Eighth Day: Appendix

Dreams

2011-09-12T21:50:00.001-07:00

The Lady swept across the floor with the grace and purpose afforded only those benefiting from lavish description of literary prose or dream time disregard for human failings. Languid and sublime her eyes followed her companion as he paced the room agitated and vexed as he sought to know the mind of his god.

The room was dark and vast with shadows hiding secrets of deeds and ages best hidden from the eyes and minds of men. His steps echoed down marble corridors and back through time while her step left no sign of her passing as she was of course neither here, neither now nor even a true to her form and function. Her companion knew her as a lady, as The Lady in fact and nothing else and yet this form was but an apparition; a physical presence to which they could assign a name, an identity, a person where truly none existed. She was after all not a physical thing but rather a concept; a conduit; an artifact.

"There's a war coming, I can feel the distant rumble of the enemy lock step and heretical", his baritone voice echoed through the catacombs. He lowered his helmet into place a thing of dark metal with rigid horns thrust out from the face as if fashioned after something ancient and aquatic. Something one would do well not to stare into or question its origins.

"7", The Lady said turning to the dreamer. "You'll forgive my friend I hope. He has been a devout man for several lifetimes long and bears the scars of his faith. One cannot stare into the furnace of one's god without consequence nor converse with the black and not have one's tongue twisted as a result", the Lady was tall and pale, lovely and distant and spoke with a far away lilt.

"But this time it's different. This time they come with steam, "reason" and logic. They dissect His world and leech from it the wonder and glory. And, and something...else." The man was wearing the trappings of death, of bone mantle and robes of human skin, twisted flesh and pale skin looked off into the dark lost in thought.

"14", the Lady brushed her hair back and moved in a fluid drift. She looked saddened by the plight of her companion. "He seeks to know the mind of his god and in so doing fights darkness with darkness seeing justification and reason, such as it is, where he sees fit. As is the nature of your kind I suppose".

The unholy holy man continued to rave, "This time, this time there's something else. Something just beyond the veil not of their making but an artifact. Something calling to them and whispering corruption into their eager ears. Blasphemy. An arrogance of technology".

"28 and back again," the Lady said turning back to her invisible dreamer. "The worlds want unification and peace."

"And that heathen thinks he can control me and employ my influence to his own ends. He'll face the flames of judgment soon enough. A fitting reward to one who claims to have given fire to man. Heretic!"

DREAM 2

"Hardly the blood of innocents" , The Lady's gaze drifted languidly about the room, a candle lit horror of carnage and blood. Cloaked figures lay sprawled amid the trappings of necromantic ritual.

"Well, innocence is a subjective thing isn't it my dear?", offered The Demon at her side. Looking to the knife held absently in her elegant and blood soaked hand he raised an eyebrow and smiled wistfully, "Really, a bloody knife? Something of a cliché as metaphors go wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, well, some things are classics for a reason." Examining the blade with a critical eye The Lady smiled approvingly, "Although sometimes a knife is just a knife and a key nonetheless to deeds that lay hidden 'neath layers of self-deception."

DREAM 3

The Lady with timeless grace and silence of ages reached down a pale hand and lifted Clarisse from the floor. The two stood in the shadows above the ritual as it unfolded, Clarisse's nude form lay on the cold stone her eyes heavy with drug or religious stupor. Cloaked figures moved about the room, their steps mimicking a rune carved into the floor as they murmured a long forgotten tongue.

Detached and distant Clarisse watched as the ritual unfolded. As if in a dream, for in fact it was, the events played out with the surreal and removed nature of dream. The binding. The perfect assassin. The blending of worlds. In the shadows a lone figure watched as if conducting through force of will alone. A tall man wearing a dark cowl and darker demeanor he turns towards the dreamer and in a familiar baritone , "They were but a means to an end and mean indeed; base of nature. And yet in the end I too was a dupe of the villain that would bring fire to man and in turn their destruction."

In chorus the others turned to the dreamer, " We never sought the merging of worlds; the destroyer, we were but pawns in a greater game begun long before the memory of man".

Again the scene changes as dreams are wont to do. "Theirs' were but simple ambitions to summon a demon do their will never realizing they were being manipulated by a greater and far darker ambition." The Lady drifted through the scene of the devout and misguided man from the earlier dream as he vilified those that assail his god with technology, reason and science while leeching wonder and glory. His cold stone floor bears the same inscription as did the earlier scene, as does Clarisse's pendant, as is mimicked in the room beneath the Temple of The Veil. "No dear, not his ambition. He is but a misguided soul whose religious fervor distorted his calling over more lifetimes than a man is meant to live. No, he too is but a pawn in the grand scheme of things."

Again the scene changes and now Polidori stands in a placeless place and directs the dreamers view out over a map of the world. "We truly did have the best interest of man at heart. We took upon ourselves to protect man from the fire of his own imaginings, his superstitions and fears. Man is indeed his own worst enemy and we the shield against his own imaginings."

Clarisse wakes. She stands in the dark, in the library of Diadotti holding the map recovered from the sub-basement of the Temple of the Veil. "Some maps are meant to hide not find" echoes in her ears.

Aztec legend: THE END OF DAYS – “ When the great seals align the gods shall return to the world of man with beauty and wonder, and man shall tremble in their passing. Their very whim shall set the lands afire with chaos and fear; their passions shall lay waste the promise of man.”

