Written in a Car

I was in a car the other day, going from my grandparents' house to my mom's. And suddenly, I really started to notice the shapes of the trees. Weather-wise, there's no snow obscuring the branches and trunks, but it's still early enough that there aren't any leaves either. It's been rainy the last couple days, too, and the contrast between the wet, black bark and the grey of the sky blew me away. I noticed that so many of the single trees I saw (whether by nature or by human artifice) had branches that absolutely spiraled out from the trunks. I could look at the trees and see movement. You have no idea how much I A. wished I had a camera and B. wished I could capture on film what I was seeing.

So instead, I cobbled together a haiku and recited it silently until I could write it down.

Here it is. I know it's a paltry offering, considering what I was trying to express, but I worried that if I tried to make a longer poem, not only would I forget half the lines by the time I recorded them, but that the poem's impact might be diminished.

----
The tree: twisted, gnarled
Bent from seasons in the world.
Still, in spring it buds.
----

Argh. I wish I was a better....poet? Writer? Something, anyway.

~Later

Art Blogs

I've been reading a lot of other peoples' blogs lately, and I have to say, this foray has resonated with me. Specifically, I've been dipping into the wealth of blogs written by working artists. (And by working artists, I mean both A. artists who work really hard most of the time at their crafts, and B. artists who then make money off of said art...but mostly I mean type A.)

Even though I am, by and large, not a visual artist--drawings, paintings, sculpture, etc.--many of the artists I've been reading are. And I am amazed at how similar their working lives are to mine. I am also always amazed at how much more awesome their chronicles of their works are, compared to mine (and not just because they post pictures of their stuff!) It's kind of weird to phrase it like this, but I feel like I'm cut off from my work, like I can identify so much more with the struggles other people are going through.

Sometimes--well, okay, most of the time--I feel like my work is just so boring. I've been experiencing an abundance of creativity lately, which is really excellent, because I'm excited about writing again. And not just a little excited. I'm so full of ideas and snippets and just general excitement that my sleep is getting interrupted. The littlest thing will get me worked up so fast that (seriously) I feel ill with the strength of it. I'm frequently burning the candle at both ends, kept awake with the need to write and waking up early because I just can't lay in bed with words burning their way through me.

Yesterday, for example, I found I could not in good conscience retire to the bedroom for the night until I wrote a ballad. And so I struggled through it. I'm pretty in love with it today, but yesterday I just wanted to be able to stop. I took a couple breaks while writing it, yes, but I could not allow myself to quit before it was finished. (And even then, after that, I sat in my bed until two in the morning and scribbled frantically to capture a scene for a story before I was too exhausted to hold the pen any more.)

I'm also putting my hand in trying to create an art quilt. It's going fairly well, though I'm only in the planning stage. I'm using a couple of different traditional blocks in addition to the fancy parts. (I hate that quilting requires so much precise math! I'm terrible at figuring out how big I have to make certain pieces if I want them to come out a certain size.)


Doing so much all at once is really very tiring. But...I have found that reading about other people's works restores me. It makes me really happy to be creating things. It gets me excited about all kinds of art again. Now, if only I can control myself a little and stop missing/burning meals because I get distracted by writing.

~Later

At long last...

It's been ages since I've had a real update here, hasn't it? I humbly offer a rough draft of a poem, written tonight as I enjoyed a piece of pie.

----

Fork Country


My people don't hold much truck with spoons.

Spoons have their places, namely stirring coffee in the cup
assuming it's not consumed black.

This is fork country:
For all that the places are set with spoons,
They go back, unused, to the silverware drawer at the end of the meal.

Meat and potatoes and bread and butter
Grace the plates across the table.
Green beans or swiss chard, stewed in the second-largest kettle
Served in a separate dish, for those who like it that way.

A butter knife and three-tined fork are all you'll ever need.

Save your fork for later:
Dessert is mincemeat pie from this year's deer,
God be thanked.
Square pie: done in a baking pan with two-inch-high sides
Still boiling hot and smelling great clear out the dooryard.

There's no call for serrated knives in this house:
All straight-edged blades, pick your choice
Razor sharp in the knife block
Just come back from sharpening in Uncle Phil's basement shop.

Grampy and Grammy and Momma and I each eat a slice,
Served on the thin blade of the cutting knife,
Placed on saucers by Grammy's own two hands.
The crust is the best crust anyone could make,
The filling's pretty darn good, not bad at all, considering
the apples and oranges and raisins were all free.

Grampy eats his with his favorite paring knife
Blade worn to a crescent curving out the bone handle.
He cuts the crust into bites and forks them up.
Grammy pinches stray crumbs with her fingers,
sliding them onto her fork and into her mouth.
Momma eyes the dish-- she'd like a sliver or a whole piece more.
And I think about spoons. I don't need one, but I want one.

But this is fork country,
And I'd be a fool to ask.

----

I know, I know. It's still pretty rough and needs trimming. Nonetheless, I'm fairly pleased with it so far. (Yes, the pie I ate tonight was indeed my grandmother's mincemeat. ^_^ The crust was store-bought, but it still tastes pretty good.)

I've been watching old episodes of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations lately, and it made me wonder: if he were to visit my state, what would we show him, as far as local cuisine goes? Frankly, I don't know of any restaurants that really cover the sort of food my family cooks and eats, and I consider us to be true locals. (I know, I'm being prejudiced about out-of-staters.) I mean, what does my state have? We have a lot of mediocre chain restaurants, a lot of fast food joints, and some half-assed attempts at "fine dining." There are lots of American Chinese restaurants (not to be confused with the Chinese food one would actually find in China.) Honestly? My two favorite restaurants are independently owned pancake houses.

Anyway, I must away!

~Later

Updates and Odds and Ends

Here's the deal. I've temporarily down-ranked the Entropy index. I'm doing this partly because I don't want any crossover traffic to be getting confused about what's what with Entropy. I'm going through and revising things in order to post them elsewhere, and I don't want people to think that what they've read of it here is the be-all-end-all. It's not. The story is constantly evolving, changing, growing. Some changes are minor, but there are going to be some big revisions, too. I'm working hard to better mesh the older and newer material. It's hard to keep such a sprawling body of work consistent. So anyway, that's why the Entropy index is currently moved down a bit. It can still be found in the tags under "Entropy chapter index."

