I’ve always been proud of my arrogant NY way until this flight. A NYer, from a Jewish and Italian heritage, is talking with four Houstonian bowlers. His accent is thick—his manner disturbing. He’s an elitist. He thinks NYers who grew up in Brooklyn or Queens are inferior, lesser life forms, outside the “in” group that runs the country. He also snorts when he laughs.
Usually I’m entertained by the discussions of others. Intrigued by their idiosyncrasies and embarrassingly simple conversations. I’ve amused myself to no-end with my selfish belittlement of Houston. And yet, when looking through the mirror, that this father, with kids of 27, 23, and 6 weeks, I’m disgusted.
The bowlers are professional—they compete in tournaments all over the country once per year. The five of them watch a disgustingly commercial trivia show on the lowered TV screens of the airplanes. The NYer makes not-so funny jokes. The first one, which he makes before we even take-off, is to his middle-seat neighbor, something about being so close you need to avoid kissing.
The bowlers clap as they get the trivia questions right. The questions are broken up by an advertisement for AWA (American West Airlines—no affiliation with American Airlines, which is confusing) and the first five are sports related.
The NYer has lots of homes and lives in midtown, where he grew up. He gets more obnoxious as the flight goes on. He’s entertaining his neighbors (both guys) to no end. I thought the clapping was annoying—now I’m hoping the plane makes an emergency landing and lets us jump down the slide—WNBC-woman’s national bowling conference—to escape this insulting barrage. The NYer has never cheated on his wife. he’s a consultant for top-10, and he makes this more than apparent and known—housing sales, whatever that means.
My ears are clogged from the loss of pressure. He’s wearing a hat and glasses, with a hooked-Jewish nose. He’s also very impressed by toothless-bowlers, which these gals are not since they work for dentists. He claims his wife thinks he’s a saint. His name is Angelo. He calls the girls by where he thinks they come from: Louisiana, Queens—which isn’t NY, and some other southern states.
The girls bowling averages are around 160, some less, some more. He’s not impressed. The tournament is for amateurs, not professionals. Texas bowlers who smoke Marlboro lights—exceptionally cancer causing—and drink Bud. That’s his impression of them. He sounds like Rob Deniro’s insane short side-kick (I forget his name), going so far as to laugh like him.
He went to college in L.I. His wife is a JAP, who spends $3k on a trip to Nordstrom and, not surprisingly, owns a large collection of shoes. If his Jewish-Italian mother found out he cheated, she’d cut off his weenie and mail it back to thim.
After finishing Robert Jordan’s book (it took me only three days, which shows the addictiveness of his books), I decided that I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing in creating characters and stories. I delved the internet to discover what it is I was missing. I thought that if I could find some exercises about writing, I would figure it out on my own. The available knowledge articles relating to writing disillusioned me quickly. The message boards are rather good, but to find the right message written by the right person on the right board is difficult. I found an interesting writing exercise book at amazon.com, and decided to try it. There’s still nothing like a good book when it comes to learning about anything non-computer related.
Being only interested in instant-gratification, I went to my local Borders. I couldn’t find the exercise book, but I did come across books teaching writing. One in particular caught my attention: a book about characters and viewpoint by Orson Scott Card, an author I respect (he wrote Ender’s Game). I’m about halfway through that book, and I have learned a lot about characters and plot. It’s amazing to realize how little I consciously knew and even more amazing to discover how many elements I intuitively used, probably from reading so many books that used the same elements. My hope is that making conscious choices about the plot and characters will improve my storytelling and writing.
Spending all my writing-time reading was not my plan, but I’ve been reluctant to begin writing until I finish the book. I’m concerned that I’ll miss a key insight in the book about writing and have to start the process all over again. (Seeing this excuse in writing shows me just how ridiculous it is. I’ll get back to writing soon.) I’m about halfway through the book and I hope to finish it before this weekend. After I finish it, I should get back to writing more regularly. Hopefully, you’ll see less of these musings and more of my storytelling.
Earlier, I spilled coffee on the guy sitting next to me. I was sitting in the coffee house on the purple plushy chair, which was separated from the other purple plushy chair by an end table. I attempted to multitask by drinking and reading. While placing my cup down on the table, I knocked it over. Starbucks designs its technically advanced coffee cups not to spill except when tipped on the side of the spout. Defying all odds, the cup fell with the spout on the bottom and the coffee shot out like an ejaculation.
After picking up the coffee cup to rescue my precious decaf mocha, I followed the coffee trail from the puddle on the table to the purple chair’s arm. Two brown drops had skidded over the purple chair’s arm and onto the man’s khaki pants. I was preparing to apologize to him until I noticed how oblivious he was. I got napkins, came back, wiped the table, and threw out the napkins, before returning to my book. I even hummed my do-de-do song while cleaning, but he noticed nothing. His cell phone was glued to his ear and he was in a different world. A few minutes later, he hung up and left, never the wiser. I probably should have felt bad about this episode, but I’m a horrible person.
Let’s see if I can apply some of the writing book’s advice to make this anecdote more interesting. The first step it to interrogate the characters by asking “casual questions,” adding “exaggeration,” and, if appropriate, “a twist” while avoiding answers from the “cliché shelf.” (This sounds like a bad 12-step program.) There are currently two characters: the narrator and the oblivious man.
What is the narrator doing in a coffee shop? He’s reading. Blah: what else could he be doing in the coffee shop? Maybe he was drinking coffee with someone. If there is another person who noticed the spill, they both could share in the amusement. Or perhaps the other person is not amused by it but feels bad for the oblivious man.
What is the relationship between the other person and the narrator? He could be alone and the other person watched the spill from a different chair. Perhaps that’s how they meet, after the phone guy leaves the other person approaches him.
So, the narrator is a he? It makes more sense, particular considering his attitude. Okay, leave it like that and continue. Let’s get back to what the guy is doing at the coffee shop alone. If he’s not reading, perhaps he’s waiting to play chess (you’ve seen that often enough), or surfing the web.
All those answers are rather boring (i.e., clichéd), what else could he be doing at the coffee shop? He’s drinking alcohol. That might be interesting: he’s drinking alcohol mixed in with his coffee (which will help explain the spill).
Why is he drinking? He’s lonely or an alcoholic. He comes to the coffee shop to be around other people and he mixes what’s in a flask he carries with the coffee he orders.
Does he get rowdy? Yes. He’s not particularly liked in the coffee shop. He’s not sounding very sympathetic. What’s the point? It was originally just a silly story to demonstrate that talking on the phone is distracting. But now you’re trying to push it further. (You’re not doing particularly well, but at least you’re trying.)
Let’s focus on the oblivious guy for a moment. First, is it a guy or a gal? It might be more interesting if it’s a girl, and the pants are white cotton instead of khaki. She’s probably loud when she’s talking on the phone, lots of gesturing; we want her to deserve it when the coffee splashes on her, and there will probably be a lot more than just a couple of drops. It can’t be too much, or she’d feel it. I like the two drops approach. It’s fitting, and it will stain the white dress, regardless of how much actually spills.
Now that you have a better idea of the oblivious woman, what can you say about the narrator? He probably should not be drunk or belligerent. That way the reader will sympathize with him. He should only add a little alcohol to his drink, but while a regular at the coffee shop, he behaves himself, and the alcohol allows him to socialize a bit more than he normally does. He’s trying to meet new people.
Why is he trying to meet new people? He just moved to town. Yawn. He just broke up with his girlfriend. He had spent all his time with her and had no friends besides her. Is his family in town? No. Go on.
What does he do when he’s not frequenting the coffee shop? He’s an IT professional. Boring. Car salesman. Sounds good. How can he be a car salesman and not be social? Good question. He’s not good at meeting new people (sound familiar?).
