would have made his life easier. He wrote because he had to. He spent an hour or so every morning wandering around the best places in the city for old paper or pens, and after he had collected what he thought would be sufficient for the day, he went to his room and began to write.
He wrote about the things other people write about, and he was not always eloquent or profound. He filled sheets and sheets of paper, with words about hope and dreams, about love and spring, about rain and loss, and about fear and death. He wrote stories and he wrote poems, he wrote sentences and he wrote fragments. He wrote lies and he wrote the truth. Lost, he wrote of searching, and found, he wrote of joy, and then he wrote of confusion. He did not care that no one would ever read what he had written. He wrote to live.
Then, one day after his morning search for pens and paper, and upon his return to his room, he realized that the pens he had found were all nearly empty. He wrote all of the ink out of the old pens he had, and then he wrote all of the ink out of the last pen but one. He sat and stared at the last pen for a moment, and then began to write, more slowly than usual. As he wrote, though, he forgot that he was nearly out of ink, and the words began to pour out of the pen, filling the paper with the usual urgent speed.
At length, the ink in the pen did run out. The writer continued to write, not noticing that the words he wrote were no longer visible. It didn’t matter to him. He wrote for hours, even into the night, when at last he rose from his table and collapsed on the bed. The next morning, he did not leave his room to search for paper and pens. He merely went to the table and began to write with the empty pen on the last blank sheet of paper from the previous day. He wrote all day, of the usual things in his head, feverish, hurried. At the end of the day, the paper was empty. That night, though, after he had fallen asleep, the ghosts came into his room and they looked at the paper, and they read the invisible words he had written. At first, they laughed at him for being so naïve and so innocent that he would think of writing such things. They had, after all, forgotten how it is, being alive and needing to live.
The next day, he wrote again in the same way, and the next night, the ghosts again came to read his words. This time too, they laughed, but then they also began to remember. Through the words that only the unseen could see, they once again smelled the earth in spring, and saw love in another’s eyes. They felt betrayal and they knew the guilt of causing pain. The invisible words created a connection between the seen and the unseen, and they began to need more. They arrived eagerly, every night, to read what the young writer had written during the day, but soon even this was not enough. They needed to see the words come. They needed to be with him as he wrote, to see him write and to watch him in his chair. Unknown to him, they gathered around him in a thick crowd, staring at each word as it poured from the empty pen onto the blank paper, taking from his thoughts and dreams the life which he would never have and which they had lost.
# # #
Forty
Forty is a fucking big number. You can say no it’s not, but I’m here to tell you yes it is.
Big.
And not only big, but fucking big. Look at the date. 4.4.04. What is that but a bunch of fucking fours? Is that why this just came on? I mean, I’ve been 40 for months now. Oh my god, look at that FUCKING BIG NUMBER! Twenty was a good long life, and this is TWICE that! How many good lives can be squeezed into forty years? I mean, I remember very well being ten, and it seemed like I’d lived forever by then. And here I suddenly am, at four of those! How many months are there in forty years? Forty times twelve is four hundred eighty. What about weeks? Forty times fifty two is two thousand eighty. Days? Forty times three hundred sixty five is fourteen thousand six hundred. What the hell have I been doing for fourteen thousand six hundred days? Were any of them BUSY enough? Forty times three hundred sixty five times twenty four is three hundred fifty thousand four hundred hours. Have I done anything really USEFUL during, say, more than fifty of them? Has the world changed ONE JOT because I’ve been crawling around on it for forty times three hundred sixty five times twenty four times sixty is twenty one million twenty four thousand minutes?
Whose fucking idea was this, anyway?
# # #
An artist’s world
My neighbors have an artist in their basement. He’s a youngish one, so I’m guessing that he probably still works pretty well. He comes out at night and drives a delivery truck. He used to wear his hair long in dreadlocks, but he got it all cut off, probably when he started driving the truck for money. He also shovels snow. The early morning after a snowstorm is usually when I see him, as we’re both out there cleaning up. I should have said that I know he still works well, because sometimes he even thinks of clearing our driveway too. (I think that he does all of the shoveling for the neighbors, and I’m not sure why, though I suspect that he doesn’t pay a lot to be in their basement and this is part of the agreement.) We chat about stuff when we’re shoveling, and it turns out that he paints. He used to do work in the real world, sort of art-related, but that wasn’t good for him. He was hoping to get some studio space but I’m not sure if that worked out. He’s a friendly artist, as well. He thinks my kids are amazing and that I’m a good singer. He heard me last summer, when the windows were open.