That aside, I have been working on new chapters for it in addition to polishing the old ones. At this very moment, I have three chapter thirteens. Or wait. No. I have four chapter thirteens and a general sketchy outline of what chapter thirteen is supposed to cover. Working from that outline has produced three chapter thirteens in addition to the fourth, original thirteen. Obviously, once they're all nice and ready for posting, they will no longer be 13a, 13b, and 13c. They'll be thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen...and depending on how the original thirteen looks after all that new stuff, there'll be a sixteen, too. (And all of that will trigger the domino effect, considering I already have a chapter 14, 15, and 16.) I swear, every time I turn around Entropy gets bigger. Maybe I should have called it Inertia. (I'm joking. ^_^)

Besides Entropy, I've recently done up a one-shot, also Naruto and also Kakashi/Sasuke-centric. I'm still on the fence about posting it here, because it definitely requires some sort of adult content warning. Is it possible to be graphic and tasteful at the same time? I definitely shot for intimate and delicate (versus raunchy and porntastic) but I didn't really skimp on the details...In fact, I sort of wallowed in the details.

I have a few other bits and pieces from various fandoms floating around, but nothing is too serious at this point. I've been consumed by the big projects recently.

As for non-fandom things...I haven't done too much. I drafted a poem recently but haven't touched it since. Really, I have two poems on the back burner. I also have been picking at a fiction piece, but I've been derelict in pushing forward with it. That particular one is tricky: I've written some for it before and it was quite serious. Doing bits for it now, I find myself dipping into the humorous and almost farcical. It's tough to balance the different moods and styles, and I'm not convinced I'm doing it successfully. I suspect it's going to be one of those stories where the different styles interrupt the main story every so often. (I consider the serious parts to be the real meat of this story.)

I've had a real yen for discussions of writing craft lately. I've been re-reading pieces of writing manuals and style guides. I've been reading about reading too, and have just encountered a rather interesting-looking book on the subject, entitled "The Crafty Reader." Part of the premise of it seems to be about reading as a multi-faceted discipline. the thing that grabbed me about it was that A. the dust jacket promised a good discussion on the craft and tools of critical reading, and B. it kind of promised to debunk and demean the New Critical theory. (I despise New Critical.)

Still, my search for shop-talk isn't turning up a lot of results. I want discussion, not a "Thou shalt write this way and this way only" sort of thing, of which so many books on writing are. I suppose I'd do better looking for essays on writing, really, but it's kind of the same problem there, with the added distinction that a lot of the "good" essays are either by or about authors I don't read, and the works they may discuss are, for lack of a better term, dated. If I wanted to delve more into the socio-historical aspects of writing craft, I would...but I don't. I think part of the problem is that I can't clearly define what I want; I am only able to look through and say that this or that is what I don't want.

Ugh. This was a singularly unproductive post, wasn't it?

~Later

In the wind...

Remember when I said, back whenever it was, that I was going to have to write all-new material for chapter thirteen of Entropy? And remember how I said more recently that that chapter was going to be a boring montage-ish chapter? Well, I've made a fool of myself. I have a chapter thirteen now, and it is not a montage. It also covers a fraction of what I was intending to cover, which means I need to do even more new writing to catch up between twelve and the chapters that lay in the story's future (which I have already written and will need to rewrite.)

Speaking of rewrites, I've done a quick re-read of Entropy as posted here. I've found some parts of chapter one that I will be tending to in the next couple days. I can finally say that distancing myself from the story has helped me find the problems. I now see better what needs to be improved and removed in order for chapter one to fit in smoothly between the prologue and chapter two. Lesson learned: try to avoid writing prologues after laying out chapters of stuff that come after! I think I can properly streamline chapter one now. It's such a relief! (Especially knowing I had some serious, very obvious errors in there.)

In other news, I've officially taken up with an online fanfic community. This is exciting, mostly because it affords me the opportunity to expand my readership rather dramatically (and yet, so easily!) I'm just getting used to the setup over there as far as posting goes, and it also amazes me how satisfying it is to watch the number of hits my story has crawl higher. (I put up one quick story over there just to acclimate myself to the controls and process and all. I'm going to take my time with the rest of what I want to put up.)

Conversely, this may mean a gradual increase in visits over here, as I've listed this as my website...not that I'm expecting much of anything.

One thing is for sure, though. I'm going to try my best not to sit around waiting for warm fuzzies and hits to come my way. I'm going to try to keep busy writing! If I just keep my head down and work, I may eventually get somewhere. With that in mind, I'll probably post something here in the near future. Fingers crossed!

~Later

Feline Stewardship?

I am consumed with these sorts of thoughts lately...

---
The cat bashes his tail against my shins. He is convinced this will make me feed him treats. He fluffs his tail up, whips it back and forth, and thwacks it insistently on my legs. If he were a tom, he’d probably spray with excitement as I finally reach for the pouch of treats. As it is, he looks ridiculous with his tail vibrating and snaking. He marches in place on my feet.

Fifteen pounds of feline fury crouches over the food dish. He tracks the fall of the treats. His pupils are blown wide. He meows. Only two treats are forthcoming, and two is more than enough, but, of course, he does not feel the same.

Ah well. This is why I am in charge: I have the thumbs it requires to open the cabinet with the treats and to open the Ziploc package itself.

----

Not much of a freewrite. But it wasn't the only thing I worked on today, writing-wise. Maybe tomorrow will feel more profitable. Profitable? Profit-full, perhaps? Whatever the word is, I want to feel rich with writing, for the first time in months.

On a vaguely related note, I was reading bits of "A Cookbook for Poor Poets And Others"--a cookbook about frugal cooking, among other things-- recently, and I suddenly realized that the title might not mean what I had always thought it meant. I always thought it meant poets who were bad at poetry, but I now understand it also means/could mean poets who have no money. I supposed you could be a poor poet who is poor, as well...which would definitely explain your using that cookbook!