Not bad. I would need to interrogate the characters a lot more to get somewhere interesting, but at least it’s more interesting than the anecdote I wrote above. Next, I’ll apply this technique on a story I’ve already been thinking about.
Blowing cabana curtains striped green assaulted the feet of its inhabitants who layed prone on the beach chairs avoiding the sun like vicars – what exactly are vicars?
The girl in the blue bikini sells getaways and charters for parties. She’s presenting her schpeel and her phone rings. “Nikki, I’ll call you right back. Answer your phone.” A child on a quiet, electric scooter zips by. He has a helmet and drives around the fenced pool area. She’s a diver. She’s selling diving trips, going from community pool to community pool to community pool to sell. Would they talk to her if she wasn’t wearing the blue bikini?
She’s dirty blonde—dye job. Belly button ring (required) with a blue wrap covering her bikini bottom and legs. I saw them before, when she was selling her scuba trips and equipment to an older gentleman. Her legs need work. Speaking of work, she is selling for a local dive shop. “If you don’t shop at your local dive shop, there won’t be a local dive shop to shop in.”
She gathers more telephone numbers. She wears those sunglasses with half orange mirrored lenses. It’s strange to see those lenses: only cool people wear them. She knows one of the customers. The blue bathing suit guy has dived with her before. He’s a woman. He wears a blue fishing hat. He’s joking how they left him behind on one of their other diving trips. She calls him a woman. That’s Jimmy.
Her other customers, newer ones: the smoking guy is wearing an orange swim trumks (what do trunks—oh, as in covering up the trunks of the legs) and white coral necklace. She leaves after presenting and flirting. She has their numbers. She also has a hiking bag. I wonder where she’s hiking? Blue bag, lots of straps.
"It sounds more like a Sunday book. too hard to read on a Saturday."
"How were your classes?"
"Bad. I flunked two classes, but at least I got a promotion. I guess it balances out. I think I spend too much time at work and not enough time studying."
Julie is a good sister for one year. You can be a good sister too if you do one good deed. It lasts only one year, like jury duty.
"It's hard to change jobs. I haven't had to think in years," says a man who just got fired to his friend.
“I used to make straight As in high school, but I’m not a college person. I don’t care about money. The average person coming in here studying won’t like what they’re doing in five years. Money is not important enough for me to follow them,” says the coffee guy.
Old Lady:
Her skin was translucent. Her veins standing out like blue worms sleeping under her skin. Her skin was loose, barely glued to her bones. Her face was long. Her blonde hair was already turned to old lady hay, curly and covering her head. Her neck was complicated with skin folds forming valleys and canyons. Her stomach was large—rounded like a man who drank too much.
“I’m just trying to stay dry.”
Bland, please-go-away response.
“What do you do?”
His face is defined by a narrow, upturned nose and broad cheeks. His forehead is high and wide. He’s well-shaven and studies each person as they walk in, trying to decide who to pounce on. He’s drinking a grande hot chocolate and does things to draw attention to himself like yawning or making noises. He wears a white short, freshly laundered and a gray tie with pink tones. His shoes are dark burgundy and his watch has a gold band with a black face. His face is freshly shaven and he practices smiling. He laughs at anything anyone says and talks to anyone who walks by.
The rain is what brought him into Starbucks—he’s a salesman for Affleck (the duck company, as he loves to describe it). He makes small talk with anyone and everyone except young, un-professionals, or couples. He waits for an individual to set up his coffee at the bar and he starts a conversation. It smells of spring rain. His pants are gray and he’s a little pudgy. He comments to the Starbucks’ lady, “I thought all the salesmen would run to Starbucks when it started raining.” She barely responds. He uses this line on lots of other people.
I was used to denying myself everything until I realized that I risked denying myself life. In other words, caffeine is a good food.
Some people’s faces are stronger from the front, others from the side—and most, from the back.
And he sat there, poking holes in his ketchup with shoestring fries.
I like design—I like completed design—design isn’t necessarily form over function. It’s sometimes form and function. Design for my website; design for my house (when I eventually buy one, and, at the looks of my current finances, I can probably afford a wall of a house); design of computer programs and the results they output; design for my apartment and book, music, and movie selections. And finally, and most importantly, at least I am trying to convince myself of the importance, the design of my stories.
There is little difference between an advertisement design, a website design, and a story design. There is always a message (even lack of a message or an emotional response is a message), it’s just the building blocks that are different. My toolkit for stories is still missing some basic tools, but I’m working on that. I just need to keep in mind the design when I’m writing a story—and I’m not (necessarily) talking about the “form” of the story. This doesn’t make an incredible amount of sense, but at this moment, in this depressed state, with hours of TLC’s design shows under my belt (allowable, but still terribly, terribly wrong, because I’m in California visiting Julie), this message is very important
The design of a story is something you will work for, like you work for the design of your website. You stay up all hours to make it work and make it “right”—the right of the last stroke in a painting or the rightness of the design of a computer program or look and feel of the website.
You’ve known about the rightness for some time, but you’ve never caught it or understood it. I’m not asking you to understand it now. I’m only asking you to use it—replace your “ought to write” with “want to write until the writing is right.” I want to stay up because I’m dissatisfied with the design of the story, butting my head against the monitor until I can give it no more. I don’t want the empty page’s gaping mouth to hold anything against me. I will write and force myself to start over if it’s not. Adding new words will be like filling in the next blank part of the canvas and editing will be the adding the detail work and touching up. All will be in furtherance of the design concept.
You will identify this, the design concept, before you start and stick with it throughout the work. There you go, running out of steam—is it right yet? If not, suck it up and continue. Now, go apologize to Julie for going crazy and the get to work.
The words flow just like lines of programming. When you don’t know what to write, step back and plan. There really is no such thing as writer’s block. What it is is a lack of a direction and plan. This happened often in programming. You would sit down and try to write a program without a plan and sometimes the results would be good, sometimes even with a rightness, especially if the results you were looking for were short and easy to get to. More usual, however, you would hit many dead ends and the right design would hit you at one of those ends or when you were about finished with a workable program with a bad design. Then you would have to start over. While this sometimes happened with programs you had expended the effort to design, this was less likely, especially if you found the rightness during the design phase.
The same should be done with writing. Don’t let your unconscious mind do all the work. It’ll chime in with the creativity when it needs to—especially if you supply it with the workable framework. This is outline work we’re talking about. The outline where the concepts based free of the writing can be explored and used to manipulate the reader. This work shouldn’t be used as a straightjacket for your writing. Let your writing go where it will. Likewise, this work shouldn’t stop you from actually writing a section because there is no framework in place for it. Design and writing are interchangeable concepts and it’s not always the rational mind that will provide the border between the two.
To truly write, you need to reach into that higher place—the place where the gods of your mind and muses walk—and let those powers guide you. They will if you let yourself go. They will guide both your writing, the poetic and associative part of the communication, as well as the framework. The spark of creativity creates the rightness in the macro-design or framework, as you’ve been calling it.
Enough about it. It’s time to test these concepts and see if they’ll help you conquer Lenny, Carl, and Moe—or if this is just another wasted effort brought about by a focused depression courtesy of caffeine.
Eating corn on the cob is like eating popper plastic (whatever that’s called).
He keeps repeating to himself, “I am not superficial. I am not superficial.” And yet, he looks at her and thinks how much better she would be if this and that was changed.
Samer (Tamer's uncle) had wise words: When a couple goes through a rough time, it's more difficult on the people around them. While the couple may work it out, all the negative and hurtful things that the couple tells their friends and family about their partner remains. The friends and family remember the negative aspects and because they love the person. It takes them a long time to forgive the partner for hurting their friend. The couple may get back together with no problems--"a blowjob and everyone is happy."
