Awareness...

is a brutal thing.

Watching a moment pass, immersed in it, and feeling nostalgia for the event before it's even over.

Start

Getting started is the hardest part.

Actually, scratch that: I have no earthly idea whether or not getting started is, in fact, the hardest part, because I find getting started so difficult that I never start.

If I could be the writer of aphorisms, ala Twain or Bierce, I would be sought after. Throngs would flock to my readings and wait for hours for me to mount the stairs, clear my throat, and, as a hush descended over the multitudes, utter such profundities as, I don’t know, nothing’s springing to mind, but let me assure you- it would be good. Wilde good.

I’ve always been a big believer in brevity. Brevity isn’t such a virtue, though, when it comes to novels. They have to be longer than a page, novels.

What I should do is work up to it. Train like an Olympian marathoner. Start out doing sprints, and then as I get faster and faster on the 100 word dash, take it up a notch and do a 400 word essay. Before you know it, I’m off to the races, being published in all the big magazines.

The truth is, I only find the contents of the inside of my head interesting when there’s no possible way to write- I don’t have a pen, I’m on the treadmill, walking, trying to fall asleep…my God, I’m pithy then. When conditions are ripe to write- nada. When the house is quiet and the sun is slanting through the window just so, when the computer is humming and I’m practically wearing tweed…there’s nothing in there. A blank. It’s maddening.

And sustaining an idea, when one finally comes! Jesus! I can stretch an argument, but still- I can sum it up with the best of them! In school, you know, you have to write those ten page research papers, and mine were always like nine and three-quarters of a page- I just felt that if my argument was right, and if I could choose the right words, I didn’t need to belabor the point. I could say what needed to be said in five pages. Is that so wrong?

Of course, I’m also a product of my society. (Blame it on MTV.) The jump cut! The pundit! The sound bite! Who wants to draw it out?

I’m loath to begin. Another project, another start without finish, another idea on the sand pile. It’s discouraging. The discipline is all, and I got none.

Liveblogging a Night with Nothing to do!

8:32: Just got back from the diner with a belly full of disgusting frozen meatloaf that may or may not be giving me salmonella
8:33: Checking the spelling of the word salmonella
8:34: Wondering if this is how Wonkette got her start...hey! Wonkette is on the Approval Matrix in New York Magazine this week!
8:36: Actually starting to worry about the meatloaf situation
8:37: Turning on the TV...ah, Nova. Something soothing about chemistry and archeology
8:38: Checking the spelling of the word archeology
8:38: Knitting?
8:39: Nah.
8:39: Cat sneezed in the other room
8:50: Looking at craft blogs instead of attending to the 97 projects already in the works
8:52: Some earnest white guy on Nova is very sad about the life of Pocahontas and American History in General
8:54: Ooooh. A documentary on the housing crisis is coming up next. There's a British narrator. I may have to watch this

Introducing the True Life Definitions Series

Hubris:

Going to a diner and having a little voice in your head tell you, "Don't order the meatloaf.", and then ordering the meatloaf anyway.

Goodbye, Christmas.

Description

It looks like a ship. It looks like a ship, and if the weather is right and you've had too many cigarettes and not enough sleep, it feels like a ship, the porthole lighting and the stories like decks, and the wrap-around porches and the metal railings. Leaning against that railing on the highest floor, with the sky above, and the concrete dizzying below, you have the feeling of flight, of flying, or the possibility of flying, or the possibility of greatness. There's a seediness, too- the green kudzu overgrowth, a trailer in the background. Cigarette butts, hastily smoked and hastily discarded, burning down slow and steady on the cement leaving cylinders of ash, ready to be blown away by any passing movement.

It's a place like any place, but the romance of youth and the veil of remembering make it mythical, inhabited in equal portion by heroes and demons. Rusty and divine, hallowed and left to rot, a ship, a soft place to land, a tower of learning, a proving ground, an arena where Christians met lions and lions met lions, and lions laid down with lambs and the elephants were brought down by a flea and then they all laid down together.

Easter 1987

1.

I can't find the eggs.
Kathy has like a million of them in her basket, and James has a bunch too, but I can't find any. I really want to cry, because I really want to find one, but if I do I know they'll make fun of me and Mom will get mad. I looked behind the couch once already, but I look again, to make sure, and while I'm on my knees behind the couch, Kathy jumps up on the cushions, and looks too, and right above my head on the windowsill there's one, behind the curtain, and she grabs it. She grabs it, and I say, "It's not fair!" And she says, "It is too fair- I found it." "You didn't let me look there, you should have let me look." "Stop being a crybaby. I found it. Go look somewhere else."