Still, I like the idea of a poet writing exceptionally bad verse. (Not that I would seriously want to read it. "Bad" poetry is painful to read.) I suppose my child's brain--my mother has had that cookbook probably longer than I have been alive--latched onto the idea that being bad at poetry meant you had to compensate for or automatically be good at some other area (like cooking.) But, sadly, poetry and cooking are not a linked skill set, inversely proportionate or otherwise.

...I feel rather silly that my post-freewrite ramblings are at least equal to if not greater than my actual freewrite.

~later

A priest, a rabbi, and an atheist walk into a bar...

...but you already know that old chestnut.

Here's another old chestnut: I have not been posting lately. I am incredibly remiss and derelict in my self-proposed writing goals, and I feel pretty awful about it. I feel hopeless and helpless, which is never a good combination.

I've been grinding away at the same poem for almost a week now. Looking at it swamps me with misery, which is half the problem why it isn't done--I almost can't bear to look it over. The other half is, of course, that I am not yet satisfied. It's definitely missing something and I have no clue how to fix it. Today I separated it into stanzas (of a fashion) to see if I could spot the problem. Is it the order? Have I said too much? Not enough? I have a sinking feeling that I may have accidentally jammed two separate poems into one, and now they're having awkward hookup sex, and really both of them would rather be alone, but they're too polite to go their separate ways.

Entropy is going nowhere fast. I'm overwhelmed with the scope of what I hope to orchestrate in the next chapter. Knowing it's going to be something of a montage showing the development of the main characters' friendship does not help. It's still a lot to do.

I have been unable to work on any old original stuff or start any fresh. I think it's fair to say I don't have my heart in it right now, because every time I squeeze a sentence out it looks bad and I toss it in the garbage. A rookie mistake and all the more discouraging for that.

And yet, I keep trying, am driven to try.

~ciao

Diseases are icky.

I know, I've been missing for a couple days. I've been severely lacking in motivation to do anything constructive...in fact, I've done a pretty good job avoiding the things I want to accomplish.

Today, though, I have a small piece of a freewrite. This isn't the whole thing, but I'm really struggling to process how I feel about the part I'm not posting. I'll probably have to write more of it before I've resolved the problem (and still I might not post the rest of it.)

---
Harry had an unreasonable fear of gangrene. He’d never experienced it, nor had he ever known anyone who had. And, as a receptionist in the office of an obstetrician, the likelihood he would encounter gangrene in the workplace was very slim.

Harry wasn’t the adventurous type. He considered an evening in to be the best sort. He had a record collection, focused on pre-World War II opera divas. While he had cd doubles of some of his collection, much of it couldn’t be found on cd. Harry preferred to use his record player, at any rate. He felt closer to the singers. His interest in movies was also pre-World War II; he liked the silent, black-and-whites much more than what passed for cinema these days…though he conceded the creation of the DVD was probably a good thing. He didn’t have to worry about wearing out his vhs tapes anymore. Harry also had a cat, Burt. Burt was quiet, middle aged, and seemed to enjoy the opera as well. He was a good lap cat. Burt didn’t complain if Harry to the same album over and over.

Harry’s taste in clothing tended to button down shirts and sweater vests. Occasionally his co-workers teased him about being an old man before his time, but largely he didn’t mind. He had a comfortable, safe life with a comfortable, safe routine, surrounded by the things that gave him the most satisfaction.

But Harry still feared gangrene. He feared it so much that any slight deviation in his health was attributed to it. Suspicious moles, stubbed toes, a scratch gained while riding the subway…all of it pointed to gangrene. He had not one, but two physicians. They were both on his speed dial. He had a small library of medical texts and a special book with nothing but photographs of the various stages and permutations of gangrene.

He spent two hours before work each day examining himself in the bathroom mirrors, comparing himself to the pictures in the book. Burt assisted and encouraged. And then, after dinner but before his bath and his time with his movies and opera divas, Harry would spend another hour on a quick check for gangrene which might have developed during the work day.

---

I too have a fear of gangrene, but more in a general "that's really gross" way, not a "holy crap is that gangrene on my body?!?!?" way. I believe it's hardwired in the species to fear visible grossness. You know, the whole deal about not wanting to eat a delicious meal if it's being served up on a garbage can lid (whether or not the lid is used, clean, sterilized, or new.)

Maybe I should write more about the scary things that, were I a different person, could rule my life and change the way I behave. Nightmares are always rich soil for creativity, even if they are unpleasant.

~Later

What a Crock.

Quick freewrite. I've been thinking about this all day.

---
Mass Hysteria

It happened like this:

Once upon a time, there was a planet, occupied by men and women. The men did manly things, like shooting guns and playing sports and earning money, which they brought home to their wives, who did womanly things like have babies and cook dinner and knit wooly socks. This system worked rather well for the men and not so well for the women.

So, gradually, women started joining a massive Cult of Ideas. No one knew who founded it, exactly, but women all over the world joined it with the belief that chores and wage-earning and everything that made up their lives should be shared equally between men and women. They went through great pains to keep this society secret from men, because the men were sure to try to nip this rebellion in the bud, seeing as the current status quo was just fine for them.

This Cult of Ideas crept into the lives of the women over many, many years, and it became less of a secular idea and more of a religious one. Its members started praying to a universal Goddess to help them change things and make it all even between men and women. (By this time, men had become even more stuffy and unwilling to change the way things are, because the way things are is the way things always have been, and who wants to break up that sort of history anyway?)

And so it came to pass, on this planet inhabited by men and women, that a wave of mass hysteria swept the planet, and the men of the planet panicked like nothing else. You see, for a very long time, “mass hysteria” was a purely mind-over-matter issue of panic and delusion. Men knew this, and they also knew that it was a woman thing, having its roots in the womb, center of all of those uncontrollable, dangerous emotions found in women. Men didn’t have hysteria.

