postaday2011

Paige [Flash Fiction]

Paige Crandall was frequently to be found standing on the docks, her short hair ruffling up a little in the breeze, a cigarette grasped loosely between the finger and thumb of her right hand. Her hair had gone grey early in life; she couldn’t be much older than forty, but with a head of steely bristles. Her clothing was an almost daily uniform of overalls over a white men’s t-shirt. In the winter, she’d wear a thick black coat over that, but it was usually unbuttoned, and the overalls and t-shirt could be seen underneath.

Nobody knew what to make of her. The residents of the dockside neighborhood knew her both by sight and by name, but none could quite recall how or when they’d ever met her, even though she knew all of them perfectly, and on her way home from the docks would often call out to them, asking this one how his wife fared and that one whether her son was coming home from boarding-school soon. She was friendly, you see. Positively charming, in her own way, although her smile was always tired and her eyes were careworn.

She lived in a small apartment above what used to be stables, but, of course, there were no horses there anymore. The stables were converted into a garage, and that was where Paige worked, mending old engines and changing tires. Everyone said she was the best mechanic in town. Some wondered why, in a dockside city like theirs, she mended cars and not boats. She liked the docks so much, they said, so why didn’t she want to work there?

There used to be rumors about her. People said that she took lovers often. They said she was a feminist. Some said she’d had a family once but that they’d been in an accident – whether they drowned or were killed in a car crash was greatly disputed. Someone said that she’d never had a family of her own but had been single for a long time. Nobody knew the truth, and eventually, they grew tired of talking about it. She was so nice, never hurt a fly, that there didn’t seem to be much point in speculating anymore. It would only lead to circular, pointless arguments, and besides, there were more interesting people moving in all the time for the neighborhood bar-frequenters to talk about.

Paige knew that it wouldn’t last, though. Her past was coming, she knew, and it would come from the ocean. When it did, when it caught up with her, the rumors would start flying around again. She only hoped that people would remember her kindness and interest in them when that happened.

Cultivate

Conserve your energy.
You never know when you may need it.
Keep the waters above the red line.
You don’t want to dry yourself out.
Remember to switch the lights off.
You shouldn’t be wasteful.
Your resources are limited, you know.
Do you feel trapped?
Do you feel strained?
That’s okay. Life feels like that,
Sometimes.
Remember, even that which you hate
Must be cultivated and taken care of.
You never know when you’ll need it.

Memory+

My grandparents’ house has always been, and still is, my greatest place of comfort. Now it is a mere memory, one that I will never get to experience in reality again, and there are days when I feel crippled with grief because of that fact. Today was one of those days. I was standing in the shower, letting the hot water stream over my limbs – I had just gotten back from the gym and was feeling my muscles loosen up pleasantly – when I felt, for a moment, as if I were standing in the shower-stall at my grandparents’ place. They had two bathrooms, but the showers in each were identical. The water stream wasn’t very hard, but there was always hot water, no matter what. Incredibly, the same is true of my dorm.

As I stood there, I let my mind flow back through time and imagined what it would be like if I were transported back into one of my memories. I saw myself, younger, stepping out of the shower and wrapping myself up in one of the fluffy towels that had monograms stitched into them. I would then get dressed while the heater blasted loudly onto me and helped me dry quickly. I’d get a shiver when I came out of the bathroom, because the house was always air-conditioned. I would still have a hair towel resting over my shoulders so that my long hair wouldn’t get my shirt wet. I’d walk through the rooms (in this fantasy, everyone was out doing something) and find wherever I’d left my book. I’d make myself two slices of toast and spread peanut-butter thickly on them, and eat them fast while the peanut-butter was still melting into the bread. I’d then maybe take a piece of Entenmann’s chocolate fudge cake and eat it slowly. All this, you understand, while reading one of the books I’d recently purchased at Barnes & Noble.

I’d take the book into my bedroom and read, with the birds making noise outside. I might let myself fall asleep, wake up and read, fall asleep again. I would wake up to find my mother and my aunt sitting outside, by the pool, smoking and watching the sunset as they talked of everything. I’d settle next to them, maybe with a cup of hot-chocolate in the old sippy-cup that I always drank out of there, and let their words wash over me. Once in a while, I might say something clever and make them laugh.

We might take a walk down the street to see the twinkling lights of the city. Or we might be going out to dinner with my great-uncle and his family. Or perhaps we would simply stay in, play word-games or watch a film. Maybe they would do something else while I would go watch episodes of Roseanne on Nick@Nite.

I opened my eyes. I was at college, in the shower, with a limp yellow curtain instead of a glass-door beside me. I am twenty-one and have gone through five cycles of mourning – perhaps six, since I considered the sale of the house that my imagination took me to as a death in its own right. I am confused, obsessive, anxious and often depressed. These are facts that I cannot alter.

But – and this is an important “but” – I have the comfort of knowing that I will always hold memories sacredly, and will never wish to ignore the past. After all, the past can help the present feel a little bit better. As I smoothed my wet hair back and shut the water off in the shower, I felt a longing open up a hole within me, but it also exuded warmth that has kept my heart thumping all day long.