He does most of his painting in the neighbors’ basement. I’ve never seen any of it, but he talks about theories of illustration and such things as though he knows and cares a lot about them. One morning when my husband and he were doing the shoveling, they introduced themselves to each other and immediately had a discussion about the color theory coming out of the Bauhaus and the semiotics of typefaces, though I’m not sure that they used those terms. Maybe he wants to be an illustrator. I’ve thought of asking him if he wants to illustrate one of the children’s stories I’ve written, but then I don’t want to pressure him. I also don’t want him to say no. At first when we met him he was very cool and said hey and not much more and nodded at the kids who were impressed with him. That was when he was not working at night and still had a car of his own. Then after he got to know us he dropped the cool and was earnest.
He doesn’t have a car now - he’s had two or three of them, but they’ve all stopped working over the last year or so. He borrows cars sometimes, but mostly he drives his work truck and keeps it parked in front of the house when he’s not using it. There’s not much room in the back for such a big truck. When it snows, he has to park it over across the street, which is in another city, because our city doesn’t let people park on the street if there are more than two inches of snow and the other city does, but only on certain streets and at certain times after the snow stops falling and the people who plow it start working. One day after a snow, a police officer went to the neighbors’ house and when no one answered the front door he asked us (we were on the way out) is there a guy living here who drives a delivery truck. We said yes, he’s out back, shoveling the driveway. He went back there, and soon came back with the artist. They got in the police car and drove away. We left, but when we got back, the big truck was parked out back in the little bit of room that was there. I’m glad that at least he didn’t have to cope with a ticket and a tow. Especially for a delivery truck.
# # #
What’s in the Queen’s purse?
Here’s one:
Have you ever seen a photo or film clip of England’s Queen Elizabeth carrying a purse? I have, and I often wonder what in the world she could be carrying in there, and why (also in the world) she clutches it so tightly with both hands, as if she’s afraid that somebody is going to grab it from her and she’s going to lose whatever it is that she carries in it. What the heck? The only thing she has to lose is her status as queen, and she surely can’t be carrying around a permission slip from her parents, can she?
I have a purse too, and though I am probably as unlike the Queen of England as is possible, I can’t help but use it for ideas. So Â… what’s in mine? Well, the three things that immediately fall out are keys, my wallet, and a bunch of handkerchiefs. Now what would the Queen of England want with a key? I have a house key, but could she need a key to Buckingham Palace, for those late nights out? Absurd. What about a car key? Nope, but I like to imagine her in the driver’s seat, revving up the Rolls. Let’s move on to the wallet - no better luck there. I never have any money, and can’t imagine that she does, either. Does she keep an ID with her, in case she writes a check or wants a beer from Chipotle or one of those places that cards everyone no matter what? Nah. The most promising ground might be with the hankies, in the sphere of personal grooming. Everyone needs a hanky every now and then, and she might even want to comb her hair or powder her nose after lunch. Still, she surely has personal assistants who can carry such necessaries for her?
Maybe her PR people think that she’ll look more accessible if she keeps a purse with her (maybe they’ve read Barthes and the "'Blue blood’ cruise"), but if that’s the case, someone ought long ago to have thought about providing training for her in the carrying and handling of a purse. Clutching the thing to one’s gut whilst smiling through clenched teeth is not normally good purse etiquette. Nor do I subscribe to the whole purse-as-accessory viewpoint. I see my purse as an extension of my being, and the reason I carry it is that I’d look and walk like an elephant if I carried everything in my pockets. I have long and faithful relationships with my purses - I don’t wear one on Monday and then toss it aside the next day because it doesn’t match my Tuesday coat. I use the same one for years, until it’s old and worn, and then reluctantly put it in the purse crypt in the attic, with all the other beloved departed. (I keep telling my daughter that I’ll get some down for her to play dress-up, but somehow, I haven’t done it yet.)