But, possibly through alien experimentation, maybe through the power of the years of women’s prayers, men all over the world suddenly developed wombs of their own. The men panicked like there was no tomorrow. And the women laughed themselves sick before they did anything else, like try and help the men adjust to this abrupt anatomical phenomenon.

----

This idea may sound completely cracked out, but it's not half as crazy as this show I was watching today, an anime in which a little boy lives in a jungle with his mom. And one day his mom inexplicably adopts a strange little girl who eats everything (like statues and people everything) and the stuff she eats gets sent to a different dimension...inside of her. And she can spit the stuff out again if she really wants. It's insane but insanely cute. Plus, it has the bonus of having one of my favorite voice actors in it.

Anway! Back to mass hysteria! I've always thought it was kind of a strange term. Sexist, yes, but also weird. And anyway, these days "mass" is always about cancer...or church. But mostly cancer.

My brains are going to explode out of my aching skull, and I'm still not free of yesterday's ailments. I should go to bed, maybe?

~Later

What's in a name?

For some reason, I seem to write about names a lot. Here's a short snippet entirely devoted to it.

---

Prudence Chastity Maheux, age seventeen, was counting down the time until her eighteenth birthday, when she would legally be allowed to change her name. She didn’t know what her parents had been thinking, naming her that. Maybe her mom had still been high on painkillers when she put that down.

Since age ten, when she had realized it was patently uncool to share her names with the Pilgrims coming off the Mayflower, Prudence had been looking for a better name. Her parents had been calling her Prudie since she could first talk. No amount of argument could convince them that her new nickname (adopted age twelve) was Chaz. It was the most cool, smallest part of her soon-to-be-ex name. Still, she reflected, Chaz was a little bit too boyish for a forever name.

Prudence had been collecting names over the past seven-and-a-half years. She kept the list in a three ring binder. She’d write down names of movie and book characters, classmates, and celebrities. If she overheard a name she liked, it went into the notebook. She had several baby name books and she eagerly awaited the coming of new phone books with their thousands of intriguing entries.

She knew all about last names as first names, and names that bridged the gender gap. She knew some names that crossed from widely male usage into widely female and the converse. Prudence was of the opinion that many Germanic names were too harsh for what she wanted. French ones sounded too snooty. And the Celtic ones…Prudence couldn’t even pronounce half of them, let alone imagine calling herself by one.

Still, she had hundreds of names to choose from, and she spent a little time each day trying them out in front of the bathroom mirror. Otherwise, how would she know which one she was? Sometimes she liked one enough to try it out for a day or two, signing her new name on her school papers and refusing to answer to her (soon to be ex) name. Prudence had invested in some “Hello my name is” stickers and they were invaluable.


---

I always have a hard time naming characters. I can't imagine how hard it might be to name myself. I mean, I go by a nickname I've had for years, but it's derived from my full name. I don't know that I could find the perfect, right name for me starting cold from a list, even if I took years to suss it out. And as for legal name changes? I don't know that I could jettison my old name. My name has history and sentimental importance attached to it.

But, if I were a Prudence Chastity, I'd make the effort.

~Later

The Dream Experience

So, for today's freewrite, a regurgitation of the dream I had whilst napping away the early evening hours.

----

I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ended up smack in the middle of an alien invasion. I had been shopping in an antiques mall, hundreds of booths and corridors and staircases that looped around in a dizzying display of merchandise. I was stopped by an elderly gentleman who had apparently heard me whistling Beethoven and he wanted to know if I could sing. He gave me some sheet music and I embarrassedly admitted that my sight reading skills were bad. Nonetheless I sang for him.

And then things went wrong. People with clear torques around their necks started to crowd out the people without them. They started chasing me, relentless. They were going to collar me, make me one of them, an alien. Or, at least, under alien control because they were coming today. I ran and fought and tricked. I punched through walls and ceilings trying to get up and out, but the aliens were swarming near me. I asked the numerous cats lazing about for help, and they obliged. They collected, out of the antiques, necklaces that could serve as a fake torque. I had to slow down in my flight to try them on. I finally got one that fit and I made my way back to an alien, because no one had witnessed my deception. But there was a flaw in my plan: my necklace was not clear, but red.

The red necklace scared the other aliens. From what I could gather without revealing to myself, I was someone higher up in the invasion plan than the aliens had been anticipating seeing so soon. Still, sweating every inch of the way, I made my stately, deliberate way to the exit…and then I ran into my mom and I had to rescue her without raising suspicions and I was so, so afraid for her, much more than I feared for myself. I managed to get her to safety, and the aliens finally caught up to me.

They were going to hold me until their leaders arrived and, by then, I was so tired that I couldn’t fight any more. I basically laid down to die. I was so tired and sad because, really, there was nothing I could do anymore. And then I woke up…which I had tried to do earlier without success.

----

Ugh. I'm sick of alien invasions.

~Later

Returning to the Regularly Scheduled Program

I'm doing daily freewrites again. Just a reminder, these tend to be word vomit with terrible grammar, structural, and continuity problems. The following is no exception.

---

I was waiting for Jessica in the Krogers parking lot. It was the middle of a particularly nasty February Wednesday and the wind howled and clawed at the car. I looked at the dashboard clock. Eleven thirty. I’d been sitting in the car listening to the radio for a half an hour now. I sighed and shifted position. Jessica had said she just needed to pick up a new toothbrush and a couple other small ‘personal’ items. I now suspected she was waiting for a refill of her birth control prescription. Jessica didn’t like to talk about that sort of stuff with me, and I was fine with that. I didn’t like talking about it either. But still, if I’d known this quick errand was going to take so long, I would have brought a book.

Maybe I should go in, see if she was stuck in line at the register. No, I told myself. That was a bad idea. Better wait. She didn’t like to be caught in the act of anything personal. Even though we lived together, slept together in the same bed, and, occasionally, had shower sex, Jessica still wasn’t comfortable brushing her teeth in front of me. I can’t imagine what it would be like if she found herself with a prescription bag, confronted by me in the checkout line.

