Scattered Nouns: People, Places, and Things All Over the Place

I've mentioned 'old writing' several times, now, and it leaves me with a twinge of regret.  How long have I been (not) writing?  If you're unlucky enough you need a money-making job, and unlucky enough you don't have someone taking care of your every responsibility, it's easy to fall victim to life getting in the way of writing (or any diversion).

I would go years without writing anything substantial.  Sometimes, in between, I scribbled thoughts down in notebooks, or sat at a computer, saving my ramblings about nothing in particular (I have a folder full of files named, for example, 2004-07-12.doc), but there were long lengths of time when nothing of note came forth.

Which, now, makes me older (through no fault of my own).  It's not that I regret not producing more, and sooner; it's just that I should have been practicing more.  Which is why I decided I must treat my writing as a part-time job.  And I can't just 'no call, no show.'  I've committed to twenty-five hours a week, and if I miss a day (when life gets in the way), I have to make up the time, later.

I count myself lucky, to some degree.  I now have the ability to produce--really move forward--in my projects, whenever I sit down.  That's a product of age.  It's not all luck; there's also deliberate, diligent effort and there's a scattering of ideas, which brings me to my title point.

Last Sunday morning I knew I was short on my twenty-five hours, and I was supposed to make up my time.  The problem was I was facing nine hours and I was feeling uninspired.

The first reason I thought I should be able to write something(s) for nine hours was that I have no less than a dozen on-going projects.  There are plays and prose (and another, less-stupid--though probably no musically better--musical).  There are projects in historical fiction, humor (anecdote/memoir), narrative fiction, satire, and even thriller/horror.  Among the projects, I can usually (though not last Sunday) find something calling to me.

Or should I say, someone?

Another reason I should have been able to do nine hours' work was each project has at least a few (and, in some cases, many) characters.  Characters have facets and depth (I hope, for goodness sake) and somewhere within them there should be something I like--or don't like--that would inspire me to start writing.  I tried to drum up some sort of inspiration from them last Sunday, but nobody wanted to boogie.

So I boogied on my own.

Tolstoy says, "Music is the shorthand of emotion."  (I looked it up on-line; I don't--can't & won't--quote Tolstoy off the top of my head.)  Having sat for ten minutes, uninspired and un-writing, I turned on internet radio.  I was in the mood for 1950's early Rock-n-Roll.  That was all it took:  a nudge from music.  Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Chubby Checker helped me put in nine hours of writing.

Granted, Etta James isn't going to roll up in my house singin' the blues and handin' me a plot.

Time, however, can.  Which is why I don't regret not producing more when I was younger.  I didn't have it in me.  I don't mean to discount young writers--hey, if you have it, work it, Baby.  Personally, I found though I could develop characters, describe settings, and delve into thoughts, a (big) problem remained:  nothing...  ever...  happened.  It took some life experience to get through that.  And it worked out in two different ways.

First, I read a book.

Leisure reading, as a writer, is a bit of a guilty pleasure.  "If I have the time to read a book, shouldn't I be writing, instead?"  Maybe...  but, no.  If nothing else, it brings you alternative approaches to style and structure.  For me, Anne Tyler truly cured me in an unexpected way.  I suffered from I-have-interesting-characters-and-perfect-settings-but-I-don't-have-a-plot-line-itis (look it up in any medical dictionary).  I've invested too much time reading Anne Tyler to disparage her - but she's not one to get overly concerned about plot.  By the time I got to my third or fourth of her novels, it occurred to me:  Anne Tyler is all about the characters; just as much as--if not more than--the plot.  Don't get me wrong, in Anne Tyler's novels, the characters do things, there is a plot, things happen.  But I began to realize that a book can be as much about the internal workings of the characters, their settings, and their surroundings as it is about getting from point A to point B in the narrative of the story.

Secondly, I answered a question.