Random Thoughts:
Poetry seems easier these days. It requires less concentration, less effort. Is that a reason to do something? because it's easy? Even now, I think of putting the pen down and uncovering oblivion.
Depression has been a stranger lately.
Titles create distance. Parents in public have problems dealing with non-parents. They're used to being the boss, and that changes when not dealing with their children.
Max is in awe of wealthy women. "Marry rich," he tells his friends. "It's a lotto ticket I can invest in."
Michael Chabon's "Spiderman II" disappointed me a bit. I'm not sure what I was hoping for.
Stories: You need to tell stories that interest you. You've been focusing on stories with a plot that you've come up with based on your past experiences. Why does the teacher not interest you? It does, but I want something to happen. Things rarely happen in your stories.
How sick is this? When I was in NYC, I worked with the guy featured in this NY Post article. He was arrested for attempting to meet with who he thought was a 13-year old girl for a sexual encounter, but was really an undercover officer posing as a girl. They met on a Yahoo online chatroom, where his talk became sexual in nature, and he arranged to meet her at a L.I. train station. He was arrested at the station, and charged with first-degree attempted dissemination of indecent material to minors, a felony punishable by up to four years in jail. He's out on $2,500 bail.
As he says goodbye to his lucrative legal career, he says hello to prison stripes and sexual-predator lists.
We live in a fucked up world.
After yesterday, I’m having trouble getting back into my story. I know where it’s going since it’s based loosely on something that happened to me when I was much younger. I just need to suck it up and start writing. I’m waiting for my mocha to kick in, and I figured I’d jot down some words before I jump in. Julie made some sounds (I love that phrase) about me not drinking caffeine, particularly since I’ve been complaining about headaches lately. She referenced my prolific writing day yesterday as evidence that caffeine is not necessary to write—a theory that I ascribe to after comparing my caffeine-influence writing days with my caffeine-free days. I’m still a proponent of caffeine for my writing, but if my headaches start coming back without explanation (this weekend the explanations were easy: too much redeye traveling and not enough sleeping), then maybe, and that’s a big maybe, I’ll look into cutting down on the caffeine. As it is now, I’m limiting myself to one tall caffeinated drink a day.
I only have a paragraph written so far for today. I found a nice bucks of stars to ply my trade. It’s about a ten-minute drive from my house (with weekend traffic), and it might be my new weekend hangout. I tried writing at the Castle but that didn’t work. I searched on the internet for a nearby bucks and came upon this one, which is on my way to work. After talking to Julie, I jumped in the Batmobile and punched in the address and away I went. I hoped there was something to eat around the bucks, and when I finally arrived (after taking a few wrong turns—don’t ask, but it wasn’t my little lady in the car’s fault), I discovered much to happiness a Subway restaurant (which in my mind is not fast food in the bad sense, i.e., the let’s kill tens of thousands of cows and mush them into a million hamburgers so each burger has at least the remains of 1,200 cows in it) right next to the bucks. And, this is even better, they built a second bucks across the street from this one, with a fireplace blazing inside. You can imagine my excitement. Once I left the Batmobile and patted my pockets, however, I made a terrible discovery. I left my money in the Castle: no money, no food, no coffee, no writing. I was starving, but I drove the Batmobile all the way back to the Castle and returned here. I’ve now eaten, drank my mocha, and found a comfortable chair. All I need to do is start writing and stop musing.
Here goes nothing:
Part I
The rumor around school was that Roger had started taking karate lessons, which made sense with his love of ninjas. Now, I liked the Saturday afternoon ninja movies as much as the next kid, but Roger’s fascination went beyond that. One Halloween, I think it was back in third grade or somewhere around that time, Roger dressed up as a ninja in a black costume with lots of sashes and hidden pockets. The principal would have none of that. The school officials always said that our school was a nonviolent place, a place where, now get this, I’ll quote them because it always cracks me up, “a place where you check your violence at the school door.” Me, I never believed them. I had two broken nose and was in three fights before I turned ten, and I’m not a violent guy. But when they come at you, you have to put up or bad things will happen. When the principal finished searching Roger, he found thirty different weapons, and from what I heard from Oscar, who was in the principal’s office when Roger’s mother came in for the discussion, Roger would have gotten suspended for sure if his mother didn’t start crying. From what I heard, they gave him counseling during his study hall for the rest of the year. Much good that did.
Over the last few years, many karate schools began opening in our neighborhood—after the first one popped up, they came in swarms. I think it had something to do with those Saturday afternoon martial arts flick. That’s some good shit, and I know I would have signed up in my parents could have paid for it. But that’s cool. From what I saw with the kids who went there, they did a lot of kicking, but all those fancy kicks weren’t much good in the schoolyard. With so many karate schools, it’s more than possible that Roger attended one. He didn’t talk about, but you had the feeling that something changed in him. He used to walk around all hunched over, like if he didn’t keep moving forward he’d fall over. Around the time that people started talking about him and karate school, his posture improved and his chest puffed out. That’s around the time that he started glaring at Charlie.
Now Charlie I knew went to a karate dojo. There was a Russian kid in our class, Mihail, who Charlie hung around. Mihail was the first kid to take karate and I think he got his black belt when he was nine. Mihail convinced Charlie to go to the karate class. Charlie’s parents encouraged him to do things.
There’s an attack stance in which you stand with one leg in front of the other and one fist in front of your face and the other one a bit lower. I’ve seen this stance in many movies and those specials where they show karate competitions. Charlie is a serious guy and a bit of a wimp when he’s not hiding behind his clever words. He’s also terribly afraid of dogs. I’m not talking about the scary dogs. I’m talking about all dogs, even the tiny ones with barks that sound more like little girls whining. We were walking to his house a year ago and passed a fenced garden. A small dog jumped out from behind a wall in the garden and charged at us. Charlie fell back into his karate stance and gave a loud, “Kiya!” It’s a cry that they teach you at karate school. I bent down and let the dog lick my fingers through the gray fence. I could see Charlie’s heart beating through his thin t-shirt. I told you he was skinny, and I’ve seen him with his shirt off when we went swimming, and you could make out each rib in his cheat and just about see his heart beat underneath his skin. It’s freaky to look at his almost pinkish blue skin and see bones sticking out and organs doing their thing. I never saw someone jump so high or yell so loud when such a small dog charged forward. But that’s Charlie for you.
Roger started looking at Charlie funnily at school. We all saw it. He started talking behind Charlie’s back. At first, he told people what a jerk Charlie was, and attempted to badmouth him to anyone who would listen. After a few weeks, he went further. He said he was going to kick Charlie’s ass. Each time he saw Charlie, he would make that sudden jerking motion toward Charlie, the I-made-you-flinch motion, and each time Charlie would jerk back. He usually resisted falling into his fighting position but not always. Once, during gym, Roger jerked at him and Charlie fell over as he tried to get into his fighting position. Charlie stood up, brushing himself off, he started in on Roger. He began with the Roger nose, which everyone had seen already and we all felt was a weak comeback. But that was just his warm-up act. Looking back, we should have jumped in and stopped him, but there was something fascinating about watching Charlie work. His insults were a real art, if you know what I mean.
Things left to write:
Charlie pisses Roger off enough for Roger to tell him he’s going to get him.
The fight and flying toe stomp.
The aftermath.
Inconsistencies: Where did Eddie go? I’m confused about Charlie and the narrator’s relationship. At first, they seem to barely know each other, and then they’re writing comics together.
I wish I could write more now, but this is not going well. I seem to have lost the narrator’s voice, and I’m going to call it an afternoon. I’m hoping to find inspiration later tonight and continue. No promises, though.
I edited and changed some of the early paragraphs, but I again ran out of steam. I will rewrite this section before I finish the draft. There are a few ideas I want to get out before I move on to the fight.