This is a time of secret and not so secret societies, séances supposedly reach out to the spirit realm treading a fine line between spiritualism and necromancy. The former being all the rage in polite society and the latter strictly forbidden. While the likes of Helena Blavatsky may publically tout the virtues of Theosophy, astral dimensions and Atlantis those that cross line into the practice of compelling spirits and demons do so in darkened halls with hushed voices whispering through the veil. Even so, most are of course led by charismatic charlatans whose focus is less on breaching the veil of the nether realm and more on the far less ethereal goals of founding cults for wealth and power - financial and charnel - in this physical realm. The Hall of the Nameless was not such as this. The Nameless were rumored to have halls in various major cities and their ranks reached the lowest of society and highest levels of nobility and influence. While other so called secret societies enjoyed a thinly veiled intentional celebrity couched in terms of secrecy with secret handshakes, lapel pins and smoking lounges the Nameless rewarded loose tongues and bravado with quick and brutal death.

Clarisse found herself within these halls and learned of things dark and lost to the minds of man. Whispers of the Antediluvians that walked the Earth even today; of demons and devils whose form and nature are dictated by the fears and superstitions of man; of places here and not here just beyond the reach of man and just beyond his knowing. And of something waiting just beyond the veil. A secret only hinted at in ancient texts. This was a black time and demons roamed the halls held in checked by pacts best left unknown and things dark and unspoken lurked behind the oily eyes of those self-appointed priests of the Hall of the Nameless. In 1817 it ended.

Clarisse awoke from a ritual to find herself naked and while all of her fellow members of the hall lay dead she was far from alone. She would never again be alone as she had been inexorably bound to Hercule, a demon infinitely and but a whisper far away. But the others. The member of the Hall lay dead or missing, not simply in this one chamber but everywhere within their sanctum. And not only this sanctum. Her search for answers took Clarisse throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas as well and in each city, in each sanctum she found the same; dead or vacant halls. None of the Hall of the Nameless seemed to have survived the night of the ritual.

While she has no memories of what happened that night one image lingers: a woman. A woman beautiful and timeless looming over her with a gentle smile and comforting words of an unknown language. A dream, a demon or a fevered memory of a fellow member of the Hall she doesn’t know. But the image persists.

Topic: Chapter 1

2011-07-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

For this assignment (should you choose to accept it!) you are to write the beginning of your new novel. Imagine the book, and then write the opening of the story - the first chapter (of course, you don't have to write the whole chapter, just the beginning of it - unless you WANT to, in which case, go nuts!). Your goal here is to establish the setting, the characters, anything that's going to be important to the overall story - this is the reader's first impression. They just picked up a 500-page novel; here's your chance to hook them.

Went through the desert

2011-07-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

Yeah, the lyrics say it all - "I went through the desert on a Horse with no name.." lah la la la la lah. See? Roadies never get any credit. A Horse With No Name. That's me. No recognition, no attribution, nothing.

BUT, I hear you say - that's just a metaphor! It's Symbolism.

Symbolism my shaggy... tail. That damn desert sun was HOT. And that river that flow'd made me more than sad it was dead, it damn near killed me. Then, then, after I'd hauled his sorry unprepared ass across the desert AS requested, he just turns me loose as soon as he gets where he wanted to go. No pay, just "run free!". That's a life of service for ya.

Working for musicians is a hard gig, excuse the pun. They don't think ahead and you kinda get pulled into their personal unreality. Then, suddenly you're out and looking for new ride. On the other hand, they ride you hard but they ride you light. Too skinny, most of 'em to weigh much and too spacey to pack even the basics so as long as you're good at scrounging you can have a good time. Saved a few lives in my time too - leading the lost out of the wilderness as it were.

Not bad people really.... I was actually glad to get out of the rain. It had been a long cold lonely winter and you know how that makes a hard days' night out of the whole damn year.

You gonna eat that apple?

Son of the desert

2011-07-27T01:33:00.000-07:00

Yeshua squinted into the unforgiving sun overhead. His feet ached and his head pounded; his mouth felt dry and his hands seem to open and close of their own volition. He could feel his heart pound, a shiver of sweat running down his back and the desert wind was anything but refreshing. Through the haze of the desert heat he could make out the crowds below and immediately dropped his gaze as if to avoid eye contact even knowing there was no danger of that at this distance.

"You're stalling" came a voice from behind him.

Yeshua sighed and rolled his eyes skyward. "And you are helping not at all". He flexed his hands and ran his fingers through his beard absently pulling out a tangle. "What if I'm wrong?"

His friend stood behind him and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, "It really doesn't matter at this point does it?"

"How can you say it doesn't matter? How could anything possibly matter more?! They're here because of me. They're here because...because..."

"I know," said the other man as he looked down the hillside as the crowd below. "Yeshua...I know. I know you're scared. I know you doubt. But at this point it doesn't matter. They need a messiah. And they need YOU to be that messiah."

The murmur of the crowd in the distance and the howl of the desert wind punctuated the silence of the moment. "But...but what if I'm not? Judas, what if I'm not? What if I've imagined it all? What if I've fabricated it all in a vain attempt at fulfilling the prophesies? What if I'm simply crazy?"