I wrote a note in one of my college literature class text's margins that reads, "Is a person's life a series of episodes, building to a climax - or is it a string of otherwise unrelated events, bound together only by that common individual?"  Yes.  (It is both.)  Maybe all that is a little 'fillosofickul,' but the point is plot doesn't have to be grand.  If planning to make it out to the mailbox, then making it out to the mailbox, and having made it out to the mailbox contains a good story, doesn't that constitute a plot?  And if that story then includes a trip to the mailbox at ages fourteen, forty-one, and one hundred and four, wouldn't that make a plot?

In the end, I'm certainly no expert: I'm just sharing my thoughts.  (The only way I'm 'seasoned' is my salt-and-pepper hair.)  If nothing else, I've put in one and a half hours on my second-job (I only get half-time for blogging).

A Sonata for Sunshine

Below is a teaser from A Sonata for Sunshine, my "big" novel.  It is the project (that is, THE project) that has been in the works for, oh, let's say 10 years, though parts of it are much older.  (Note a cameo from Jack, a character who has been around since 1995.)

I've been good about being productive today.  What follows is two chunks from the story of Olive.  The first part (through the asterisks) is from chapter seven, which is in part two.  After the asterisks is the continuation of the story in chapter nineteen, part four.  As you might imagine, there is a lot that transpires between II-7 and IV-19.  To help you follow it, you need to know that Emily moves to Sacramento in between.  Since the book isn't entirely chronological, these excerpts, quite separated within the story, actually follow each other.

Stay tuned to find out what happens...

Despite the enormous visor built onto Olive's old car, the glare of the early afternoon sun on the dirty windshield made it nearly impossible for the family to see their new home of Sacramento as they crossed the city limits.  Olive leaned her head out of the passenger window and squinted to see down the highway.  A motel was coming up on the right, and she told Adam to pull in.

"I don't see it," he said.

"It's coming up," she replied.  "It's the big blue sign coming up."

"It's ugly," William murmured from the back seat.

"You can't even see it, yet, Bill," Adam said.

"Sacramento is ugly," he replied.

"Billy, please," Olive said.

Everything was sensitive; she was desperate to make this new life work, and she knew she would have to be the constant optimist for that to happen.  William had proven during their cross-country journey he would be the biggest obstacle, the heaviest drain on her enthusiasm.  He was sullen.  She knew she had ripped him away from his newly forming social life.  At seven (and a half, he would point out), his awareness of a bigger world, of the importance of relationships, and even of his actions' consequences were developing.  Now, in carting her son away to California, she had, she feared, halted that development, or at best delayed it.  Her optimism had to step over the guilt in order to come through.

Adam hadn't been a bundle of joy during the escapade either.  For this, she was not guilty but angry.  It was his damned idea, for goodness sake.  Some of his grumbling she could get over, attributing it to his moody tendencies and to simple exhaustion.  It'd been a long trip.  There seemed to be another level of irritation, though.  It peeked out at times when Olive was talking to no one in particular in the car about her thoughts on what life would be like in Sacramento.

"Wouldn't it be nice," she asked, "if we could find a whole house to rent, rather than an apartment?  I mean, we're a pretty big family now.  Don't you think it'd feel tight in an apartment?  And a house just feels so much more stable, more comfortable than a crumby apartment."

"Olive," Adam interrupted, "I can't drive with you talking so much."

While she sat in silence, she turned the comment over in her head, considering possible retorts, possible ways to get back at him for being mean, during which her thoughts got off track until she realized she was talking aloud again about unrelated things.

"Olive, can you please stop talking for just ten minutes?"

"Fine," she said.  She really wanted to say no, she wouldn't stay quiet for one, let alone ten, minutes.

Adam seemed more pleasant at the moment, maybe because they'd finally reached the end and could rest.

"Oh, Adam, there it goes!" she exclaimed.

"I didn't like the way it looked," Adam replied.

She sighed and wished he didn't have to be so contradictory.  Did he not like that motel just because she's the one who noticed it?

"Here we go," he said, pointing to one farther up the road.

"Do Billy and I have to share a bed?" Jack asked.

Adam said "yes" at the same time Olive said "we'll see."  Always so contradictory, she thought again.