Story idea upon awakening this morning: A high school boy drives his car off a cliff during a race. A high school girl becomes obsessed with the dead boy. She slowly comes to believe that he was her boyfriend and he drove off the cliff because of his love for her. Hilarity ensues.
Story idea from my memories: (1) detention for throwing snow; (2) Russian friend and prejudice
Voyeur:
A young workman is eating. He wears jeans and brown workman boots. Kneepads cover his knees. The pads have black straps and a two-part white plastic covering, made up of two circles in a figure eight. There are rubberized lines in the middle of both circles, with the top one larger and going over his knee, and the lower one smaller and going under his knee where the other part of his leg would hit the ground. He wears sunglasses over his blond, curly hair, and has a wooden stick over his left ear. He’s wearing a gray, striped button down shirt and a pink t-shirt underneath it.
Two police officers are sitting at a table talking. The workman keeps trying to strike up a conversation with them. He starts with, “Be careful I’m armed,” pulling out his tape measure and extending it out a few feed. “It goes out to ten feet. You better be careful.”
The police officers do their best to ignore him.
“You guys get to walk around with these cool toys on your belt. I only get to wear a few tools and stuff.”
I’m not sure if he’s slow or just conversational. He’s eating a cake and taking large bites, chewing with lots of jaw motion under his pinkish skin. His boots look too large for him, they’re steel-toed, which might present this illusion. He has tiny ears and greenish eyes. He has a dimple on his chin and on both sides of his face when he smiles at his own jokes.
I’m embarrassed for him. It’s painful to watch him try to strike up conversation with the officers only for them to answer noncommittal and ignore him. He’s comfortable with it and tries a few more times to start a conversation. I can’t stop watching him, hoping that he does or says something. It’s painful like sitcoms are painful—I’m thinking of Three’s Company—where at the end the situation and misunderstanding is set up and the falls begin. I hated that part of the show. Why is that funny? Other people’s pain should not be funny.
The workman leans forward trying to listen to the conversation and waiting for an opening. He drinks from a Subway cup and eats a brownie, cookie, and cake. I’m not sure why this fascinates me, but I felt the need to put it down before it was lost to the world. I’m sick that way.
He’s definitely slow. When the police leave, he tries to say something to them, but I can’t make it out. He scrambles his words together and makes funny faces at the young children that sit around him. The first time they look, and laugh. Then he continues to try to make the faces, but they ignore him, and he tries harder, which just makes the four-year olds ignore him more.
“I can get away with making faces to kids. I can’t get away with it for other people,” he says to the children’s mother. He wants people to hear him and think he’s clever or funny.
I was playing with my website today, mostly making some internal changes to speed-up the generation of the musings and photographs, and I did a huge bad thing, because many of my musings just vanished. I’ve spent the last hour recovering them from my iBackup account. I am incredibly thankful for that $3/month backup site. My heart just about stopped when I rendered my website and half my musings vanished, poof, into the nether regions somewhere. I don’t have a very good idea of why this happened and I’m at the stage where I’m going to hope it never happens again (wishful thinking at its best). It might have something to do with some changes to the code or some minor maintenance I was doing with the directory structure. Enough useless worrying, here are some thoughts I had today:
It’s a merry, merry post-headache day, and I have the time and the energy to write and write and write. I’m not sure if you’ll see much of my writing, since I’m going to delve back into the editing of The Flying Toe Stomp, but if all goes as planned, I’ll hopefully have the story edited by the end of this weekend. I’m about a third of the way through and I’ve finished most of the interesting parts. I need to rewrite much of the remainder of the story because the voice and quality just isn’t there. Luckily, it’s always easier for me to rewrite when I have words in front of me and a good understanding of what I want to say.
After finishing my afternoon writing session, I took a walk to Columbia City, which is a few blocks long, with two coffee houses (not much of a surprise, this is Seattle after all), and a few galleries, bookstores, and restaurants. Columbia City is a cute area that reminds me of NYC, if you imagine NYC as three blocks long. While I did need the exercise—I haven’t been to the gym in two weeks now, and it’s not looking good, the gym, that is, I’m still looking as fit as a fiddle, a skinny fiddle, but a relatively healthy one—I did have an ulterior motive for my thirty-minute stroll. It seems I neglected to pay my water bill and the water company was threatening to shut off my water in the next few days. I’m the first to admit that I’m lazy when it comes to bills, which is why I automated most of my bill payments. I even signed up for automatic deduction for my public utilities, but that takes a few months to kick in. So, I trekked down to Columbia City to the community window, which as far as I have been able to figure out, provides a payment window for utilities, transit passes, passports. The friendly guy behind the three-feet of bulletproof glass told me that on Tuesday, the public utilities would accept credit card payment on their website. I was a week short of saving myself a long walk. But the walk was just what I needed to reconnect with myself.
I’ve noticed a tendency of mine lately to fill up my quiet time. I’ll be sitting, thinking about something, when disruptive thoughts will go through my head. I’m not used to being alone with my thoughts anymore. My writing over the last two months has been almost constant, and the time I would have spent thinking I now spend pounding away at the keyboard. This is not always a good thing. My thoughts turn repetitive and derivative, and don’t go much of anywhere when I don’t spend some time with OT (that’s original thought, for those of you who are not regulars—and, someone please tell Word to stop changing OT to TO!).
I could have driven to Columbia City, but I just don’t do enough walking in Seattle, especially now that winter is almost upon us. My car has many distractions: the XM radio, the phone, the navigation system, the terrible traffic. When you’re walking anywhere, it takes a while. Even somewhere you can drive to in less than five minutes might take twenty minutes to an half hour to walk. And during that time, I found myself thinking and enjoying just walking and listening to nothing. Every so often, it’s nice to reconnect with yourself. Yeah, it sounds narcissistic and it probably is, but it does help me in some strange way.
Voyeur
Little brown-haired girl eating a very large gingerbread cookie, head first of course. Her mother, black, straight hair, cut to her shoulders but just hanging there, looking almost greasy, although you get the feeling that it’s clean. She’s wearing black shiny shoes and no socks. She has a white long sleeve shirt and a blue puffy vest. The little girl is wearing a white sweater with jeans.
They’re discussing why Starbucks has holiday decorations that all look the same. The mother is drinking a coffee and the little girl is starting to get a bit wild with all of the sugar she’s eating, including a strawberry milkshake type drink. The girl asks about the decorations, and the mother tells her they’re not terribly Christmasy because there’s a giant decorating company that decorates all the Starbucks in the same way. She also tells her daughter about the other holidays that occur during December—and she adds that may be why the decorations aren’t all green and red.
They discuss Hanukah, and Kwanza. The mother quizzes the girl on what happens during Hanukah. They come up with a dreidle (tough word to spell), lighting of calendar for eight days. For Kwanza, which the mother describes as an African holiday, but the little girl didn’t know what she was talking about, he little girl has no idea.
Two ladies sitting next to the fireplace are discussing balls of yarn, which one of them brought bags and bags of yarn. One of the yarn balls on the floor by the little girl. The mother tells her daughter to give them the dropped ball, but the little girl doesn’t want to. She is scared. The mother does it for her.
The sugar is starting to drive the little girl crazy. Her feet are tapping and she’s unable to sit still. It’s either the sugar or ADD. They leave. (Okay, I was desperate to write something and nothing was going on around me.)
His head filled with steam, and he looked for the release valve.
Her neck snaked forward like the inhaling of an accordion.
Unlike yesterday, today is not going to be easy. It’s 11pm and Julie is not letting me write. She keeps bothering me trying to stick her tongue down my throat. I’m keeping her off me with extreme effort. It’s difficult, but I have obligations. Today was a long day. I slept through most of it after a family barbeque.