I was trying to respect her, but it was hard. She made it hard. Hell if I knew why. Maybe it would just take some more time. I looked at the clock. Eleven forty. I needed to go in and check on her. I didn’t want to be stuck waiting all morning. I sighed, looking at the dismal parking lot. It was rainy with standing slush on the ground, and the wind was fierce. I checked my windbreaker, zipped it up as far as it would go. I pulled the keys out of the ignition and unbuckled my seatbelt.

The wind heaved against my door as I tried to push it open. I sidled out and the door slammed, missing my fingers by an inch.

“Stupid wind,” I said.

I kicked the car’s tire and locked up. Jessica had insisted we park as far away from the entrance as possible.

“Just think of all those old people,” she had said. “They’re all lame and stuff. And besides, they can’t drive. You don’t really want to be so close to one of them trying to park in the handicap spot, do you?”

And so we were all the way across the vast, flat plane of tar. I snorted. It was ridiculous how all the new stores had such huge parking lots. It was like they expected the entire city to come in all at once. I’d never seen more than a half dozen cars there at any one time. I trudged through the slush and felt cold water seeping into my sneakers. The footing was shitty. The wind threw water into my face, stingingly hard. I skidded every few steps, and two cars tried their best to run me down. The whole parking lot is empty: why in God’s name did they need to come so close to me?

I made it to the front entrance and I stood there, just inside the doors, letting myself drip and enjoying the heaters blasting air onto the top of my head. I shook myself off, to the apparent disgust of an old lady on her way out. Screw you, grandma. You’re parked right next to the door. No wading across the parking lot for you.

And then, I began to look for Jessica. She wasn’t in any of the checkout lines near the entrance. I made my way to the back. Maybe she was at the prescription counter. I grinned as my sneakers squeaked. The noise echoed up to the huge empty ceiling and bounced around. The whole store could hear my every footstep. It would be even better if I’d picked up a shopping cart. I never failed, by random chance, to get the worst-repaired, most rusty, rattling one. But it was dumb to use a cart when I wasn’t going to buy anything.

Jessica wasn’t there. And, in fact, the pharmacy counter was closed. The blinds were drawn, and the lights were off in the pathetic little waiting area, with its square yard of carpet and two folding chairs. So I wandered the aisles, looking for her. Not in the snacks or greeting cards. She wasn’t sniffing shampoos or comparing razors. She wasn’t picking out Tylenol or vitamins. I spent a little time looking at the display of overpriced beer. That wasn’t even a good sale price.

I made a loop of the store. She wasn’t anywhere. And then, I heard her. It was her, definitely, by the photo counter. Oh. Crap. There was no mistaking it. That was her special “I’m having sex and loving it” noise.

I went over to the photo counter. There wasn’t anyone there, but the blinds on the photo booth were quivering. Fuck.

I didn’t wait around. I sped out of the store and crossed the parking lot in record time. I fumbled the keys, fished them out of the slush, and got in. I didn’t want to wait around and talk, so I left her there. I started the car and drove off, leaving her in the store with her…whoever. I didn’t pay much attention on the drive home, and I nearly got sideswiped because I was too busy thinking about Jessica in the cramped little room full of chemicals and the evidence of other peoples’ lives.


---

Okay, so for some reason, I just couldn't get with the first person past tense. Still, it must be an awful thing to find your girlfriend is cheating on you like that...I can't decide if Jessica was cheating with a pharmacy tech or a photo counter person.

~Later

Blast from the Past

I'm kind of too sick to concentrate and write. (Hell, I've been watching movies all day because reading books was too difficult.)

In the spirit of illness, I bring for your reading pleasure a poem from my past.

---
A Winter Sonnet


In wintertime we stay inside and drink
our herbal teas in hopes that we might not
succumb to colds and flus. We make a stink
when illness first appears as drippy snot.

We blow our noses ‘til they’re raw and red--
The trash can soon overflows with tissues.
The store brand cough drops cannot clear our heads.
We try to put aside these trifling issues.

We go to work and spread this horrid plague.
While sniffling in our shirtsleeves we’re mumbling
“Everything is fine.” But fine is too vague
a word for such a coughing, grumbling

disease that takes up all our strength and time.
Until we‘ve kicked it, all we do is whine.

----

I wrote that a while ago, but I still think it's pretty good. As I recall I spent a while making it appear to rhyme while phrasing it so that the end rhymes were downplayed in an out-loud reading. (I'm hoping this is my final version, and not a partway edited one full of embarassing errors...)

Here's to drinking herbal tea and using a million tissues!

~Later

Ethel Fantasizes

This is a quickie. I may come back to it later.

----
Ethel had a crush on the weatherman. That is to say, she was enamored of his sharply handsome looks and the way he cheerfully reeled off more information on cloud formations and low pressure systems and general temperature and dew point fluctuations than the average news watching person could ever use. There had also been a special report one time, in which the weatherman had been coaxed into a kilt. That sealed the deal.

She had never met the weatherman, and really she had no intention of doing so. But she liked the figure he cut in his suit as he strode across the stage and gestured at the maps. You see, Ethel spent a lot of her time in front of the television. She was getting older, and she couldn’t get around as well as she used to. She needed more time between bouts of activity, and the couch in front of the television was both comfortable and easy to get out of when she was rested.

Ethel lived alone and she liked the noise the television made in her small apartment. She liked to pretend that she knew the people on the television, that any minute now they’d be ringing the doorbell and coming to dinner. It was lamentable that this would never happen, but such is life. Ethel knew where the line was between reality and fantasy, but it was nice to imagine.

And then the weatherman moved in across the street.

----

I can't make up my mind how pervy Ethel will be. I do think that she's going to dance around trying her best to avoid the weatherman so as not to let reality intrude on her fantasy. Also, I'm not really clear on how old she really is. Maybe she has chronic health problems that are making her aging more difficult. I think she's just this side of housebound, though she's not precisely frail, just has mobility issues.

I must away! I'm pretty impressed I wrote anything, truth be told. I do not feel well.

~Later

Fairy Tales

I may have to come back to this.