Over the next several days, while they stayed in the motel (which Olive was quite certain wasn't as nice as the one she'd first seen), they rattled around the streets of downtown Sacramento in Olive's dirty old Nash four-door, apartment hunting.  Olive wasn't sure if it was a sign of William's maturing thinking or just his sulking, but he seemed to have quite reasonable reactions (always objections) to the apartments they saw.  Usually, it was his insistence that they have a proper dining room.

"It's where we're supposed to eat," he said.

"But there's a nice big kitchen in this apartment," Olive explained.  "Our table will fit."

"It's not the same," he said.  "It's not right to not eat in a dining room."

After two more apartment previews, the discussion devolved into a temper tantrum.  What was the big deal about a dining room?  "I guess we've always had a dining room," she considered, but his demand for it seemed so fierce she doubted there was just familiarity behind it.

They settled on an apartment; the second floor flat of a duplex, with a breakfast room.  It wasn't a whole house, but it was close.  It didn't have a dining room, but it was close.

A few weeks later, after her things had arrived from storage in Hartford and they'd settled in, Olive arrived home from a doctor's appointment.

"Adam," she reported, "I'm pregnant!  Isn't it wonderful?  I was pregnant during our whole trip across the country.  Isn't that a gas?  What a wonderful surprise.  It makes me feel like our family will really be settled here in California, once we have a child here."

"It is," Adam replied.  "It is wonderful, Olive.  I sure hope we can afford it.  But I'm sure we'll make do, right?"

Way to bring the mood down, Adam Loews, Olive thought.  She was the one who already had found a good job.  She was the one who would "make it work."  She laughed.

"You old poop.  If I didn't know better, I'd think you were the old one in this relationship," she joked.  "I have to tell Emily!"

"Honestly, Mother," Emily said over the phone.  "Don't you think it's a lot to take on?  A new job and city and now a baby?"

"It wasn't on purpose, and if I'd known before we moved we might have put it off," she replied.  "But it's happened and I would appreciate it if someone could be a little, oh, I don't know, happy for me?"

"What's my step-father think?  Was he happy?" Emily asked.

"Of course."

"Oh," Emily continued, after a pause, "I am happy for you, Mother, if you're happy.  I'm sorry to be so critical; it was really thoughtless of me.  Congratulations.  Are Billy, Jack, and Camille excited about having a new baby brother or sister?"

"You know, Emily," she said, rather seriously, "William seems to be having a hard time adjusting--to the whole move I mean.  I think he's looking forward to the baby.  But I just don't know if there's something more I need to do to help him feel more at home here."

When their boxes had arrived, William dove into the china and arranged it systematically in the built-in hutch in the breakfast room.  With each meal, he scanned the shelves for appropriately-sized plates, dug through the drawers for cloth napkins and silver, and carefully and deliberately set the table.  Olive felt it might be getting out of hand; it was compulsive.  They'd not had an informal meal.  William screamed at Jack when he left the table after a Saturday morning breakfast without excusing himself properly.

"Billy, Dear," Olive said later in the day, "would you like to let Camille set the table for dinner?"

His lower lip quivered immediately and tears were nearly instantaneous.

"She won't do it right," he said between sobs.

"Alright," she said in a panic.  "Alright, it's... it's no big deal.  You can--you're right; maybe she's not ready for such a big responsibility."

The response seemed to calm him, but Olive was unnerved.  This just isn't right, she thought.

On December 1, 1956, Avery Loews was born.  Adam sat next to Olive, holding her hand, watching her caress their new son.  To Olive's admittedly exhausted and possibly misinterpreting eyes, he looked cross.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Absolutely nothing in the world is wrong right now," he replied.

Olive was juggling a newborn, a wooden spoon, and an oven mitt when the phone rang.

"Emily!" she gushed into the phone.  "Sweety, how are you?"

"I'm just fine, Mother," Emily replied.  "More importantly, how are you?"

"Dandy!" she said with a joyous lilt.  "I forgot how much fun it is to have a baby by your side."

Emily laughed.

"You're something special, Mother," Emily said.  "I was going to ask you if you're surviving, but clearly you are."