Besides, the pretty little bags the Queen carries are much too small to be useful, unless she keeps a spare, fold-up crown in them. Anyone who carries a purse for any amount of time knows that stuff collects in there, and that it’s all very important and potentially useful stuff. Going back to my own purse, let’s see Â… I also have four CDs, and an Elizabeth Gaskell novel I read while my kids are in Sunday School or I’m waiting for a ride. Nix for those sorts of items, I think. How about a small notebook with filthy edges and six pens, three of which don’t work anymore? No, again, give the personal assistants something to do. Chapstick. Do queens use chapstick? Cough drops. Personal assistant again. Ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Maybe get a second personal assistant. Hey, there’s a dollar at the bottom! And a broken watch, and some pieces of little toys that mean something to my children, and a bunch of black fuzzy stuff, and some crumbs from loose cookies that we all forgot about.
I think I’ll give up. Who knows what’s inside the Queen’s purse? Maybe that’s the point. Maybe she carries it to feel like she’s human after all, and has the need, or the right, to carry a bag like everyone else, the contents of which are and will likely remain a mystery to the rest of us. After all, in a life as public as hers, the purse could help remind her that she’s real, and give her something however small that is exclusively her own. Looking inside mine has shown how very much a purse can reveal about the life and character of its owner. But if that’s the case, oh horrible thought, what if her purse is empty?
# # #
Ladybug guilt
There’s one ladybug, or a near facsimile thereof, crawling up one side of my kitchen windowframe. I feel pretty bad about her solitary state - I always think of ladybugs as having female gender although I am perfectly well aware that it must take another gender to ensure that the ladybug be a viable competitor in the struggle for survival. I wonder why they aren’t called lady/gentlemanbugs. No, I don’t. The reasons are simply too obvious and manifold - at any rate, I’m personally responsible for her solitary journey up to the top of the window. If it weren’t for me, she’d have at least two hundred, or more, companions.
During the last two or three weeks, I’ve killed lady- and gentlemanbugs in just about every way imaginable, except maybe smashing them with a shoe. Too messy. The best method for a wide sweep is the vacuum cleaner - not the good one, but the old dirt-devil for the basement and the cars. I use this method on genocide days. The next most effective method, for up to ten bugs, is the dust-buster. At first, we used this for a version of "catch-and-release" but then, I’m ashamed to admit that sloth got in the way - have to put on shoes to go out into the yard, after all - and I resorted to flushing them down the toilet, giving them the ignominious death heretofore reserved for spiders. A torn paper towel or piece of toilet paper serves for the individual murders, the "pounce" method. Again, I’ll admit to barefaced flushing of these victims. I’ve also run a few down the drain. I’ve disposed of ladybugs while they were engaged in just about every possible ladybug activity - sleeping, eating, mating, bathing, reading the paper, I even caught a couple swimming in a cereal bowl the other day.
*****
I wrote the above in late September and now it’s the middle of February (does February have anything other than a middle?). For all these months, I’d been feeling pretty bad about those ladybugs. I mean, not really, after all, they were just ladybugs and they had no business setting up house in my kitchen and besides, some of them probably weren’t even real ladybugs; they were those pretenders who like to get into your soul by disguising themselves as Mother Goose characters and then when their chance comes, they show their stripes. Or, their lack of spots. Or whatever. But still, I was feeling pretty bad. It’s uncomfortable to look back and acknowledge that I did enjoy that wholesale removal and took pleasure in wiping (or suctioning) the place clean. Isn’t that a bad sign for my character? Does it imply that I’d be the sort of person who, once I had any real power, might use it ill? Today ladybugs, tomorrow the crows?