Judas breathed deeply and surveyed the crowds gathered below. He thought back to the man named John whom they all knew to be insane. He thought back to the hope he had seen in the eyes of the enslaved and hopeless. The spark of glory and enlightenment he had seen in the eyes of those that followed his friend and were inspired to greater things by his teachings. He cast his mind's eye back to the temples, the market place and the expulsion of the money lenders and heathens and the healing of those inflicted and without hope. And he wished desperately for his friend to be the savior of man, the lamb and the son of Yahweh. And he knew without doubt he was sending the lamb of god off to be a lamb to slaughter. "My dear friend, you're not crazy. At least not in deed and spirit. The people need a lamb of god and they need you to be that lamb. They need hope and they need a future." And the future needs a lamb to slaughter.

Yeshua stood and his body ached. His head pounded and mouth was dry. He walked to the overlook and cleared his throat. He felt dizzy as he looked down at the expectant faces as the murmur died to an overwhelming silence. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"

Son of the Desert Sun

2011-07-23T16:42:00.001-07:00

Jacob cleaned his father's guns - among his many responsibilities at the homestead, that was the most important. As the eldest he had been the one who learned how to clean the rig - Ezekial tended father's stallion, Michael kept his bedroll and camp gear clean and in order, but Jacob cleaned the guns and the belt and holster they rode in.

He remembered how his father had called him over to the fire one night when Jacob was eight - seven years ago now. His father had just returned from the desert and still wore the sour smell of weeks spent under the pitiless hammering sun tracking his prey; always, before even washing himself he would tend to his guns. He had called Jacob over and Jacob had approached apprehensively - if he had come near on his own his father would have driven him off with scarce more than a baleful glare, but now his father beckoned him close with a gesture. He remembered how his father had wordlessly shown him how to clean the guns - removing the cartridges from the cylinders, breaking down the pistols, lathering and cleaning and polishing the leather holsters. When he had finished, his father had handed them to Jacob and said, "Now you." Jacob remembered the quailing nervousness in his heart as he took the guns in his hands, but he knew Father would be more angered by trepidation than mistakes, so he did his best to repeat the steps Father had taken. Father had watched him wordlessly, correcting with a grunt and a pointed direction when Jacob erred. When he finished, Father said to him, "Next time I return, you will do this," and Jacob had done it since. How many times had that been? Easily ten, twelve times a year...nearing a hundred by his estimation.

He had come to know those guns and the leather of the rig intimately by that point. When he was done the ancient scrollwork on the barrels would gleam and catch the light; the countless layers of salt and grime that had seeped into the leather of the belt had been washed clean and the carved leather shone with a deep glow.

The gun-belt had been intricately worked and carried symbols and runes that ran around the entire edge of the leather, top and bottom. On the back the belt-maker had carved a tableau; Jacob speculated that it depicted a scene from some lost tale. It showed a barn surrounded by spreading trees and standing hard by a vast pond; at least Jacob reckoned it to be vast - he had never seen a pond, so anything larger than the watering trough the horses drank from was vast to him.

Father had returned today after ten days' absence. He arrived just after sunrise; Zeke had slammed the door open and yelled that Father was back. Michael and Jacob had immediately dropped the chores they'd been attending to and readied for Father's arrival. Jacob pulled the lacquered box that held the soaps and brushes from the red cabinet in the entryway and Michael cleared a space among the breakfast dishes, preparing to clean father's camp plates and cups and the coffee pot he always carried.

Father had come through the door limping. Jacob and Michael bowed formally but instead of stopping and studying them a moment before returning the bow as he usually did, Father made a noise, a sound halfway between a gruff dismissal and a grunt of pain, and brushed past them into the bedroom and closed the door. Jacob observed that he was holding his left arm stiffly by his side. Jacob turned to see Michael and Zeke, who was standing in the doorway, both staring wide-eyed at the door Father had just shut. None spoke for a moment, then Zeke whispered,

"Come, see! There's a man on Father's horse!" He swallowed nervously, then continued, "I think he's dead!"

Desert Sun or Son (suggested by Margaret)

2011-07-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

An Object in a Dinner Scene - 7/23/11

2011-07-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

Sherri looked magnificent. The flimsy red dress with the deep decolletage showed off her brand-new boobs, and Max's thick gold and diamond tennis bracelet made the perfect complement to the outfit - a necklace would've just cluttered the lines of the dress and distracted from the view.

It was the best table in the restaurant, and as she sat there alone, she was aware of the glances in her direction. More men than women would stare, of course, but the women always looked longer. They wanted to see something besides a bland smile on her face. The men, though - they only took in the superficial details. Aware of the audience, Sherri refrained from checking her lipstick, smiled just enough at the waiter who had silently appeared at her elbow, and ordered an expensive Scotch whiskey, neat. It would irritate the women and the intrigue the men.

Thanking god for booze, Sherri wondered what else she could do to pass the time. The appetizer menu arrived with no prices - of course. Four perfect little choices, all beyond hip and more taste than substance. "Lemon-grass foam with oyster reduction and bacon pearls" - what the hell? At least it was amusing reading. She toyed with her left earring, making sure that the expensive little bauble was still firmly attached to her ear, before giving in to temptation.