"Emm, I didn't even think it would be this good.  I'm trying to make dinner and everything is a mess, but I'm so happy, I can't even tell you."

"Just make Adam make dinner," Emily said lightheartedly.

Olive did not respond.

"Mom?"

"Oh, you know Adam is nobody's wizard in the kitchen," Olive quietly replied.

"He's not there, is he?" Emily asked.

"Well, not at the moment."

"So he's working," Emily posed, suspiciously.

Olive again made no response.

"Mother!  Are you serious?" Emily demanded. 

"Yes, yes," Olive lied.  "Yes, he's at work; I'm pretty sure."

She could imagine Emily's expression on the other end of the phone.  Olive could sense the anger.

"This is the third time I've called this week that he's not been there," Emily said.  "Frankly, Mother, I'm getting angry.  And I'm getting worried."

Olive couldn't react in time to deflect Emily's reaction.

"That son-of-a-bitch better watch his step.  Listen," Emily insisted, "I want you to call me the next time he walks through that door.  I want to know what's going on."

"I will not," Olive said, defiantly.  "He'll be back any minute now and we're going to have our dinner together as a family, and I don't need to prove to anyone it's happening."

"I just can't understand you, Mother," Emily said with a cracking voice.  "Good night, then.  Have a good night and tell the kids I love them."

"And give Adam my best, if you see him," she added, sarcastically.

"When!" Olive shouted into the phone as Emily hung up.

*  *  *

Emily went out to the garage and found Adam inside, smoking a joint.

"Do you have to do that here?"  she asked.

"Would you rather I did it in the house?"

"It's so good for kids," she said sarcastically, "to look out the window and see Pop getting led away in cuffs to a police car."

"Nobody gets arrested for pot around here, Emily," he said.

"Are you going to go to work stoned tonight?"  she asked, continuing without waiting for answer.  "Oh, let me guess, you're not working tonight, are you?  Wouldn't want to exhaust yourself."

"Did you want something, Emily, or did you just come out here in the freezing cold to bitch at me?"  he asked.

"I would love to stand here and bitch at you for hours," she said, "but I have a job to go to."

"I hope you're in a better mood when you get back."

"I hope you're dead when I get back," she replied.

That night was the first that Adam did not come home.  At first, Emily cared.  She was just nineteen and she had the stamina to make a big deal out of it.  In fact, she was just seven years younger than Adam, and she knew she could play games right along with him.  She could smoke up, she could drink plenty, she could stay up late, and, more importantly, she could out-will him.  She ran into Adam in a seedy bar room on the south side of downtown.  When she noticed he was alone, she approached him.

"Listen to me," she hissed, taking him by the collar and pulling in close to his face.  "I hate you completely, but I can't get my fool of a mother to see it.  So you need to get back to that house, to her, and your son.  You remember, you have a son?"

"Get away from me," Adam said, pulling away and leaning against the wall, resentful and deflated.

"She's already practically forced me out of his life," he said.

"Don't you dare pretend you're a victim," Emily said, more intent than before.  "You are a shiftless, awful piece of garbage that my mother can't let go of."

Awash in an adrenaline driven heat, Emily let herself go.

"I wish!" she continued, feeling a blur of anger and alcohol come over her, "I wish I could cut off her arm so she would let go of you and we could be rid of you... forever."

"You're the only one who hates me, here," Adam replied, recoiling from from Emily's sudden strength and anger.  "You're the one breaking my family apart, Emily."

She looked at him for a moment with squinted double-vision.  Her distrusting eyes brightened with a realization.  He prepared to speak, but she interrupted him.

"Don't bother, you lying bastard," she said, waving her hand in front of his face.  "You can try to blame this on me, or my mother, or anyone else in the world, but the fact is you are...  worthless, pointless."

A wave of relief and release came over her.

"We won't miss you," she said.

"What do you mean, we?" he shouted after her as she walked away.  She decided not to hear him.

The next day Emily convinced Olive to leave Adam and return with the family to Springfield.