After too many late morning risings and naps, I’ve found another cause for my morning headaches besides sleep apnea. Julie is again trying to distract me from my writing duties by smelling me. I’m trying to resist her evil allures. It is difficult but we all have crosses to bear, and mine is Julies. She slapped me after reading the last sentence. She’s also trying to press the backspace button to erase the evidence, but I’m not letting her. I’m sneaky that way.
New paragraph. I’m sure when people see us together they are as sickened by our disgusting baby talk and touching as I would have been seeing two people like us together years ago. Now it’s funny and cute and sexy. I guess this will last another six weeks before it all becomes old and craggily. Julie, for those still paying attention, is now sucking on my neck, again trying to distract me from my writing endeavors. It’s been difficult coming up with different words, such as endeavors, duties, and obligations, but I’ve persevered to bring up to the minute Julie sightings and doings.
Getting back to my discussions on sleep, since I’m sure you’re more interested in that than in Julie’s groping (and if you’re not, there are plenty of other sites on the internet that you should be visiting; please send e-mail to Julie for the exact URLs of those sites—she again slapped me after reading this comment, denying any knowledge of the aforementioned websites). Mom, if you read this, Julie thinks that you should disregard all of the above because these terrible, terrible truths embarrass her. Now she (that’s Julies again) is trying to poke me upside the chest and stomach areas and yelling, “Change that, change that,” in a most threatening and scary voice. For the enjoyment and education of my reading audience, I shall again persist in keeping these words as they were written in a moment by moment analysis of the events as they occurred.
Once again, returning to the topic of the day—sorry for the interruption, but Julie, complaining about the terrible heat that has met us in NYC, demanded that we close all the windows in the bedroom, where I am writing and Julie is poking most inconsiderately, and turn on the air conditioner. The weather today has been terribly hot. The outdoor barbeque that my mother planned became an indoor, air-conditioned barbeque because of the heat and its affects on the partygoers and my grandmother in particular, who is in her 80s (I would have put the exact number down, but I’m not a very good grandson). Any who, I was trying to talk about sleep and my self-diagnosed sleep apnea. As I write this and Julie reads in real time (which, by the way, is the most reading she’s done of my website since I started posting—she always claimed to read everything I wrote, but I watched her today read yesterday’s efforts, and after reading the first twenty or so words, she immediately began skimming my beautifully crafted words for the “Julie” part, and then partaking in the “Julie” part most excitedly), she groans at the continuous mentions of sleep apnea since she believes I have a tendency to dwell on certain aspects of my personality. Of course, this is ridiculous. I do not dwell on such parts of my personality, but instead use this time and these words to better myself and evaluate me and my life, trying to improve it so Julie can have a better David. (After writing that last sentence, I was rewarded with a sweet kiss, which only goes to show you that writing for your audience is important, and the truth is not so important.)
New paragraph. Getting back to the sleep apnea question, it has come to my attention that perhaps, in some way, I was mistaken in the sleep apnea self-diagnosis. After taking a not-so-needed nap in the middle of the barbeque this afternoon, I woke up with a mild headache and a case of PY (pathologic yawning) (don’t feel bad if you didn’t remember what PY stood for, since I didn’t either without Julie, who is now making nice to David in the hopes of getting more positive mentions in this musings, to which she is obviously succeeding, who, getting back to what Julie did, reminded me that the name of the excessive yawning was pathologic). The mild headache and PY after today’s nap (which brought my total sleep time to over 30 hours for the last day), convinced me that perhaps, in some way, I might have incorrectly diagnosed myself with sleep apnea or the African sleeping sickness, which is another favorite diagnoses of mine when it comes to my sleeping problems. My mother made this more than clear after laughing off any possibility that anyone in her family would have sleep apnea, believing that no Figatner has ever nor would ever snore, except—as Julie points out sitting next to me as the judges in the Muppet Show would do during particularly poignant (thanks to Julie for that spelling or that word would have never appeared) segments—when sick.
Another interruption as Julie comments after reading over my shoulder (something I usually don’t let her do, but since I had nothing to write today, I decided to incorporate Julie’s distractions to show you how I overcome her normal distractions), she said, “I can’t believe that Chuck wants to read this (she was going to say crap here, but she didn’t, but since I lie all the time anyway, I’ll include) crap?” To which I have no response, particularly since he claims to have read yesterday’s bowl of crap, which, I am very proud to say, was one of my most prolific and brilliant works to date, which, by and by, only goes to show that Chuck has impeccable taste when it comes to writing. It’s either that or he’s a terrible masochist, glutton for punishment (another favorite cliché).
I’m halfway through with lots of words and not much to write about today. Today, if you haven’t figured out yet, is a caffeine-free day. I’ll pretend that if had not been, I might have attempted a story, something I am irrationally avoiding. After writing the first half of today’s entry, my joy and excitement has waned. I’m now tired and trying to squeak out more words to meet the Goal. This would have been easier if I didn’t spend the last three hours watching the Tony awards show. I particularly liked how they cut off the thank-you speeches with the music. I wish I could do that in real life. I would be talking to someone who was boring me, and then I’d say, “Cue music,” and the music would come up, and the person would know that they’re talking was coming to a close. Then, and this is my favorite part, if they continued to speak, the music would swell until I could no longer hear them and all their talking was for naught. Oh, what a world, what a beautiful world that would be.
We woke from our nap with all of the guests having left the house. Seeing as we had breakfast at midday (thanks to our late rising), and my mother served the barbeque at around 3pm, I didn’t eat much at the barbeque thanks to my bagel, cream cheese, and lox at breakfast. When we woke up after the barbeque and nap, I was hungry, and Julie and I ventured through the streets of Brooklyn (or “the hood,” as Julie called it) to find sustenance. We walked down the Avenue, passing many yummy pizzerias, none of which Julie would eat at because she, being Asian, abhors cheese, a condition that I, being a Brooklyn Jew, cannot understand, especially when it comes to pizza. We eventually settled on a greasy roast beef joint—which, as it turns out, was David’s original plan before we walked thirty minutes down the Avenue only to return to two blocks from my mother’s house for the greasy roast beef. It was a bit hot in the roast beef joint, but we found a table near the air conditioner, and ordered the dripping roast beef sandwich that I described poorly in The Flying Toe Stomp (I think—not the poorly part, but the describing part). The food was delicious as always, except at the end, where Julie noticed a friendly cockroach wandering around the area near the napkin holder and sweet relish. That kind of killed any remaining appetite, and we called for the check and went home.
The best part of our Brennan and Carr adventure was a large man who was sitting at a round table, which the waiters use when not serving the customers to add up their checks and waste time. He was an older, muscular man, with a thick neck and large, tattooed arms. When we first walked in, he was sitting in the chair with his eyes closed, holding a plastic cup filled with Coke. After waking from his short nap—he waited a long time for the waiters to bring him his two cheeseburgers—he began chatting with a waiter. He said with a profound Brooklyn accent, “Don’t waste your life. I’m 50 years old, and when I look back at when I was your age, I can’t believe how much I wasted. When you get my age, you look back and see everything you should have done, all the gorgeous girls you should have done everything with, you look back and wonder what you didn’t and why you didn’t do things. Regrets. Think about regrets now when you have a chance to do something about them. When you get to be my age, you have nothing but regrets and no way of changing anything.”
The same guy, after one of the waiter’s girlfriends sat down at a nearby table, started a conversation with her. “You’re gorgeous, you know. If I was thirty years younger, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you. How old are you? Twenty-one, eh? You’re just a baby.” The boyfriend sat down. “You hitting on my woman? What, you go after the younger ones now? Thirty-years younger?” The waiter was about half the guy’s size, but the guy laughed him off.