----
The Crown Prince of Halidon was searching for a bride, and all the eligible princesses in the land came to call upon the Halidon royal family. The prince was very handsome; he had hair as dark and shining as the wings of a raven, and lively, bright grey eyes, and dimples that showed whenever he flashed his dazzling smile. He was fair-skinned, tall, and strong and the crown sat perfectly upon his brow. In addition to his good looks, he was blessed with a keen intellect, which helped him run the country smoothly even while his father was still king, and he possessed a wonderful sense of humor. His laughter made women--in particular his mother’s ladies-- swoon. In short, Halidon’s Crown Prince was the catch. And all the princesses knew it.

Now, the crown prince’s mother was not such a nice person. She was, at heart, a bit of a schemer, and so she schemed to find the best princess for her only, beloved son. While the prince held court and hunted and did other princely things, she was going over the princesses’ pedigrees. She decided, after weeks of scrutiny, that, lovely as they may be, none of the princesses of their kingdom would do. They were all too common, and therefore a foreign match must be brokered. So the call went out; the king reluctantly dispatched messengers and sent them to all corners of the world.

Meanwhile, the prince had fallen in love. She was the second daughter of a baker and about as far from a comely, elegant, meek princess as it came. She was very strong from kneading and rolling dough--he’d seen her engage the blacksmith in a friendly contest of arm-wrestling. Though she had lost, the prince was convinced it was because she was not yet a full-grown woman: The baker’s second daughter was only sixteen, but she‘d nearly made the blacksmith lose the match in an apoplectic fit.

She had no pedigree to speak of: daughter of a baker who was a son of a baker who was the son of the baker before that, and so on down the line. As to her looks, well, her face was well enough when it wasn’t covered in flour, and she was tall. Her hair was a fiery red and her eyes were kind. But she was soft and round like a dumpling, unlike his willowy suitors. The prince was entranced. When he dared himself to sneak close enough to smell her, she exuded the smell of apple pie and he longed to be close to her every day and feel her strong, plump hand in his.

Unfortunately for the prince, she didn’t know he existed, because the Crown Prince was too chicken to approach her. He spent much of his time around her trying to talk himself into asserting his princely rights, which would allow him to sweep her off her feet and bring her to the castle forever and ever amen. But…he hesitated, and not just on account of her strength. He wanted her to like him, even though he knew plenty of happy couples who hadn’t met before the wedding. The prince needed to be assured of her love for him. After all, the Halidonian people were long-lived and he didn’t want an angry wife for the century or two it might take for her to calm down.

And then the worst thing so far happened. The baker’s second daughter got a cat, and the prince quickly discovered he was allergic. If he were any less manly, he would have lay down and wept. As it was, he spent a lot of time brooding at the edge of the castle moat and sighing at his reflection. If only there were some way he could get closer to his beloved apple dumpling without sneezing up a storm!

------

I realize it is extremely unfinished. I also realize that no one has a name yet. I didn't want to get distracted by a lengthy name-hunt while trying to write the actual narrative. I could look up name meanings for hours before finding ones that are right. Also, I was going to make the girl younger (like 14 tot he prince's approximate not-quite-thirty)...but I realize it'd probably creep people out, however accurate it may be for the quasi medieval setting.

My thoughts on aging in this fantasy world are this: I imagine the people of Halidon visibly age until somewhere around thirty, and then age less noticeably for a few more decades and so on, so it's really a more gradual process on the adult end of things (as opposed to an aging process where a person is a baby/child/teen for a prolonged period of time before being considered an adult.)

I vow to make there be lots more purple prose should I work on this more.

~Later

Groundhogs!

...I'm not sure where this came from. It's kind of insane.

---
They say the town of Kilcastle--current population 2301--was saved by a pair of groundhogs in the days of its founding. The story goes like this:

Back when the settlers were sweeping west in a grand motion to conquer all they saw, they moved into a nice, grassy valley with a river, called the Little Grass Snake, running on its western edge. There was plenty of game to hunt, and fish practically leapt into the boats. There was more than enough timber to go around , and so the settlers built themselves a little town comfortably close to the edge of the river.

The valley was also home to a lot of groundhogs. All the construction and increasing hubbub of human habitation drove most of them out of the town proper, but two stubborn groundhogs refused to be scared off. They maintained a series of tunnels beneath Maddock Barrow’s general store. And, though he tried with poison and shotguns and all manner of clever traps, he could not get rid of them. Why, sometimes this pair of groundhogs had the nerve to enter and exit the building through the main entrance intended for human customers! Eventually, Barrow gritted his teeth and admitted that the groundhogs did his stock no harm and he put up with them.

In fact, the groundhogs became a bit of an attraction. All the children came to see the “tame” gophers and, generally speaking, those with a bit of pocket money might purchase a small candy upon which they feasted while waiting for the gophers to appear. In time, the children named the gophers Mariachi and Pip.

Pip was the female--or at least, the one they presumed was female, given groundhogs tend to look alike. And she was named Pip because she would “pip” her head around the corners of the long display cases before venturing forth across the open floor of the store. Mariachi received his name for the unusually shaped patch of fur on his side; if you squinted, it looked like the sombreros the children had seen on a traveling band of musicians. None of those musicians had spoken a word of English, but Mariachi had cocked his little head at their speech, and so Mariachi was christened.

As the little town grew and prospered, Pip and Mariachi enjoyed a celebrity status among the newcomers. Of course, there were some who did not like the gophers being in the general store. These dissenters soon discovered that the store could do without their patronage, but that they could not do without the store’s wares.

During one spring, the rains were unusually hard. But the river did not overflow its banks. The land could still be farmed. It was dreary with so much rain, and the well-traveled paths had mud deep enough to suck the boots right off a grown man, but nothing truly awful was happening from all the water. So the inhabitants of Kilcastle shrugged it off as best they could and carried on.