Some Stories Are Different

Five titles:

1. Befriending Giants

2. Things to Say When You Don’t Know What to Say But Don’t Want to Stay Silent

3. The Summer of Finches

4. The Madcap Man on Wimpole Street

5. Building a Chair

Five first sentences:

1. Catherine didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she’d made up her mind and there was no turning back now.

2. In a small chest, half-buried in sand, deep down in the darkest corner of the ocean, lies a piece of my heart with a gold thread wrapped around it.

3. Sometimes you don’t feel like going to work; it’s a thing.

4. She looked at me and laughed the sweetest laugh I’d ever heard, and I realized finally that she reminded me of my mother.

5. The highway patrolman spat on the ground and looked at his watch; his shift was far from over.

Five fictional quotes:

1. “I wouldn’t touch the balloon if I were you. It’s unsafe, you know.”

2. “Me? Freak out? I so did not freak out. I may have gotten giddy. Just a little bit. But I seriously did not freak out, okay?”

3. “Dickens didn’t write an autobiography. He wrote David Copperfield instead. What does that tell us about the book? Should we treat it as an autobiography? As a novel? As a mix of the two? Come on, people, you’d think I was the only one in this room. Talk to me!”

4. “There are some things you just don’t say. If I ever had any respect for you, it would have dissipated right around now.”

5. “Ready… Set… FLY!”

Five emotions:

1. Anger

2. Confusion

3. Anguish

4. Elation

5. Tenderness

Five last sentences:

1. She died that day, and though I knew that it was a sticky, humid morning, I couldn’t help picturing it as a perfect autumn afternoon.

2. He freed his hair from its restraining cap and shook out his long curls for all the world to see them one last time.

3. An eagle let out a cry and the party below all looked up and shaded their eyes to watch the majestic creature swoop.

4. The coffee cup stayed in the sink for months before anyone dared wash it out again.

5. No one picked up the phone, so I left a message, but the machine cut me off before I finished speaking.

Fountain [Flash Fiction]

The fountain had been dry and empty for years, just like the house that closed in on it on all four sides. The courtyard was entirely isolated; there was no way to reach it, unless maybe you helicoptered in.

“How do you get in there?” Amy asked the real-estate agent who was showing the place. The man looked like a wax figurine, smile hitched almost permanently in place and his hair combed and parted perfectly, looking as if it was simply sculpted that way.

“We-ell. You don’t. Actually.”

Amy waited to see if this ‘actually’ meant that there actually was a way in, but finally understood that there was no further explanation coming. “They built the house around the fountain?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I could climb out the window and into the courtyard, couldn’t I?” she mused aloud. “I guess that’s what the pool guy will have to do, huh? Don’t pool guys take care of fountains and stuff, too?”

“We-ell. Well well. See, actually. Actually if you look you’ll see that there aren’t first floor windows leading into the courtyard. As such. And the drop from here is very very high. You see?” The waxen smile was becoming strained, as if a candle flame was being held under it and it was going to melt grotesquely at any moment. Amy drew away from it, and from the man, in slight disgust.

“But then what’s the point of having a fountain? And what if I want to get it running again? I love the watery sounds that fountains make.”

“We-ell, the previous tenants just ignored it, you see. That’s really the best option. Now, if you’ll come through here I think you’ll appreciate the east-facing balcony which is lovely and warm during the afternoons but comfortably cool in the evenings…” he rattled on, and Amy took one last regretful glance out the window at the fountain before following him.

A bird that had only recently settled in the neighborhood chirped merrily from the eaves of the house and then, thinking it saw something, dove down into the courtyard. The fountain twinkled as the clouds parted and a ray of sunlight hit its marble surface. The bird’s mate waited anxiously for it to return, but nightfall came and she waited in her nest in vain.

The Process

One strand after another, something is woven. Slowly, painfully, maddeningly slowly, a pattern begins to emerge. Sometimes there are stray hairs that creep into the fabric and need to be picked out. Sometimes a mistake is made and you need to go back, to destroy some of the careful work already finished, in order to fix it. There might be a change of heart – you might decide that the blue corner should actually be red because it looks nicer with the brown beside it.

I learned how to knit many times in my life, but am finally trying to take it seriously now. And one thing that I’ve learned from it is that mistakes are not irreversible, that you can always take out a few rows, that people will always be there to help you correct something you’ve done, and that there’s a joy in the process.

I’m in a corny mood tonight, I guess, which is odd because I feel far from being comfortably settled. My mood is flip-flopping irritably. But knowing that the process is important helps, and knowing that there are few things that can’t be fixed in some way or another is also an important fact to remember.

I’m all over the place today – forgive me.

How do you deal with weird moods? Do you remind yourself of the good things? Do you try to be intrigued instead of uncomfortable and investigate what it is that feels not quite right? 