Gritty Park

   I'm posting a teaser from my novel, Gritty Park.  Below are excerpts from chapter one, where we are introduced to Gritty Park, and, following the break, chapter four, where we are introduced to a few of the characters in the story.
   I've not really revisited chapter one, yet, so expect that the finished product would be more expansive.  Also, I trust that by the end of reading you'll see it is intended to be a light-hearted satire, but I felt compelled to make that explicit, since the story is not here in it's entirety.
  Both excerpts have been edited for length--hastily--so I hope there's not too much interruption in the flow.
  And I hope this is an effective tease and will compel you to come back later to find out more.

Hanging from a bracket on the second story of a large brick building in Washington, DC, was a sign that once read '7th Street Donut Shop.'  During its prime, this area, which covered nearly forty city blocks, was full of pastry shops and bakeries and came to be known as Sugar Hill.   Its prime was long gone, the stores closed, and owners and residents moved away, but the name remained.

Like much of the rest of Washington, Sugar Hill began a resurgence during the first decade of the twenty-first century.  Vacant homes were purchased and restored, flowers and trees were replanted along the streets, and people began to sit on their front porches again.  As people moved in, stores and shops opened up, and the hoped-for renewal of years prior began to take effect.

The small park at Second and K streets, once known as Culkin Park, got flowers, benches, a new fence, and a new name, Rhapsody Park.  Most of the residents continued to call it Culkin Park--and some continued to call it by the nickname it picked up during its tougher years, "Gritty Park."

It wasn't perfect, of course, and it took several years for the changes to take place in Sugar Hill.  There was still grit, still drug dealing, and still vandalism.  The small gangs in the different Sugar Hill neighborhoods competed with each other for dominance, posting graffiti to stake their claims.

Still, many of the families that weathered the bad years welcomed the coming of the good.  In fact, many of the families knew each other well, married each other, and worked together.  Even some of the newcomers were already tied-in, encouraged by a family member, co-worker, or friend to reconsider Sugar Hill, and see what it had to offer.

It seemed, at least from outward appearances, that the neighborhoods were teeming with friendly people, yearning to welcome others into their lives and work together, hand-in-hand, to see Sugar Hill become the nicest place to live in DC.

*  *  *

"I'm related to her," Diamond said.

"You're full of shit," Joey replied.

"No, seriously.  Her step-uncle is married to my dad's great-aunt," Diamond insisted.

"You're not really related, then," Joey said.

"Close enough, Man.  If I wanted to, I could talk to her."

"So why don't you?"

"I don't know," Diamond said.

The 'her' in question was Ceinelle Portland, known as just 'Ceinelle' since her run-away pop-music hit, "(You're Not Takin') My Eggs and Bacon."  Her given name was Michelle Porter, and her step-uncle was, in fact, married to Diamond's father's great-aunt.  'Diamond' was not his given name, either; he'd adopted it when his grandmother died and he inherited her diamond engagement ring, which he promptly sold to buy a Cadillac.

On a Tuesday afternoon, a few weeks prior to their graduation from high school, Desmond 'Diamond' Harris and his friend Joey were cruising the streets of Sugar Hill.  Ceinelle's song, distorted in the over-worked speakers, blared through the Cadillac and rattled the rear window.  They had their windows down and billows of pungent smoke gushed from the car.

"Wouldn't it be cool if I could get her to come sing at our graduation?" Diamond asked.

"It'll never happen," Joey replied.

"Watch.  I'll make it happen."

Diamond was in charge of the 5-I gang.  When his grandmother died, in addition to the ring, Diamond inherited a sizable amount of cash.  He used it to buy the gang's leadership role from the Sugar Hill king pin, Clarence 'CC' Coleman.  Diamond believed his cash reserves and his gang's larger area put him in a good position to take over as king pin when CC stepped down.

CC was old.  He had grown up in Sugar Hill when the bakeries still puffed out intoxicating wafts from delicious deserts.  He joined a gang back then and stuck with it through Sugar Hill's decline, failed renewal plans, and the crime waves, and he knew the recent rebirth of the neighborhood would eventually bring an end to his current life's work.  Besides that, he was just plain tired and he had stumbled upon other interests.