But then, one night at the end of spring, Maddock Barrow, proprietor of Barrow’s General Store, was wakened in his bed on the second floor above the store by an unearthly screeching. He ran down the stairs, nightgown flapping, shotgun in one hand, lantern in the other. He rubbed his eyes when he saw the pair of groundhogs whistling ear-piercing notes and scurrying away from the stairs that led to the storage cellar. Hr had never seen them behave like this before. What was going on?

“Now Mariachi, Pip,” he said. “I’m going to take a look downstairs, see what you’re making a fuss over.”

And he peered down into the cellar and was shocked. The whole place was flooding! Barrow’s first thought was for his stock down there, but then he thought of his neighbors. Were they flooded too? He dashed outside to try and figure it out.

A huge wash of water filled the street. Maddock Barrow put on his gum boots and followed the water up the street toward the river and there, he saw that several huge trees had come down from upriver and were diverting the flow of the water right into their little town! Barrow ran door to door, pounding and yelling. Soon the whole population was roused. The women and children gathered a few belongings as quickly as they could and headed for higher ground. The men worked hard; one group worked at digging ditches to help direct the water away from the homes, and another group worked together to try and move the blockage. They also sent their fastest horses and the best riders among the young boys to the neighboring towns for help and as warning.

Three days later, the crisis was over. The trees had been moved, as many homes as possible had been saved, and everyone was safe and dry with roofs over their heads and food to eat. The townsfolk tried to hail Barrow as their savior, but he was modest. Mariachi and Pip were the ones to thank. They were the ones who had saved the town. And so the gophers were treated like kings for the rest of the days of their lives, and no one ever again complained about gophers in the general store.

Over time, the townspeople erected a statue, and groundhogs became incorporated into many store signs. The town of Kilcastle has held a celebration in honor of the valiant groundhogs ach year on the anniversary of the eve of the flood. They even have a play, “Mariachi and Pip Save Kilcastle,” put on annually. But, though this is the official name of the dramatic work, every child of Kilcastle knows that it is, really, truly called“Mariachi and Pip Save the World.”

-----

I know it was kind of rushed but, frankly, I want to go to bed. At least I got the idea out there, right? I suppose it shows that I've been reading several books that take place in the days of the Wild West lately. But also, it's kind of cool to think about all the weird things that crop up in the histories of towns.

~Later

Don't panic! (It's just a parody.)

I wish I could rightfully blame this on drunkenness, but the truth is I've been mulling this one over for a while. Rated L for a bit of language...but mostly it's just kind of funny.

---
"Freeballin'" (to the tune of "Free Falling" by Tom Petty.)



It’s a hard life, living on my own,
Doing all the chores momma used to do.
Maybe someday I’ll be good at cleaning,
But ‘til then I may be screwed.

I did laundry ‘bout three weeks ago.
Do the dishes only when they gather ants.
Bedroom floor is covered in beer cans.
And today I don’t have no underpants

And I’m free, free-ballin’!
Yeah I’m free, free-ballin’!

I’m rushing, trying to get to work:
Can’t believe it’s already half past eight.
I can’t find any boxers or briefs.
I’ll have to go commando or be late!

And I’m free, free-ballin’!
Yeah I’m free, free-ballin’!

Been a long day, in my cubicle at work,
Eight hours (plus lunch) in khakis that chafe.
Feels so good to get home and strip down,
I’ll never make that same mistake!

And I’m free, free-ballin’!
Yeah I’m free, free-ballin’!

Yeah I’m free, free-ballin’!

Free-ballin’!
I’m free, free-ballin’!
----

...I can't believe I did that. Well, no, I can. It was slightly more challenging to do than I had anticipated, but certainly not as difficult as most structured forms of poetry I've tried.

I love that I have the right to parody and not go to jail for it.

~Later

Food as sex?

Ugh. This is what I get for reading fanfics and being hungry at the same time.

----
The reverse of the skin caught on her tongue, rough as it slid down her throat. The fragrance in her nose was delicate and floral and warm and sweet. Juice dripped down her chin and she chased it with a finger. The flesh was tender, falling apart in mellow slickness as soon as she touched her teeth to it. She worked her lips around it and sucked it into her mouth: the fruit slid off the core. She licked her fingers and swallowed the mouthfuls of juice, then closed her eyes and exhaled through open lips and a dropped jaw. Pear scented air circulated through her throat and mouth and up into her nose. It was ecstatic. She chewed the pear down to the soft fibers of its core, no more than a few strands holding the stem to the remainders of the blossom. She licked the leftovers and her fingers once more before rising to wash her hands and face.
---

Here I am, sitting around and fantasizing about how the skin of a pear feels when you eat it. I don't know if I'm the only person who exhales through the mouth in order to better taste a food, but let me tell you, it's kind of a strange habit to try and articulate on paper. I seem to remember a Carver story where a couple uses the eating of food as a substitute for sex. I suppose this snippet is along those lines, except...the eating of food is pleasurable in itself? I mean that the actual physical sensations and actions involved in eating are pleasurable, I guess.

Heh. I think I just made some food porn. Not particularly demanding, but I did have trouble varying the length of my sentences. I notice a tendency to get stuck writing heaps of medium-length ones, and then when I go through them I groan because they all read like clunkers.

~Later

Storytime!

The fruits of my labors!

---
While bending over to heft a ten pound bag of sugar into her grocery cart, Sarah had a wardrobe malfunction. Her beautiful, wonderful, perfect right breast squeezed out of her bra and out of the top of her shirt. She dropped the sugar and it exploded over the floor.

“Oh shit,” she said.

She blushed terribly as she tried, frantically, to stuff herself back into her shirt before anyone saw. Goddamn sugar for goddamn holiday cookies for the goddamn holidays. Why the hell was it on the bottom shelf, anyway?

“Hello there.”

Goddamnit. Sarah yanked the edges of her neckline together. Sugar ground into the skin of her hands and into the cashmere. Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit. She looked up, briefly. She froze.

Whoever he was, he was cute.

“You look like you need a hand,” he said.

Sarah stared at him. Whoever he was, he was cute, a twist on the tall, dark and handsome. He had bright green eyes, dark hair, and a seasonal sweater, very Fair Isles.