Self Censorship

On October 1, I changed the theme of my blog for the first time in three years, and asked you guys if there was anything you wanted to see me write about. ShoutAbyss  posed this question to me:

 How did you decide you are an atheist? Do you out your atheist beliefs or keep them in the closet?

I realized, as I read the comment, that when it comes to my blog, I really do keep a lot of things in the closet. I censor myself. I rarely, if ever, use the swear-words that I use both in everyday life and in much of my fiction. I try not to touch tricky subjects like politics or religion. I don’t share my deepest darkest secrets – or, if I do, I try to mask them in story form or in poetic prose, and I attempt to shield my exact meaning. This last makes sense – there are people who read this blog who actually know me, and sometimes I want to discuss things that they might not know about me and that I’d rather not share with them. This is natural. Anyway, writing about my personal life through other kinds of media is an interesting challenge and I enjoy it.

But why do I censor my politics, my religious opinions, my coarse and often vulgar language?

I think I’m scared. Scared to alienate readers. Scared to have people challenge me on my ideas. To be fair, when it comes to politics, while I have solid ideas and opinions of my own, I don’t feel comfortable expressing them when I’m ignorant of many of the facts. The title of this blog has always, whether you knew it or not, alluded to my weird reluctance to read the news and educate myself properly on what’s going on in the world. I’m less ignorant now, and I listen to NPR and read the New Yorker, and I feel more informed, but I still feel the childish ignorance rise up in me when I’m called to defend my opinions.

When it comes to religion… well, that’s a very sensitive subject to a lot of people, and it’s one that I feel extremely strongly about. I also know that I have various readers who have their own strong opinions, and yes, I don’t wish to alienate them or push them away from me. I’m probably not giving them enough credit – they’re all open, intelligent people, and I’m fairly certain that they wouldn’t forsake me because my opinion differs than there own. And yet – and yet I still haven’t written about how I feel on this subject (unless, of course, I have and I’m not remembering it. Which, in three years of blogging, is entirely possible.)

Finally, when it comes to the profanities, I think that I don’t use them because a) yes, they make many people uncomfortable, but also because b) there are stronger, more interesting words for me to use, and it’s a fun challenge to write differently than I speak.

So am I censoring myself? No doubt. Despite all my lovely rationalizations above, I’m still aware that it probably all stems out of fear of being rejected. Approval matters to me a lot more than I feel comfortable admitting. But maybe, in censoring myself, I’m managing to explore some other sides of me, my mind, and my writing.

How about you? Do you feel like you censor yourself on your blogs?

Everything Unlike

Rhonda appeared unconcerned. Her hair looked particularly well that day, and she knew that everybody in the restaurant must be looking at her, arching their eyebrows in jealousy or appreciation. The person across from her was arching his eyebrows to, but with anger.

“So you’re lying to me,” he stated.

“No, William. I’m not.”

“Then you’re lying to yourself.”

“That might be a possibility,” Rhonda admitted. She didn’t think it was so, but if she were lying to herself she probably wouldn’t know it. She was an excellent liar.

“What on earth can you want with me? Why do you keep toying with me?” William’s voice was still barely above a whisper. He had an impeccable sense of propriety, and he disliked having this conversation in the crowded eating-house, but she had brought it up.

Rhonda knew, of course, that both the subject matter and the setting would pain him, but for some reason she didn’t mind. It was odd, especially since she was so incredibly convinced that she loved him again. She had changed her mind various times, but she’d never seen herself as cruel for doing so. Even William didn’t see her as cruel. He saw her as Rhonda – nothing more, nothing less, and he didn’t really understand what he meant by that, only that it made sense to him.

“I’m not toying with you, dear, I really mean it this time,” she said.

“You’ve meant it before.”

“True.”

Rhonda patted her hair delicately, making sure that the tumble of curls at the back was still only half-collapsed, looking as if it had fallen out of an arrangement and just happened to rest so beautifully on the nape of her neck as it did. She adored this sort of pretended natural style. Her clothing was similarly on the verge of looking windswept and rumpled, and her face was made-up very lightly, as if she hadn’t finished applying the proper cosmetics before she’d had to rush up and go somewhere.

William loved all this about her, no matter how fake it was. He often convinced himself that there was no artifice involved at all. He thought that she was so consistent in her inconsistencies that they must be genuine.

She read him like a book. Though not exactly cruel, she had a streak of playfulness that made her fickle, and there was no one who could stand it in her the way William did. So Rhonda used him. She knew she used him, but she also knew that he enjoyed it on some perverse level.

It never even occurred to her to feel guilty.

New Challenge, New Look

I haven’t changed the theme on my blog for the more than three years I’ve been posting on it. It’s time for a change. I like the warm colors and larger fonts of this theme; it seems homier, less cold than my previous one.

In addition to changing the looks, I’m trying out the WordPress Post-A-Day Challenge for the month of October – I’ll see if I keep it up afterwards. Mostly, I want to use it to get warmed up for NaNoWriMo, which, despite my being at school, I still want to try to complete.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? Anything particular you’d like to see me post?