Several years ago, when he was making big money, he decided to invest in Tiger Tail, a take-out restaurant and the only store around.  Tiger Tail had bullet-proof glass at the counter, a stench of dirty, over-used grease, and a single formica table at the front window.  After a dozen years of service with an associate, CC was offered the opportunity to get deeper into the cocaine business with no cash needed--if CC could work out a little problem.  His associate, Vincento, had ended up with loads of coffee, used to hide the cocaine during transport, and he needed to get rid of it.  So CC made an offer to the proprietor, Mr. Koh:  he would fund a complete overhaul of Tiger Tail in exchange for serving coffee when the renovated shop opened back up.

It turned out that Vincento's cocaine supply was buried in outstanding coffee.  Within six months of reopening Mr. Koh's as 'Kiosk,' word had spread throughout downtown that the place had the best brew in the city.  With an ever-growing clientele, they reworked the menu five times in the first year, changing from fried take-out in Styrofoam containers to a variety of carefully crafted meals, served on stoneware plates to wooden tables with tablecloths and napkins.

The Sugar Hill gangs still met at Kiosk, but CC was often interrupted by problems from the kitchen or surprise visits from favorite customers.  At a meeting in mid-May, he announced he was stepping down as the king pin of Sugar Hill, and he was looking for a replacement.

Randall 'Honey' Beets was an enormous man with an enormous appetite.  Honey's nickname didn't come from his love of sweets, though; it was because of childhood teasing.  His father called him 'Honey' once and the other nine-year-old boys found it hilarious, so they mocked him.  By the time he'd grown to be a teenager, he'd also grown to be twice as large as any of his friends, so he kept 'Honey' to remind them of who had ended up in charge.
At two in the morning, a week before CC's retirement, Honey was rolling down Seventh Street in his giant black Ford Expedition, surveying his territory.  Monty and Red, his second- and third-in-command, were passing a box of jelly donuts around the cab.

"Raspberry, now," Honey mumbled, his mouth still full from his last treat.

He was brushing powdered sugar off his black tee-shirt when he slammed on the brakes.  Another one of Sugar Hill's gangs had tagged a house in his domain.

Honey led the Seventh Street gang.  Their area was in the middle of Sugar Hill, it included Kiosk, the central meeting place and CC's roost, and, with his shear size and brute force, Honey believed he was destined to take charge.

Fiction, Science

I started my first self-initiated, independent writing project during the summer between third and fourth grades.  I was nine.  The movie E.T. was released that June and I loved it.  My project was something between a comic book and a kid's picture book (e.g., The Cat In The Hat).  I guess I had trouble even then following conventions:  rather than write a "once upon a time" story, I was building a fictional Encyclopedia of Alien Lifeforms.  Each entry was introduced with a labeled diagram of an alien, identifying the important anatomical systems (sense organs, circulatory and nervous systems, etc.) followed by written descriptions of home planets, common characteristics, and--possibly the most inventive of the writing--how they differed from human beings.

By mid-winter I'd created perhaps forty different entries in my book.  One morning during a snowy, windy walk to a waiting school bus, my entire collection of work was caught up in a gust, blowing every page across the cold, wet snow.  I could never bring myself to try to recreate it: the project was lost to the cruelty of nature.

As I got older, I found it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief around science fiction.  I liked science too much to allow it to be cast aside for the convenience of fiction.  Some time around seventh grade I was assigned to read a Ray Bradbury story (I forget which one) and hated it so much that I never returned to the genre.  And I became increasingly intolerant of sloppy science in fiction, especially time travel.

I began to come around finally when I read Machio Kaku's Hyperspace from the mid-nineties.  He put forth a hypothesis I could buy.  1) Time travel required a machine (rather than being just an "action") because it required control of an immense amount of energy. 2) Travel through time could only happen as long as the machine existed; you couldn't go back in time before it, and you couldn't go forward beyond when it stopped functioning.  This theory made time travel a slightly more acceptable fictional tool.