Okay, the scene was much better in person than in description. I didn’t have my Moleskine, and I missed many of the more interesting turns of phrases in the conversation. It was good to eavesdrop again, even if I didn’t do as good a job this time. Camera and journal: I have to start carrying them both around more often. I didn’t take any pictures during the barbeque or our walk along Sheepshead Bay last night. If I don’t start snapping photographs, I’ll have nothing to revitalize my photos section, which I haven’t updated in a long time.
Julie’s birthday is on Wednesday of this week. She was disappointed that I hadn’t mentioned it here yet. I told her I was waiting for Wednesday, but seeing as I have nothing better to talk about (not that there could be anything better than talking about Julie’s birthday—how about that for brownie points), there’s the mention. With a bit of caffeine tomorrow, I might try my hand at starting my 10k story. I had some ideas, most of which passed from my brain before I thought to record them. Regrettably, many of my stories revolve around magical objects, which brings me too close to returning to the Pink Sweater, something I am trying desperately to avoid to save my and my three reader’s sanities.
I’m approaching the end of this crooked musing. It wasn’t as bad as yesterdays, but, again, it was forced, something I’m growing more comfortable with the more often I do it. I don’t know if it’s helping my writing, but I am enjoying writing more, even when it’s just this type of crap. I can’t understand why, but I guess it makes some semblance of sense for an egotist, and I’m nothing if not an egotist (or I am an egotist, for those who have trouble translating double negatives). That last parenthetical pushed me over my self-imposed Goal. Word count: 2,122; caffeine: none; distractions: many.
The black crow flew onto the roof, presented its tail feathers, crapped a long, white stream to the ground below, and flew away.
***
“He was here before,” the barista said to explain why she let the guy jump in front of me at the coffee line. It was as if had he not had an explanation, she wouldn’t have let him do it.
“I don’t mind. Even if he wasn’t, he can still go on ahead.”
“No rush?”
“Bingo.”
***
After I finished peeing, I went to the sink to wash my hands. A bug sat near the drain, and I wasn’t sure if it was alive. I turned on the faucet. The bug, rolled in a small ball, was all legs and body. The water flooded around it, but it did not plunge into the drain. When I turned off the water, the bug, actually a spider, I realized, unrolled itself and began crawling up the sink.
I repeated this process with greater amounts of water each time, but the spider managed to hold on. It wasn’t until I opened both faucets fully that the water overcame the spider and washed it down the sink. As I began singing, “down came the rain and washed the spider out,” I saw the spider’s thread on the side of the sink, which I hadn’t noticed before. It must have used the thread to stop itself from falling down the drain. I broke the thread with my finger and turned on the water to wash it down the drain.
***
I’m like my mother in always believing that people are innocent, even when they’re clearly guilty. I was happy when the jury acquitted OJ, and I’m happy that another jury acquitted Michael Jackson. I think this is the only positive aspect of my personality: I want to believe that everyone I meet is a good person. While I haven’t met celebrities in the physical sense, I have met them through their work and, like an acquaintance; I want to believe that they are incapable of inhumane acts. I guess we all have our fantasies.
While telling my co-workers about the ring I bought for Julie, and that I had to take it away from her to have it resized, one of them asked why I didn’t borrow one of her rings and use it to size her wedding finger. Before I had a chance to answer (the answer is two-fold: Julie doesn’t wear rings, and, even if she had, it will take four to six weeks for them to remake the ring, which would have ruined my NYC engagement plans), another co-worker stepped in with a good story.
He had a friend who was preparing to surprise his girlfriend with an engagement ring. To keep it a secret, he snuck into her room and stole one of her rings to have it sized. The jeweler thought the ring was small, but he explained that his girlfriend had very petite fingers, and the jeweler made the ring. When his friend presented the ring, she couldn’t get the ring past her first knuckle. It seems his friend had accidentally sized a toe ring. He ended up having to buy an entire new setting, as the jeweler couldn’t enlarge the toe-ring sized ring to ring-finger size. Julie, aren’t you glad I waited? (Not that Julie wears many toe rings, either.)
It’s almost dangerous for me to be drinking this coffee. I don’t know what happened today, but after finishing my first meeting this morning, I found myself in a wonderful mood, the type of mood where my motto, “super great and getting back,” actually rang true. Part of it is thanks to the beautiful spring weather we have today in Seattle (supposedly, this will be the only beautiful day this week—we’ll see, I don’t trust these weather people anymore). Another part must be the delayed onset of P.H.D. (post-headache day, of course). I woke this morning still feeling a bit headachy, but after foreswearing the internets (thanks to Chuck’s last post—not that I haven’t tried this before, but it’s always nice to be reminded now and again), to working rather hard, I now feel great. But I said that already, and I’m trying not to repeat myself too many times, too many times.
Outside the crime-ridden streets of Island City, the masked hero is planning a surprise for the caped woman.
Okay, that idea didn’t pan out. I originally thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have a superhero asking a woman to marry him (working off my engagement theme, which I will somehow turn into a story). Obviously, that was the wrong angle. What I came up with during my walk and dinner (see below) I think is much better. Now, if I can only take the vague notes and ideas and turn them into a story, something I have not done in a while (the turning into a story part, not the story part), life would be grand.
***
I sat on the rocks overlooking the lake. The rocks—really cemented stones—walled in the water from the grassy park and trees, which line this part of Lake Washington. Mount Rainer loomed majestically (as if mountains can loom any other way) in the break between the house-covered hills and the watery horizon. I studied the rocks and brown mud through the clear, shallow water, which gave the rocks a wavy appearance.
Two girls sat on the rocks to my right. One was tattooed with slicked-back short black hair and a white muscle t-shirt over a black sports bra. She held a blue ball catcher, which consisted of a long blue arm and a small catcher cup on the end, and a squeezable handle that opened and closed the cup to clutch a ball. She used the catcher to fish a tennis ball from the lake and throw it far into the lake for her white dog to fetch. She wore black cargo pants and a black bead necklace with a greenish stone hanging over her neck.
Her friend was a chubby girl with short-cut hair and a red, puffy vest made of the same material as ski jackets. From where I sat, I could see an oval expanse of skin between her black parachute pants and black undershirt.
A boat, anchored halfway across the lake, played classic rock while turning slowly in the gentle wind-powered waves. Schools of ducks floated near the rocks to my left. The lake smelled of the rotting water moss and the duck feathers, which both floated over the lapping water.
Another pair of woman walked by and tugged a miniature dog behind them.
The white dog enjoyed his game of watery fetch and snorted as he dog paddled to shore, chewing contently on the tennis ball.
***
I order a glass of Chianti in the neighborhood Italian restaurant. I take my first sip and find something stringy like a tiny twig, at my lips. Thinking it’s a piece of cork, I pull it out of my mouth to examine it. It looks familiar, like something I’ve seen recently. As I continue to examine it, I remember what it looks like: the rolled up spider struggling in my sink on Monday. I fling it on the floor before I have a chance to verify its identity, and order a replacement, Chianti, hold the spider.
This is clearly a great neighborhood restaurant. As I sit here, munching on my salad, freshly baked bread, and sipping my glasses of Chianti and water, Ed the waiter comes over and asks if he should put in my order. He sees me scribbling away in my Moleskine and tells me to take my time, there’s no rush, he’ll put my order in when I’m ready. I eat my salad slowly. While I’d like to spend more time here writing, my mother called, and the phone signal is weak in the restaurant. I want to return her call before it becomes too late in NY. I ask Ed to cook my dinner. I know I’m using my mother as an excuse, when, really, I fear that my inspiration will run out and I’ll have nothing to do while they cook my food. I guess with all things being equal, I might as well eat first and worry about the details and the walk home later.