I really want to cry now, big time, because I'm the littlest and this always happens. They're bigger and faster and they don't give me a chance and I hate it and they get all the good stuff and it's not fair.

2.

The rain taps gently against the picture window. The forecast on Channel 5 called for scattered showers and the one on Fox Action News said it would be partly sunny, so Beth had vacillated between taking the risk and having the Easter egg hunt outside or playing it safe. In the end, inside was the best decision, clearly, but it took some of the fun out of it, didn't it, thought Marge.

She sat in the velveteen armchair where she had been settled by a too-thoughtful Martin and watched the children tear around the living room. The smallest one was close to tears, as her siblings snatched up every egg, leaving none for her. Her lower lip was starting to tremble, and she fidgeted with the plastic grass in her basket, trying to regain her six-year-old composure.

Then Marge spotted a sliver of blue behind a decorative plate on the sideboard. She stared hard at the child, willing her to look up. As if on cue, the little girl did, and she looked at Marge with her big red eyes. Almost imperceptibly, Marge shifted her cane toward the sideboard and raised her eyebrows, The child turned and looked, and a wash of realization went through her. Not wanting to call attention to the newly discovered egg, and with all the subtlety a tiny girl can muster, the child sidled with a casual air over to the massive oak sideboard and grabbed the prize.

A warm feeling infused Marge, and the smile of triumph she shared with her smallest grandchild began to make up for all of the indignities of the afternoon- being picked up late from the nursing home, all the family so obsequious and pandering, speaking too loudly to her, as if she couldn't understand them...the grateful child made up for them all.

Penny Dawson woke and heard something moving furtively in the dark bedroom.

She lay there, silently as possible, not daring to breathe. She felt as though ants were rushing through her veins and a sharp pain in her midsection as the terror gripped her, hard.

Silence. Nothing.

Penny opened her eyes a slit, experimentally, and she saw the light from the motion sensor over the garage outside filtering through the blinds. She could see nothing, and it was still silent.

Then a wet, furry snuffle came from across the room. Her heart leaped and she snapped her eyes closed, willing the sound gone with all her might. She promised every deity she could think of that she would be good, stop smoking, stop secretly hating Brenda at the office, who was so nice but was always wearing holiday-themed sweaters...

She could picture where the sound was coming from: the corner between the closet and the door to the bedroom. If she wanted to get out, she would have to go past whatever that thing was in the corner. There was a pile of clothes there, and other sundry things, things laying where she'd dropped them on her way to bed or the shower. She cursed herself for not cleaning up- it was almost like the laundry had come alive, or that the pile of clothes had proved irresistable to some terrifying creature looking for a nest...

She felt hot tears leaking from her clenched eyes. The tension of holding herself so still was making her ache all over, and the noise just wouldn't go away. That's all she wanted. She quietly bargained with the noise- she wouldn't try to find out what it was, she would just lay there if it would go away, but as soon as she started to relax, it would snort again. The silence was almost worse than the noise- at least when she could hear it she knew where it was.

She laid there for what felt like hours, and then with seemingly no conscious decision, she leapt up screaming and hit the light switch. She screamed with a blind fury backed by the hours of sleepless tension, snapping like a bowstring, ready to strike at whatever was in the room.

Short Fiction- apologies to Randy

There's a smell to him. You know what I mean- an unidentifiable back-of-your-throat kind of smell.
It absolutely emanates from him, and if you get too close, it envelops you in this cloud of Randy and you smell like him all day. Last week I got caught in an elevator with him, and his smell coated me in this sticky film and I couldn't scrub it off in trip after trip to the corporate bathroom using that drippy pink soap they have in the dispensers. I tried some Handi-Wipes I found in my desk drawer, but those were no match for the Randy smell either. Co-workers were actively avoiding me- taking the long route to the water cooler rather than walking past my desk; emailing me instead of coming by to talk to me. I spent a miserable day, and at the end of it, I bolted from the office and drove home with all of the windows rolled down. I went directly to the tub, and even considered adding bleach to the water, but I thought better of it at the last minute.

It's this appalling odor- like garlic mixed with cheese, but assuredly not in a Le Bernadin sort of way- like old socks and coffee left in the pot too long. The way a little kid smells after they've been playing outside for hours- of snot, and dirt, and little kid sweat. Ozone. Iron. Worms. That's Randy.

I hate Randy, and I know it's unfair, but my nostrils rebel when it comes to Randy and all of my democratic ideals about equality and the nobility of man crumble into worthlessness in the presence of the smell of Randy.