The bracelet glinted alluringly in the discreet candlelight of the restaturant as she checked her smartphone again. Max was never on time, but always insisted that she be there waiting for him when he swept in with his financial entourage, his reporters, and that person that she always privately thought of as his Famous Groupie of the Week. She didn't care who it was anymore. Waiting for Max, looking perfect - all part of the deal.

A dinner scene

2011-07-22T01:20:00.000-07:00

Angie loved her tea parties, especially when mommy and daddy joined her. It was a lovely spring day with a gentle breeze wafting through the canopy of the old shag bark hickory tree in the Matherson's front yard. Angie had arranged Mr. Zeek, Mrs. Fluffy and the Hoppy Twins in their favorite spots around the table. The table was set with her finest tea set and cups filled and biscuits had been served. Mommy sat to Angie's left and daddy to her right. They were being very quiet today but that kind of made sense. They had been very worried about some very bad things that had been happening lately.

They wouldn't tell her just what was going on but Angie knew something was going on. Bad people were up to something but mommy and daddy only talked about it in whispers when they thought Angie couldn't hear them. But she heard some stuff. Sometimes she overhead bits and pieces of what mommy and daddy would say and sometimes what the news man was saying on TV. There was a sickness going around and it made people do bad and crazy things!

There was some old man from the "Center for the fleas control" on TV that talked about some super bad sickness that was spreading around and the army was rounding people up who were sick. Angie saw pictures of funny looking people that looked sick and cars and buildings on fire. She saw people screaming and running and people dressed for Halloween. Then mommy turned the TV off and told her to go play in her room. But later when mommy and daddy were watching TV with the sound turned way down Angie snuck outside to go meet her friend Nancy in their super secret hideout. Nancy said she heard something about people turning into camel bulls and that the army had told everyone they had to stay home and couldn't leave. Nancy was very mad about this because they were planning on going to Six Flags that weekend and now they couldn't. Not only that but her parents had told her she wasn't allowed to leave the house cause they were afraid she would get the really bad flu that was going around. That's when Kenny showed up at their super secret hideout and he looked really sick.

Angie poured mommy more tea and brushed the fly off of mommy's forehead. Daddy's cup fell to the ground but he didn't seem to notice. He just stared off in the distance as if he was thinking about something and wasn't really interested in the tea party. Angie was a little disappointed. It had been a lot of work for her, Nancy and Kenny to get mommy and daddy to the tea party and now mommy and daddy didn't seem to be having a good time. They just sat there looking rather sad and didn't even notice when flies landed on them. Not even when they landed on their eye balls or tried to crawl inside their mouths. And it was such a perfect day for a tea party.

Is this thing on?

2011-07-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

>tap tap<

Hello?

Anybody there?

A notebook

2011-07-20T13:04:00.001-07:00

There is an apartment building in the old part of the city; decades of grime and car exhaust have darkened the beige walls and its windows are frosted with dust and filth. One side - the side open to the parking lot - is covered with overlapping layers of graffiti tags.

On the ninth floor of the building, on the northeast corner, one apartment looks out over the street with a view of the Asian market, the fire station, the defunct video shop with its doors sealed shut by rock show posters. The windows of the corner room are cleaner than all the others, inside and out. The room itself sees frequent use, although it is almost bare: one battered couch, a small end table that supports a dingy lamp, and a desk and chair that sits in the middle of the room with another lamp placed in the back center of the desktop. The desk is an old metal affair, recovered from a postal office that was being shut down. On either side of the knee space are two large and one small drawers; a wide, flat drawer above the knee space.

In the center drawer there is a notebook. It is a handmade notebook, the paper made by a man who sells his product at craft fairs; the binding is made by a friend of the papermaker. It is soft brown leather, thick and warped. The spine is held together by thick leather lacing and the notebook is held shut by another piece of lacing wrapped around a bronze button that bears a decorative image of a bear.

The first seven pages of the notebook are filled with writing of no consequence: a failed attempt at keeping a journal by the notebook's first owner. It is the writing on the fiftieth page of the notebook - exactly halfway through the book's hundred pages - that people will commit murder to see. It is the information on that page that will change the direction of history.

New topic: An object

2011-07-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

This object is critical to your story; the success or failure of your tale depends on your reader seeing it clearly in his or her mind's eye. Make them see it.

A place

2011-07-16T23:57:00.000-07:00

Geneva of 1877

Geneva was a truly international city. Quite possibly the only city in the world that could make such a claim. Heads of state and industry called this city home and the arts and sciences thrive. Geneva was indeed a melting pot of the best, and consequently, the worst Victorian man had to offer in terms of hopes, dreams and ambitions. Theologies from theosophy to kabbalah were debated openly while some, darker and older are the stuff of whispers in secret halls and hidden temples. The origins of man were hotly debated in cafes by anthropologists while men of wealth and science design, and make designs upon, his future. Or lack thereof.

Overhead airships of all shapes and sizes ferried, mostly those of privilege or position about the city and points beyond. A labyrinthine cobweb of concrete and elevated roads connected all parts of the city allowing stunning views of the city lights from above. At street level the older cobblestone streets squeezed their way between the buildings and at times were hidden altogether where newer construction was built atop the old bones of the original Geneva. Deeper still in perpetual twilight the seedier parts of the city in effect formed another city still. One of gangs and crime but with rules of conduct of its own and not the place for the well healed.