I finished half my dinner and my entire glass of wine. They’re boxing up the rest of my spaghetti and Chicken Marsala, which was okay, if a bit bland—surprise—and too sweet. I will eat the leftovers tomorrow before video game night. For the record, last night was an impromptu video game night as well, which was another reason I didn’t get around to finishing writing the Goal last night. We played until midnight. I think I mentioned that in my posting this morning, which were the remnants of what I tried to write last night added to all the excuses I came up with this morning to explain my absence.
I’ll resist dessert tonight because I’m not sure how it’ll treat me, viz., will it bring me down emotionally or keep this great day going. Whatever was in the warm air or breakfast this morning, this has been a great day on all fronts. There was a bit of a down time this afternoon after I drank my coffee (see the first paragraph), but that worked out for the best. Had I written at the end of work instead of in the park and in the Italian restaurant, I’m not sure I would have come up with the good material. And, of course, there’s always the thinking and walking I did before the writing (which I’ve been yelling at myself to do for a long time). I planned much of the underlying story for the serial I plan to write during my walk. I asked myself: what is it I liked to imagine myself as, and why the hell hadn’t I written a story about that before? I disregarded that my idea was childish and I concentrated on what excited me about it, remembering that any genre can be used to tell a story that touches people. Look at Lord of the Rings. Look at Peter Pan. They both have important themes that the authors get across in exceptional (and arguably clichéd) genres. It’s not the genre that’s important but the characters, story, themes, and messages.
Switching to the Moleskine, and, of course, the walk to the lake on this perfect night, was one of my better ideas in a long time. When I drank my coffee at the end of work and stared at the blank computer screen, I didn’t want to write anything. Escaping to the comfort of the pen on Moleskine paper let me get back to a warm place. I should have applied some of these diary/voyeur words to the story planning, but you know how I am: digression is my middle name, and word count is my other middle name. Now that was clever.
Yeah, I know. I missed it again. I wrote a few words, but not enough yesterday before video game night, thinking, sure, once we finish at a reasonable hour, I’ll have plenty of time to pound out the last thousand words or so for the Goal. Obviously, that didn’t happen. While I wasn’t too tired when we finished around eleven, my fingers and wrists were killing me, and I decided it best to go to sleep. Having an eight o’clock meeting today didn’t help things (even though I went to the meeting and didn’t say a word—I hate meetings like that. I’m like, why am I even here?).
Our gaming session last night was rather fun. Julie even joined in on our voice chat, which we use to talk during the game. (Julie and I still had our private phone chat for our adoring whispers and baby talk we don’t want to share with the freaks from Syracuse.) I have only a little more work to finish on what is turning out to be a beautiful, if tired, Friday, and I hope to provide more thinking and writing on my story, especially since I’m wasting all my diary words for the morning excuse. I got halfway to the goal with the excuse, not too bad for a video gamed day.
I have to write quickly to prepare for video game night. I received a mail from Will earlier, and I was afraid to open it. I couldn’t bear to read it if it was a cancellation of our game tonight. It wasn’t. Will felt like torturing us by sending a message with hundreds of “WoW…WoW…” written on one line. Obviously, he has too much time on his hands. Unlike me, who, instead of writing teasing mails, daydreams about the game tonight while I sit in meetings.
The life of the intern isn’t always glorious. I’m waiting in line for coffee (as if I do anything else with my time), and the barista asks one of the cafeteria workers to bring her a stack of pastry holders (you know the type: waxy paper bags where pastries spend their last moments of life). An intern, identified by his bright red shirt with the little white “intern” lettering, waits at the wrong end of the coffee bar, holding his money and the stack of pastry holders. The barista takes the stack from him, tsking her coworker in Spanish. “She just gave them to you?” “Yeah, she said I should pay over here and bring these things while I was on my way.”
The internets distracted me as I prepared to dive into more useless notes about my story. I was threatened yesterday with violence if I don’t turn these notes into some sort of story. I will be the first to apply violence to myself if I don’t write this story. I’m excited about it and the world I plan on creating. It’s just a matter of lighting the fire and seeing what erupts, which is so much easier said than done. But you knew that already, didn’t you?
I found another neighborhood eatery, although I should consider this one in the next neighborhood because it’s twice as far away as the Italian place I spoke about this week. I didn’t finish writing yesterday. Today, after taking a long walk down to Columbia City, the hometown of my MC, I’m sitting in the bucks of stars thinking of how to get out of my rut. I’ll save those words for my next posting. Here was the only crap I was able to write yesterday, thanks to movies and too much video games (I’m an addict, what can I say?).
-So, how goes your battle with cigarettes?
-I’m working on it.
-Let’s go.
-Where?
-To have a smoke.
-I don’t have any cigarettes.
-That’s okay, I have some.
-Ow, ow, ow, ow. You know, this is the reason I don’t bring cigarettes to work, John. Do you have a lighter too?
I twisted my fingers in a jerky, stiff movement and waved my arms and wrists. I had long forgotten how spastic this action looked since the few people who saw it had their own spastic action, or, more usually, forgot my spastic action moments later. Or that was how it had always been until Julia. She was the exception. I met Julia three months before in Tenement Used Books where I worked stocking shelves. I enjoyed the smell and feel of old books, and since the stock changed infrequently, I spent most of my time reading the shelves, and providing unsolicited guidance to the customers on the quality of the books they planned on purchasing.
“How can you love a vacuum cleaner?”
“You don’t understand. This is not just any vacuum cleaner. This is the Roomba. Do you see how cute she is? How red and circular, how she sits in her little home waiting for me to press her power button.”
“Uh huh. And Roomba?”
“She’s a vacuum cleaning robot, the first of its kind. I bought her for the Castle yesterday. She’s already successfully cleaned the first and second floor. Tomorrow, after she finishes charging—look how cute she is! Her blinking red light, so eager to clean, so ready—she’ll clean the third floor. She leaves little Roomba marks on the floor—they look like tank-tread marks as she crisscrosses the rug—so you know she’s done her job.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Worried about what? About Roomba? No, no. She’s just a robot. I have within me the capacity to love both a vacuum cleaner and a Julies.”
“In what order?”
“I just bought the Roomba—it’s not fair for me to judge this early in the relationship.”
“It would be very sad if Roomba had a little accident. Perhaps an accidental fall from the second floor. That would be very sad, very sad indeed.”
“It’s okay, darling Roomba. She doesn’t know of what she speaks. She doesn’t mean it. She just doesn’t know you yet. Once you meet her, it’ll be different. She will accept you for the beautiful machine that you are. She’ll look past the red makeup and see your inner beauty, just like I do.”
“Are you still talking to the Roomba?”
“What? Oh. No, of course not. I’m listening to your story. Is that what the patient said. Unbelievable. I can’t believe it. Please, do go on.”
“I’m watching you and your little friend. I’m watching very closely.”
I walk home, daydreaming. In my mind, I see a mugger approach me. I walk along Wilson Avenue from the Castle to my neighborhood Italian Restaurant for an early Friday night dinner. I eat alone as I do often when the Julies lives thousands of miles away.
The mugger takes out a silver switchblade. “Give me your money,” he yells.
I take a step back, a bit disappointed in his clichéd demand. He repeats himself, probably taking my silence for shock. I pull the magazine I brought to read with dinner out of my back pocket. I roll it tightly.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks.
“Well,” I respond. “This magazine is to beat you like a dog.” I reach into my front pocket and pull out the phone that is smarter than I. “And this phone is to call the police and give them a blow-by-blow description of me beating you like a dog.”
He lunges for me with his knife. I calmly move to the side and smack his wrist with the magazine. His arm swings down and I take the opening to slap him across his left cheek. I dial the police on the phone. I look at the mugger after I press each button.
“What are you doing?” he asks again, rubbing his cheek.