As I continued to learn about developments in modern science, as I encountered increasingly bizarre and nearly-fictional scientific theories, I eased up on my resistance to suspending disbelief in science fiction.  In some cases, I have to suspend disbelief to trust science fact.

Being so unfamiliar with science fiction, I feel I would be unfairly encroaching to write it.  Also, I suspect the genre's community would think I was making fun: there's no way I could write science fiction with a serious tone.  To me, it's frequently too "out there" for me to be serious.  I had an idea about an alien fact-finding mission: a series of observations of humanity from the perspective of an outsider--in the extreme.

Most of the beings have a tissue growth at the top of their bodies.  It is a fine, soft, flexible growth, possibly originally developed to keep their brains warm.  Those that have it seem to be excessively fixated on it.  In fact, many of those that don't seem equally fixated on recreating it, either with a synthetic substitute or through chemical-induced regrowth.  They shape it, twist it, and even discolor it.  Vast amounts of resources are used on it, though we do not observe any sort of greater social value derived from the expense and effort.  We assume it is for some sort of mating purpose, though as of yet have not found any consistency in its effect.

The trouble is, in writing, you have to satisfy two audiences: readers and yourself.  Regardless of how entertaining such a work might be to the rest of the world, my lingering angst over science fiction keeps me from feeling compelled to write much more than the above.

I Hate Guitars For The Same Reason You Hate Chess

I found yet more old pieces I've written and I am going to post one.  I think to myself, shouldn't I be working on and posting new stuff? -- but the coincidence of finding this file on this particular day has led me to put it up.


I created all the lyrics to the songs for a musical I'd intended to write.  The plot was wretched and the characters were lifeless and the thing will never see the light of day.  Neither am I any kind of musician; I still have in my head some of the old lessons about scales and meter and such from eighth-grade music class, but I think I'd have to collaborate to make something palatable.


So, I'll just call this a poem.  And it came about because of a friend (whose birthday is today--thus the coincidence and appropriateness of posting this) who is the "You" of the title.  I really don't hate guitars, of course, but I think the complex psychic mix of supposed hatred and self-aware jealousy written in between the lines of this ditty make it entertaining--to me anyway.  I really can't speak to the rhyme or meter... there was a reason behind it once, but that was forgotten long ago.

When the lull comes and silence arrives,

The conversation is ended and still.

It seems to last for hours, and now

We can't find anything to talk about.

You run off to play guitar:

You know I don't know how to play.

Does that damn’d guitar treat you well?

Is it loving; is it caring: a better friend?

I don't know how to play; you don't know how to play:

I hate guitars for the same reason you hate chess.

Go on and play your guitar;

I'll go play chess.

When the lull comes, deadly silence invades:

We have nothing to talk about.

It can last for hours: feel the silence

Until we must run away.

So I set up the board, lost for hours in this game:

Too bad you don't know how to play.

The game I enjoy treats me well:

Gives me what I can't hope to find anywhere else.

I don't know how to play; you don't know how to play:

I hate guitars for the same reason you hate chess.

Go on and play your guitar;

I'll go play chess.

I sometimes forget you won't always be around,

But when we can't connect, then

You go off and play guitar,

And I go off and play chess.

I suppose I could learn how to play guitar,

And you could learn how to play chess.

I suppose I could put aside my disdain,

And you could end your disapproval.

Don't you know we could teach each other how to play:

I learn guitars for the same reason you learn chess.

Come and teach me guitar;

I'll teach you chess.

Poor Jack Has a Headache

Some years ago (too many, really), I began writing vignettes about a character named Jack.  When I began putting the vignettes to use in a plot I was building, I came to recognize that he was simply too pitiful and unfortunate to carry a good story (I didn’t want to make people too miserable as they read.)  In the end, Jack has been absorbed into another story, as a supporting character.  Though he is no less unfortunate, he is no longer the focus of the story, which I hope will allow him to survive without making a miserable reader.

I thought I’d let Jack live a little from his old life; this snippet no longer fits anywhere in Jack’s new world.