Geneva of 1877 was a city teaming with hope and wonder lit by gaslight and electricity as well. Coaches rattled along past beautiful people on their way to opera houses and fine dining. Men of ill repute and questionable motives looked up as clockwork monorails passed overhead. Secret societies gathered behind benign-looking doors plotting and practicing ancient rituals. Heads of nations and captains of industry looked down on the city through leaded glass and decided the fate of millions. For better or worse, and most likely both, Geneva was the harbinger of the future.

A dinner scene

2011-07-15T17:53:00.002-07:00

Dinner

The table was large, and set for ten. Two appetizer plates steamed in the middle of the expanse of oak, a tower of onion rings arranged in descending radius as they climbed up a thin metal spike, and a platter of nachos slathered in day-glo cheezefood substitute that glistened greasily in the overly bright overhead lights. Three drinks stood on the table, and David wondered if passers-by would think he'd ordered them all.

He sat alone at the table, stuffed absurdly into the far corner of an enormous cherry-red naugahyde booth. Only one of the drinks was his, the "Lumberjack size!" Bud Light that sweated into a slowly gathering lake at the base of the pitcher-sized glass. No wonder this country has an obesity problem, he thought, when this kind of obscene overindulgence is sold as some kind of nasty birthright.

He checked his phone again - no texts. He could feel the heat rising on the back of his neck; he hadn't even wanted to come out tonight. Come on! they'd said, it'll be fun! He had a new Netflix disk waiting on the dining room table in his apartment, on top of a pile of unopened mail (mostly come-ons from credit card companies, undeterred by his lack of response to their last hundred and fifty entreaties to take advantage of their low low interest rates!), which was in turn crammed into a crater in the pile of washed but unfolded laundry that he'd been dressing himself from for the last week. He wasn't really sure what movie it was - he had the vague memory that it was either a French actioner that subverted the premise of an obscure Coppola film from the 70's that his film-snob friends had recommended, or a brainless boobs-n-blowup film that he'd missed in the theaters the summer before. But he'd been all set to cocoon in for the evening with it - even had a six-pack and a bomber of what his ex-girlfriend had called one of his "snooty beers" in his plastic grocery basket, along with one of the orange plate specials from the grocery store's mini-cafe. Then he'd run into Phil and Kate.

There had been much shoulder-grasping, much rolling of eyes at his attempts at begging off their invitations. Lame, they'd said; many iterations of "duuuude!' in a tone that communicated disapproval, brotherly (or in Kate's case sisterly) camaraderie, insistence, and bemusement. Finally when it was communicated that the cute redhead who'd started six months ago but whom David had yet to even wrangle an accidental introduction to would be among the revelers, he relented. He almost backed out when he dropped his groceries off at home; as he put his not-to-be-eaten-tonight dinner into the fridge (got tomorrow night covered at least!) and put the beers on the top shelf, he fought the urge to pop open the cherry Netflix envelope and just fuck it all. But he'd mentally smacked himself around a little and bustled determinedly out of the apartment.

He'd gotten to the restaurant first. It was a slow night so they seated him anyway, even though he'd said there'd be ten and he was the only one there - the hostess looked like there might be things she cared less about in this world, but not many. He sat in the corner of the booth with his jacket on, playing microgames on his smartphone and feeling humiliated every time someone walked by the table - like he'd been seated in a high chair or something.

Eventually Phil and Kate showed up - awesome, duuude! You made it! Kate bet you were going to bail and stay home with a Netflix or something! David laughed dismissively. They'd slid into the booth on either side, but only to the ends, and only long enough to order drinks from the waitress who drifted over, her voice exuding disbelief that anybody else had actually shown up. Drinks had come, trite toasts were made, and suddenly Phil noticed an old friend of his and Kate's at a table on the other side of the restaurant - be right back, dude!

That had been twenty-five minutes ago.

Topic - a dinner scene

2011-07-15T17:53:00.001-07:00

A place

2011-07-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

If there had ever been a time when this world was beautiful, that memory is lost - but while no heart-wrought poems would ever be composed to the golden sunsets of Peralta or her shimmering mountains or blue seas, she had for a time borne herself with a stately majesty. Her mighty factories and vast arcologies dazzled rather than charmed; what waters still faced open sky were penned in vast cooling lakes that tempered the beating nuclear hearts of a million power plants. Where nature's green was to be found, it was arrayed in ordered rows that marched for leagues. The streets of the cities were vast caverns between towering walls that let no light reach the dusty tracks below.

But even that stark majesty was lost when Peralta was cracked.

The planet had been struck by the focused cosmological necromancy of The Enemy, harnessing intergalactic energies that struck her with the impact of an incomprehensibly mighty maelstrom. Her core had been split and her skin broken in a million million places. She was fractured like a crystal seeing sphere dropped upon the marble floor of a Hierarch's auditorium. Her cities had crumbled; the waterways spilled their boundaries and flooded down through the leagues of structure below, spewing steam into the sky to mix with the smoke from countless fires. Factories had crumbled like a child's palace of twigs, molten metals and solutions eating through the surrounding cities in waves of consuming chemical flame.