I show him the phone and make the universal phone symbol with the hand holding the magazine—you know the type, pinky and thumb extended and placed near my ear and mouth. “Hello,” I say into the real phone when a woman picks up. “I’m being mugged at knife point.”
“Hang that fucking phone up,” the mugger says.
“I’m busy, just a second,” I say to the mugger. “Yes, I’m at Wilson and Upland.”
The mugger starts toward me and I raise the magazine. He stops.
“He’s still here. I’m holding him off with a rolled up magazine. He isn’t much of a mugger, if you ask me.”
The mugger feints and then lunges toward me. I slap his thumb hard enough to cause him to drop the knife. He scuttles back away from me. He leans over to pick up the knife. I swing the magazine and uppercut his chin with the tip of the magazine.
“He dropped the knife,” I say into the phone. “Yes, I would be happy to describe him.”
The mugger tries to reach for the knife again and I smack him on the back of his head. “He’s 5” and is wearing an orange hooded sweatshirt.”
The mugger turns as if to run and dives back toward the knife, like a baseball player sliding into second base. I step on his wrist as he grabs the knife.
“Orange, that’s right,” I say and step down hard on the mugger’s wrist until he let’s go of the knife and yells in pain. “And blue jeans worn around his knees, you know the style.”
A police cruiser pulls up, its lights flashing but its siren silent. “Thanks for your help,” I say into the phone, “but the police just pulled up.”
A Yucan Gold potato, the world’s greatest tuber, is on the table when Herbert enters the room.
***
An older couple sits in the outdoor area of Banana Bread, a bakery so named for serving baked sandwiches and banana-themed desserts. They hear an ambulance’s siren in the distance. “That sure is loud. Do you think there’s more than one siren?” the wife asks. “It sounds that way,” the husband says. The ambulance drives past the older couple. “I think it’s just one ambulance,” the husband says. “Why does it have to be so loud? Damn loud siren,” the wife says.
***
We’re buying another painting at a Laguna Beach art gallery. The owner of the gallery is helping us. He’s in his thirties and wears a flaring white shirt and shoes. I ask about shipping and he says, “well, my husband—I mean wife and I have not been charging tax for California residents, so since we’re shipping it, we can pass that tax discount to you in the form of shipping cost.” Afterwards, we wondered if he thought he’d lose the sale if he had stuck with his original description of his life partner.
What if? Start with a simple question and develop it to see where it takes you. Focus on the telling, and worry about the editing later, when you have less energy and the world is not as bright or meaningful. Even if your inner editor is crying to get out, don’t let him out until the world is dark; only then should see what he has to say about some of your earlier works. Until then, however, start saying something and worry about what you’ve said only later.
Random thoughts fling off my fingers as I look for something to say. It’ll come to me soon, the idea, the spark that will drive me through the day. I should get used to this, to opening my creative valve and catching something that looks writeable. It could be a name (Herbert), or an idea (not being able to share clever ideas w/the girlfriend or they’ll disappear). Whatever it is, I’ll catch it and try to turn it into something.
***
Drunken guy behind you on airplane, he’s trying to impress his coworker. His boss, the twenty-two year old in the front row of first class, he’s a good guy.
The drunk is bald with tightly cropped tufts of hair near his ears. It makes him look older than his thirty five years. His face and head glow a red sheen. He’s not overweight, but because of the size of his head, which looks bigger because of the loss of his hair, when I first saw him, I thought it was fat. I heard him long before I saw him, he had the voice of a skinny man, older, unrefined. I sat in front of him on the first class flight from Seattle to Dallas, visiting Julie’s family.
Possible story idea: Commotion on the plane. Befriends then scares the flight attendant (former teacher). Heart attack. He turns out to be much better than you thought, in his obituary. Most of what we share is animal sounds. Noises made to reassure or share some inconsequential information.
The airplane is overbooked on the day before Christmas and the ticket takers? are having difficulty selling people on the offer to take a flight the next day to allow everyone who wants to fly to fly. The offer is up to a five hundred dollar travel voucher, a first-class flight the next morning, and hotel and food accommodations for the night.
The passengers already seated in first class don’t know about this. They boarded before the ticket takers? began bidding up to find how much other passengers thought of the worth of being home for Christmas.
That’s me, sitting in seat 5B and visiting the in-laws during my few days off. My wife and children are already there, in Dallas, having left four days before.
He’s bald, sitting behind us in the airplane next to his colleague. Their boss, a twenty-something overachiever, sits in the front of the page. The baldman is drinking heavily, he is making friends with the flight attendant, and, he thinks, with the rest of the plane.
“I always try to be nice to those with the worst job because I used to have the worst job and I know what it’s all about.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Any job where you have to wait on people is the worst job.”
The flight attendant helps the people to their seats, talking into the microphone. Make her sound like a schoolteacher, because that’s what she was before she started flying. Everyone has their own story.
“Where are you from?”
“South Dakota.”
“What are the chances, I know someone from South Dakota.”
The baldman thinks he’s funny, and he thinks the rest of the plane shares in his humor.
“Our luggage gate will be 4C,” the former teacher turned flight attendant says into the microphone.
“Yes,” the baldman screams, as if his team had just scored a touchdown.
“Shut up,” someone in the back of the cabin answers, causing much hooting and agreement.
“What did he say,” the baldman asks his coworker.
“He said for you to shut up.”
“Did he now,” the baldman says, “did he really.” His coworker does not answer.
Two girls sit near me. They both wear purple plaid pants and gray sweatshirts. They must be related or playing a joke on the rest of us.
I judge throughout the flight. The baldman has a heart attack. A doctor sitting nearby performs CPR. The baldman dies, and I read about him in the obituaries the following day. He’s a good man. Lived a tough life, died an ignoble death. How do I feel about it?
“There’s nothing worse than service jobs,” says the FedEx pilot sitting next to me.
“My daughter—she’s 20 and finishing college—she got a part-time job at Victoria’s Secrets. After working there a day, she told me how terrible people are, how many people don’t have credit and can’t pay for what they want to buy. How rude those people and most of the other customers are. It’s dirty business, she told me.
“And you think I haven’t been telling her this all along? There’s nothing I like better than flying, and flying without passengers, without having to listen to their complaints and care about how they feel the cabin is too hot or too cold or too bumpy or too bright—I would never go back to commercial airliners. Not in a million years.”
So after I posted the last doodle, Julie reads it and says, “but I don’t always tell you what to do,” which is hilarious on so many levels. Firstly, that the Julies thinks everything is about her, her, her. Maybe sometimes. But this time it’s about a hand puppet. And secondly, because she like the rest of the world did not get the joke (admittedly because it was neither funny nor clear): it’s the puppet saying to the arm “I hate that you always tell me what to do.” Yeah. Funny. Very funny. Almost LOL funny.
Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled programming. And, yes, I am very easily amused by my own ten-minute doodles. Deal with it.
I was reading through the 2006 March 13 New Yorker, when I came across this hilarious description of the artist Barnaby Furnas. The article describes how Barnaby developed his style. I've done some searching on his paintings, and they're actually quite good (also see).
It doesn't take anything away from this description of an "artist" discovering his true calling from the New Yorker article:
Furnas surveyed the canvas and tried to explain how blood had become his motif. "Basically, I wanted to do history paintings, and battle paintings," he said. "But I was having trouble painting figures. I was particularly frustrated with the faces and the hands, and as a way of getting around that I'd paint someone being shot, and then I didn't have to worry. Like I'm having trouble with the hands--splat!"
When I first read this (before I looked up his paintings), I figured, sure, here's proof that abstract painting is just a way for middling talented "artists" to sell their works.
Here's the search for Barnaby Furnas to find more of his works.
She said: “Sorry we’re late. We got lost on our way over here.”
He said: “Yeah, we got lost leaving from our driveway.”