   A Gallagher's supermarket was five blocks from Jack's apartment. He inhaled deeply when he entered the store, immediately familiar with the smell, unique to this Gallagher's. Jack placed it as a combination of industrial degreaser, spoiled milk, and body odor. Gallagher's was the only store in the city that would permit most of the general public to come in and loiter in the heated aisles during the cold, nighttime loneliness. The market boasted none of the scanners, electronic tellers or automatic doors of most stores, but it offered the largest selection of cigarettes within sixteen blocks.

   Jack needed aspirin. There, sharing the shelf space with toothpaste, shampoo, and foot powders, numerous and confusing bottles of aspirin waited. Jack was in short supply of money, as usual, so he searched the shelf for the smallest, cheapest bottle he could find. The permanent headache he battled for the last four days was growing and intensifying. None of the bottles was priced under two dollars, which was all the money he could find in his apartment. The pain in his head seemed to get worse as he realized he could not buy painkillers. He stretched his arm out to hook his fingers under the shelf's edge and keep himself from falling.

   Jack stared down at the floor to regain his stability. The tiles were yellow, with the appearance that they were once nearly white. For twelve years, since the first time Jack entered it, the store had looked exactly the same. While he stood stabilizing himself, Jack wondered if some of the products were the very same ones as those which were in the store that first time.

   When Jack was strong enough to stand on his own, he shivered with a fear mixed with exhaustion and cold. Thinking about it, he realized that he had at least one of these spells of light-headedness nearly every day for two weeks, and on a few days he had actually fallen down a few times.

   He picked up a bottle of pills. It cost four dollars and sported a brand name. Jack closed his eyes to force back the headache, which seemed to roam around to different areas. It crouched at the very front of his head, pushing against his eyes and forehead. Jack pushed his index fingers against the soft part of his temples, at the end of his eyebrows, and rubbed in circles, until the bottle he had clutched with his other three fingers fell out of his grip and rattled on the yellowing floor.

   Jack bent over and picked up the bottle, casually passing it by his coat pocket and dropping it in. He held his arm in front of him, pushing the other bottles on the shelf in crowded bunches with his open palms as he searched to balance himself in the aisle. He guessed he had been standing in the same place for as long as twenty minutes. The young girl at the check out could have easily seen him the entire time. He held on tightly to the shelf. He could see nothing through his blurry eyes, dotted with a variety of colored sparkles, except the other bottles of aspirin that looked just like the one in his pocket.

   He hung his head down, pushing his ear against his outstretched arm. He breathed deeply, feeling his ribs, chest, shoulders, and back flex and bend from the intake of air. He was beginning to regain his sight. Jack had not stolen anything since he was twelve. He felt sure the check-out girl saw everything that had happened and was waiting for him to leave so he could be caught.

   When Jack finally stepped out of the store, no one stopped him. The girl was far more interested in her chewing gum than Jack. The enormous relief struck him so suddenly his knees gave with his first step.

[more to come...]

Poetry Schmoetry

I managed to dredge up some old computer files and discovered a folder call "poetry."  To my disappointment, there was only one file in it (somewhere out in the electrons, there is an old disk with a hundred slip-shod poems from my college days).  The one file was a sonnet (or maybe just a quatorzain--it seems to be a little off in the rhyme scheme) written during my semester in Costa Rica.


I'll repeat a few words as qualifiers: "college days," "slip-shod," and "a little off." It is what it is.

Lake Atitlan

The Atitlan sits blue in mountain dell;

The sky above is clear and sweet with sun.

In quiet hillside town rings out the bell

To call to any dedicated one.

Confession of my sinning thoughts to eyes

More sweet than sun, more blue than the skies above.

Within the bells the playing music lies:

A pilgrim’s dance to your cathedral love.

Embrace in dance, close lips and feet find grace,

To hold you close and let you set the pace.

But kept too close you try to steal away

Spun widly from your arms’ embrace to stay

Cast out from Eden’s honey light and skies.

From other love I cannot take your eyes.