But that had been years ago. Though the nuclear embers still smoldered and glowed, steaming sores that still festered on the skin of the world, most of the fires had died. The bursar's portion of the steam pillars had faded. Poison rains had washed the soot and ashes from the ruins of the hive dwellings and into deep undercity caverns that boiled and breathed toxic vapors through the dark hidden places below.

It was here that I had been delivered, to this corpse world of Peralta. The dromon that had carried me from the shining light of the Imperator's holy presence to this place had dropped from The Path only long enough to expel my descent craft before disappearing in a shattered-mirror prism of refracted starlight.

My sentence here is the Imperator's gift to me of my life. It is also his condemnation of me to my death.

Theme: A Setting

2011-07-11T06:08:00.000-07:00

The theme for today is to write a setting. You may have a character in the setting, but nothing is to happen: you are to focus on creating a real space in the viewer's mind.

A few seconds in first person

2011-07-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

The bell rings as I enter the store. The girl behind the counter is terrified, I can almost feel her fear radiating off of her and past the man with his back to me. I immediately look for the signs. I see her eyes darting left to right trying hard to neither look at me, at the man in front of her or towards the back of the convenient store. The other criminal is there. I can see his reflection in the glass of the beer cooler as he stands perfectly still waiting for his partner to act. His partner, the man at the counter, is standing like a statue slightly to the left of center of the counter. This places the cash register in front of his left hand; his wallet is in his right rear pocket; this makes him right handed. That will be his gun hand of course.

I know it would be a mistake to simply walk back out as these are armatures. They would just start blazing away and in their panic kill the girl. I walk up to the counter giving the girl a reassuring smile. The gunman spins bringing his pistol - a Ruger .380 - up towards my chest. Idiot. He practically hands the gun to me. I check the pistol with my left, jab the inside of his wrist with my right and twist the gun up and away from and an upper cut with the elbow snaps his head back, a strike to the throat with the butt of the Ruger crushes the windpipe and he stumbles back and out of my way.

In the second and a half it takes the other would-be killer to come running from cover I slide the action to chamber a shot and aim. He rounds the corner 20 feet away with a scream and a misplaced shot as if he's a thug from a Tarantino movie. I put four shots into the center of mass just to be sure. His momentum and adrenalin takes him into the candy aisle and he'll be dead before his body stops moving.

The first guy scrambles to his hands and knees his eyes wide with monkey brain terror as I step between him and the camera over the counter. Two shots to the face and he goes down clutching blindly at empty air "Please no..." sputtering from his lips.

The girl is close to going into shock. I need to talk her down before...damn it. The little prick nailed me with that one wild shot. Well, at least this is a convenient segue. "Girl...Megan (according to her name tag), I need you to focus for me!"

I grab wash rag from the espresso counter and press it to the wound. "Young woman, here, hold this right here. You need to keep pressure on - listen to me girl! Focus! Ok, now, I'm going to dial 911 while you keep me from bleeding out."

Now

2011-07-06T11:06:00.001-07:00

A bell jingles as I pull open the heavily-barred door and I am hit with a wall of super-chilled air, almost painful after the scorching dry heat of the parking lot. I step into the store and stop for a moment to take my bearings. My shirt becomes cold where sweat has caused it to stick to my chest and back and I pluck at the fabric to pull it loose from my skin.

The store is one large room mazed into a series of corridors by dented and dingy beige metal shelving. Near the entrance glass cases have been arranged into a square with an open space in the middle for employees; the outside perimeter of the store is lined with a similar array of glass cases. A variety of goods squat on the shelves and in the cases: musical instruments, amplifiers, rings and bracelets, desktop lamps. On the right side of the store a row of dirty bicycles lean drunkenly on each other; beyond, a cluster of lawn mowers. The store is lit by banks of blazing fluorescent tubes on the ceiling; everything is evenly illuminated and looks artificial and cartoonish. There are no shadows.

I walk to the nearest counter display and pretend to look at microphones while the lone employee helps a young couple looking for an affordable (read: cheap) ring. The sweat is drying on my back and under my arms but a cold trickle runs from my hairline down my neck and into the collar of my shirt. It is not the result of the temperature.

Finally the couple commits to indecision and leaves without making a purchase. The salesman - a skeletal figure who could be in his thirties or forties, badly shaven days before - comes over to me and offers to help.

"Yes. May I look at your guns please?"

Whitewater Here & Now - 7/4/11

2011-07-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the bow of this canoe, craning my neck to see how the rafters ahead of us are running the line. Ken's in the back, and we're both paddling backwards gently, slowing our approach to the monster waves in front of us so the rafts will be clear when we drop in.

My gut's cramping up a little, and my heart rate's definitely trending upwards. I can feel that ache in my palms that says "quit choking your paddle to death, Lucas!". I ease my grip & take a deep breath. Feel the cold water sloshing over my toes, and hope we don't get too much more than ankle-deep when we pound through the beast in front of us. Five, six big waves, a hole to miss on the right, just after the pour-over from the rock - oh, my god, look at that hydraulic! DEFINITELY miss that, then punch left through the wave train, try to miss that next big washed-out eater, and then stay upright until the train ends. We're drifting closer to the tongue, the start, the big drop.