Well as I say, I had been feeling bad about it. After all, in our deep freeze I hadn’t seen a ladybug for months. But last week we had our first real thaw. And Tuesday afternoon, with the warm sun coming in through the kitchen window, damned if I didn’t see a ladybug making its way up the windowframe. It was kind of brownish and looked like it had been through the mill, but in my heart I felt the immediate surge of battlelust, and I began looking wildly for a bit of something to use to scoop it up. The paper towel holder was empty. No Kleenexes on the fridge. I ran to the bathroom for t.p. and when I got back
# # #
The last leaf
This fall, the trees seemed less willing than usual to lose their leaves when the weather turned. It was dry and the colors were quite brilliant for a few days, and some leaves did dutifully float down when the hard freezes came. Our maple, though, and quite a few other trees on the parkway, just hung on, and now with the snow coming and going, they look kind of ridiculous, still covered in brown dead fur. I see one or two leaves occasionally torpedo down while I’m walking with Abby, but for the most part, they’re still up there.
This persistence in maintaining the illusion of life and vigor is having an effect on me, and I’ve begun to wonder if there’s ever a time when the season wins, the trees lose all hope, and they drop the last leaf. Our maple, for instance, is at least 50 years old, and is quite a large specimen. In the spring, when the first onslaught comes, I rake up barrels and barrels of the little flower pods, and then more barrels and barrels with the second onslaught of the baby seed pods. With the leaves that fell, even this year, I filled ten or so barrels. But of all of those individual instances of life on that tree, will there be a last one? Will there ever be a time when the tree is truly bare, truly dormant?
My mom has in her yard in Florida what is referred to as a "live oak" tree. She says that it drops leaves all year, but that it grows them back again right away, so it’s always full and green. Now is the season of her discontent, as the tree is doing some heavy shedding, just like a dog in July drops its hair. And, like the dog, the tree somehow never goes bare. More leaves grow to fill in the empty places.
So for some trees, in some places, the answer to the question is: No - there is no last leaf. But what about here? I stare at a tree and think that I can see nothing in it, and then I spy a straggler, clinging to a twig. If I can see one, then there’s probably another one. And what of our big maple? What force is it that will determine which leaf will be the last to fall? Or will there not be a last leaf, after all?
# # #
Can you kill "Chrysanthemum"?
I’ve broken down twice so far this year and bought chrysanthemums. One has purplish flowers and the other is a nice bright yellow. They’re sitting on our front step in their pots, awaiting their doom. I’m not a bad gardener - I grow respectable tomatoes and am learning to grow different kinds of herbs - but I have terrible luck with chrysanthemums. Over the years, I must have killed dozens of them. I don’t mean to, but I can’t seem to keep them breathing.
I’ve tried everything, I think. I’ve planted them immediately after buying them in the spring, and immediately after buying them in the fall. Nothing’s there the next spring except a few dried stems poking up. I try clipping them back, I try not clipping them. I keep them in their original pots until later in the fall, before the ground freezes. I plant them here and I plant them there, hoping that the ground will be friendlier in one place than another. I even try keeping them in their pots, buried in leaves and compost, in the corner of my perennial garden. Okay, I’ve also left a few in pots on their sides, where the wind blew them over, to freeze and wither over the winter. Those dried stems are the only thing I ever get. It’s kind of pathetic these days - I’m so hopeless now about them that I’ll often forget where I put them, and the next year I’ll be weeding or planting, and lo, there’ll be those stems, putting me once again to shame.
One spring, of the three mums I planted the previous fall, one actually came up. I was so excited, but then we had a hard late frost, and the poor thing withered on the stem.
I found out last year that my mom also has a brown thumb when it comes to mums. I was telling her about my mum-woes, and she told me that she has the same troubles. I wonder that I didn’t know about it before. The silver lining must be that I found a similarity to my mom that I didn’t know was there before. The cloud gets a bit blacker, though, now that I’m suspicious of a genetic link between me and the dying mums. Maybe there’s just no hope.
That would explain the sense of guilt I have over those pots of prettily blooming flowers on my step. Why do I keep buying them when I know it’s a death sentence? It’s like a primal urge, forcing me to do it when I know it’s wrong. I am not a malicious person, and I’m frequently pessimistic, but there does seem to be an unfounded optimism in this persistence in an endeavor that has consistently proven hopeless.
Maybe I’ll get a nice orange one this weekend.
# # #
Testing, testing, one, two, threetofour
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