“Aww crap, that came out wrong. Sorry,” he said.

His mouth twisted into a smile. He had dimples, she noted. Dimples in his square, classically handsome face. This was so bad.

“Can I offer you my coat and a walk to the restroom?”

He held up the coat in question. It was long and large and probably and excellent cover for her mishap.
Sarah nodded and tried to force the lump in her throat back with a smile of her own. It didn’t go so well, judging from the concern suddenly visible on his face. She concentrated on not crying. He draped the coat over her shoulders and she sniffled. When he placed his basket into her cart and then made to steer the cart, Sarah’s eyes watered.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “Let’s get you to the restroom, yeah?”

And suddenly, everything was simultaneously so much worse and better than it had been. Sarah and Dimples crunched through the sugar in formation. She stuck it out as everyone within eyesight stared at them, no doubt due to her cart being the loudest, squeakiest cart in the entire store. She put up with it, still red with embarrassment. Dimples was the nicest man on the planet. He was superhumanly nice…and he’d seen her beautiful, beautiful goddamn breast in the baking aisle. Sarah wanted to kill whoever had made her scoop-neck sweater. She vowed never to wear it again as they approached the customer service desk.

“I’ll wait here for you,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll look after your cart.”

Sarah fled to the bathroom. She locked herself into a stall and slid, reluctantly, out of his coat. His cologne made her mouth water and the rest of her feel warm. She fixed her bra and sweater and, all too late, realized she was feeling warmth that had nothing to do with either the burning of embarrassment or the scent of his cologne. She unlocked the stall and looked in the mirror. And then she looked down at the coat in her hands.

“No, no, no,” she said. “This can’t be happening.”

She wetted down a paper towel and wiped ineffectually at the hives raising on her skin. The cool water felt nice, but it wasn’t doing a damn thing to bring down the swellings. She was allergic to wool and that coat that Dimples had offered was a hundred percent boiled wool. At least it wasn’t going to kill her…but it was really the icing on the cake.

“Well hell,” she said, and began to cry. Sarah bawled and drew great heaving breaths that shuddered into more sobs. Her face got all red and her nose dripped and she felt horrible. She bit the inside of her cheek and, slowly, calmed down. She washed her face with cold water and patted dry with more paper towels. She blew her nose.

Sarah steeled herself and left the bathroom at a forced march. She pasted a smile onto her face and greeted Dimples.

“Thank you for the coat,” she said. “I really appreciate it.”

She handed the coat back and noted that her palms were getting itchy now too.

“Oh my God,” he said. “Are you all right? You looked…different before.”

Sarah flushed as he looked her over. No doubt the hives were looking worse. Oh crap. Before for him was sugar-bag before. Crap crap crappity crap crap crap.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’d like my cart back now, please, so I can pretend none of this ever happened.”

“I am so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean…it’s just…”

Dimples looked uncomfortable. Good. Sarah was so beyond uncomfortable right now. She took the handle of the cart and tried to pull it away, but he was still holding onto it.

He stuck out his hand. Sarah stared at it like it was roadkill.

“My name is Scott,” he said. “Scott Garland.”

“Seriously?” she said. “Garland?”

Sarah’s brain felt like it was going to explode and she itched at her hives without thinking. Scott dropped his hand to his side.

“Yeah,” he said. A little wrinkle formed between his eyebrows.

“It’s so…festive,” Sarah said.

“You mean awful,” he said. “Or unfortunate?”

“That too,” said Sarah. “Well, uh, I’m Sarah.”

She held out her hand, which was currently red and itchy as all get out. Scott blinked at her and the corners of his mouth lifted.

“Sarah,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

He shook her hand.

“I’m allergic to wool,” she blurted. “But really it was so nice of you and I didn’t notice at first.”

Comprehension took over his expression. And then he threw back his head and laughed.
“I am so, so sorry,” he said. “I really was trying to help.”

“It’s okay,” Sarah said.

And, suddenly, it was, despite the itchiness and mortal embarrassment and the sugar that crunched in the tread of her shoes.

“This whole thing, it’s just been unbelievable,” she said.

Scott nodded.

“Not how I imagined my grocery shopping would go,” he said.

Sarah snorted.

“Me either.”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s not every day I find a damsel in distress in with the flour.”

And then he froze and looked at her before feigning nonchalance. Sarah blushed again, but it wasn’t so bad.

“Believe me, I’d rather have skipped that part and gone straight to introducing myself,” she said. “Or maybe I would have just given you the eye if we happened to bump into each other.”

Scott laughed again, and Sarah fell a little bit in love with his nice, white, even teeth and the way his neck came out of the collar of his sweater.

“Well, I’ve got to get going,” she said. “Cookies to bake and all that. But thank you again.”

Scott let go of the cart.

“Take care,” he said.

“You too.”

And with that, Sarah wheeled away from the nicest guy in the world, hoping she would never see him again, even if he was handsome and funny to boot.

---

I thought this was both funny and slightly painful...but mostly funny. I know there's probably no man on earth this considerate, but that's the good part about fiction. I swear I was going to write more and have even more stuff go wrong for Sarah, but I'm just too darn tired.

~Later

Excerpts

I'm not putting the whole free-write up here. Suffice it to say that I'm feeling down again.

---
I’m pretending she doesn’t exist
even though everything I do reminds me.
Missing people leave
Ragged holes in the fabric of our space and time
Seen only at night when between the stars grows
Wider and darker than we remember.

The abrupt leavings that tear through us
Leave our united fronts asunder.
I hated her and she didn’t care.
I loved her and it wasn’t enough.
I want to save her
When she is gone, gone, gone.

Pick pick pick pick at the unseen wound
Turn it over and over, unable to decipher its shape
I am heartbroken.
Rejected: it wasn’t me
She chose to leave and not say goodbye.

If I could I’d excise this love
Weigh it, measure it
Box it up and throw it out.
She doesn’t deserve it, wouldn’t keep it
And I have no one else to take it.
---

Ugh. I wish I could sleep all this crap away, but I even dream about her.

~Later