"Okay, paddle ahead!" Ken's voice reaches me even as I'm taking that first stroke. We're a good team. I'm getting a surge of adrenaline, increasing those butterflies and making my hands shake. I need to move, do something, or I'll just get dizzy, so I'm paddling ahead, concentrating on pulling the bow into the perfect place. Damn, this water's pushy, the river's high, we don't have as much time to manuever, it has to be perfect. Wish we'd brought the smaller boat, it turns quicker, but it's less stable, well, too late to think about it now, right?

The bow's dipping, the first wave is rising over my head - god, sometimes I hate being in the front! I can't see what Ken's doing, although I can feel him back there, and I'm always staring right into the scariest parts of rapids, no breathing room. Ken's yelling "Okay, keep it straight!", and I'm holding a brace as I get whapped in the face with ice-cold river water. Shake my head without moving the paddle as we get whipped towards the right - there's that hole, motherfucker! I'm pushing away from it and bracing as we arc over that first wave. The bow smacks down in the trough. Time to make the next move.....

"Now LEFT!"

I'm throwing a cross-stroke across the bow to pull us radically left, and I can feel Ken's steering brace from the stern. All that water gives us a huge push on our left-side ferry, and we're suddenly zooming across the face of the next wave, quartering it, a little scary but we have momentum, it'll be okay, we're just going take on some water, aw shit, that lip's gonna.....

"Pfft-!!" I'm blowing silty water out of my open mouth and shaking it out of my eyes again, feeling the water in the bottom of the boat sloshing over my ankles now - shit! - as we surge into another wave. The extra water makes us heavier, less manueverable, so I'm digging into the face of the wave as we rear up it, keeping us moving ahead. Sliding backwards on that daddy would be unthinkable, so I'm not thinking about it. Move, move, move-! Brace, brace, BRACE when that cross-current slamming off the shore threatens to tip us sideways, makes a scary slosh. I'm feeling the thigh-straps bite into my legs when I throw my whole torso into another life-saver with the paddle.

"NICE, honey!"

Holy crap. Two more waves, no problem, almost there, just stay upright.....I'm feeling a second surge of adrenaline, the one that eradicates the fear. Almost there, then we can pump out the boat and set up for the next one. I'm feeling lighter now, grinning hugely even as the cross-chop is threatening to swamp us. Flipping on the last wave....it happens. I'd hate to swim, it's cold and fast, it'd be a bitch to retrieve the boat and pull it to shore. My paddle's staying in the water, we're almost there...

Unpleasant Scene - 7/1/11

2011-07-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

The gal standing in the checkout line was wearing a tight, low-cut jean skirt that showed both her substantial muffin top, and the back of her lacy red XXL thong. Well, it could have been regular-sized underwear, but I suspected a thong. Her shopping cart was filled with cheap kids' clothes, and every type of synthetic food imaginable.
The little boy in her cart was screaming with anger, tears running down his face. He was clutching an action figure in his grubby little hands and blowing snot all over it while he wailed like a fire engine.
The gal's face was turning a stony pink-red while the kid's volume continued to climb. She was hissing at the boy, "Shut up. Shut up RIGHT NOW." The kid's face began to turn purple with the effort of maintaining the howl.
A fat arm snaked out and slapped him in the face, momentarily interrupting the kid. He gulped, shocked, then screwed up his face to start again. Another slap, accompanied by loose flapping arm flab.
"You CAN'T HAVE IT, you little shit! You wanna be gay like your dad? Just keep it up!"
More howls. The arm lifted up for another swing.
I couldn't look away.

Topic: Here and now

2011-07-01T07:16:00.001-07:00

New topic: a sense of immediacy. You are to write a scene in which you are doing something or about to do something. The goal is to build a sense of mounting tension; your technical restrictions are that you will write present tense, first person - "I am walking into the store" rather than "he walked into the store".

2011-06-30T00:08:00.000-07:00

Officer Connelly, Mike, hated responding to domestic disturbance calls. Not because they were particularly dangerous in nature - they usually weren't - but rather they were so damned uncomfortable to deal with. And they would almost inevitably fell into one of a few categories: You had the asshole wife beater that was taking out, fill in the blank, issues on his woman. The mutually destructive couple both of whom would do better to simply avoid any and all relationships in the future. And then you had "DPB". Dickless punching bag. The guy that let the woman pound him. Milk toast. And then you had this sort of situation. The sort that doesn't fit easily into any of the above. These were the scary ones for being unpredictable.

Rachel, Officer Manguel, had taken the girl into the kitchen while Connelly took the man, barely more than a kid really, into the living room. The place was trashed. "So, um, was this the result of the fight?"

"Well, no, not really. We're just slobs", the young man replied almost too casually.

Scanning the room Officer Connelly looked for any damning evidence. Anything that might suggest that what the couple claimed to be merely a heated argument was in fact a physically violent exchange as the neighbors suspected. Dirty dishes, woman's clothes, miscellaneous debris and ...what looked like an illustration torn in half. Odd.

"Are you an artist?", he asked picking up the two pieces of Bristol board.

"Yeah".

"Nice work. Comic book page from the looks of it". The officer put the two pieces back together and cocked his head considering the combined pieces and nodded approvingly. "So, did you smack her when she tore this in half?"

"No".

"Did she smack you?"

"No."

Officer Connelly eyed the boy. Damn he hated these cases. The young man was a fine liar and would have been far more convincing without the split lip. If he wanted to let his girl beat on him that was his business. But, this was exactly the kind of case that would have he and his partner back here with a body bag. This was not the typical DPB kind of guy. This a-hole was tall and strong and willing to look a cop in the eye and lie. He either loved her enough to protect her or he was biding his time. If the former he was in for some serious trouble in the future. If the latter, well, they would probably never find a body to bag.

The girl stepped out of the kitchen with a subtle yet self-satisfied smirk. Just behind her Officer Manguel caught her partner's eye from across the room. A brief flash of her eyes spoke volumes.

Scene

2011-06-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

Phillips's car pulled up in front of the house just before three in the morning. He'd seen the lights a block and a half away: at least a dozen police cruisers, a couple fire crew vehicles, three ambulances. The flashing of the red and blue and white lights seemed at odds with the hush that filled the air like a presence. There were no shouts, no barked orders, no casual laughs - if anyone spoke it was in a low, somber tone.

A cop lifted the band of yellow tape that fenced off an impromptu lot in the street and Phillips rolled under, tires hissing softly on the rain-soaked road. He slowed to a stop, pulled the emergency brake, killed the lights and the engine, and sat for a long minute observing the scene.

Quiet neighborhood. Neat, but not nice - the houses were probably thirty years old, inhabited by a third or fourth generation of owner. Peeling paint. Phillips saw at least one car parked in a driveway that he felt pretty sure wouldn't start or run. A couple of sun-faded kids' toys in yards. But grass was cut, hedges trimmed; the curtains in most of the houses might have been Wal-Mart, but at they were clean and cared for. The people who lived here would be blue-collar workers and housewives; maybe a manager-level here and there but for the most part men and women who'd been working the same jobs for a long time and would keep working them until they retired or were laid off when the company shut down.

Phillips saw the standard audience - the neighbors standing out in their yards, on the sidewalks, or behind screened front doors. Curious, and a little frightened. Not sure what was going on, why the somber circus of police presence - usually just a spectacle on tv or in the movies - had suddenly materialized for real right across the street from their beds and living rooms and kitchens. He scanned the faces reflexively, looking for anything out of the ordinary, an out-of-place look he wouldn't expect to see among the apprehensive neighbors roused from their beds by the disruption. When he saw nothing that aroused his attention he sighed and climbed out of the car.

It was cold. The day had been muggy and warm, full with the promise of rain and storm, and it had arrived right after dark in a wall of wind and thunder and lightning. Crews were out around town fixing downed power lines and blinking stop lights, and leaves decaled the streets and sidewalks everywhere. The air was still humid but it was the bite of the air after a cold front instead of the heavy, spongy moisture that had blanketed the city for the last couple of weeks, making shirts stick sweatily to chests and backs. Fall soon, Phillips thought. He walked to the sidewalk and toward the concrete path that led up to the small patio and front door of the house, hanging his badge on his coat pocket. Hernandez was at the juncture of the walkway and the sidewalk; she gave him a somber look and gestured towards the house.

"He's already in there," she said. He studied the house for a moment, then turned to her.

"That bad?" he asked. He could usually count on Hernandez to greet him with some sort of ribbing, a twinkle in her dark eyes.

She didn't reply. She opened her mouth and as if to say something, then cut herself off as if she weren't sure she'd be able to get it out. Instead she just nodded and turned away as if she didn't want him to see her lose it.

Phillips put a reassuring hand on her shoulder for a second, then walked up towards the door.

As he approached he surveyed the scene. Two cars in the driveway. Three small windows to the right of the front door - probably bedrooms, lights shining behind drawn curtains. A large picture window to the left, between door and garage. The venetian blinds inside the window were tilted open so Philips could see right in - the crowd of police, the cheap furniture, the smear of red on the wall. He pulled the screen door open and stepped inside and said,

An unpleasant scene: No insight nor end in sight

2011-06-29T00:18:00.000-07:00

A ragged scene? There was no reconciling this . There was no happy ending to this. The boy, the love and joy of his life lay broken and dead at his feet and nothing would change this' nothing would make this ok. Nothing would ever be the same again. He was dead. He would never realize his potential, never bring home a date or succeed where others had failed. Exceed where others had been found wanting.

A moment of weakness, of drink and indiscretion. Ragged and brutal, there was no lesson to be learned, no time in the future in which he would look back on this and take solace in a lesson learned. He would never take comfort in memories of past joys or warm inflection. His boy was dead and the fault undeniably, unforgivably his. There was no ending to be had, no epiphany and insight, only blood and loss.

Topic: An Unpleasant scene (with a ragged edge)

2011-06-26T15:20:00.001-07:00

This topic will see us writing an unpleasant scene - you pick what kind, and the nature of the unpleasantness. The technical requirement on this one is that you leave the piece with a ragged trailing edge - this should not be "wrapped up" or finished in a narrative sense but rather left unfinished, as if this were just the first chunk of a long-form piece.

Tense conversation

2011-06-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

Protag hated these conversations. Not just due to the antagonistic nature of them but the delay of calling such a long distance. The pause in response created the impression that the person on the other end of the line was carefully considering the answer before responding. In some cases he was. And never with the best of intentions. Quite the contrary. They did not have the best of relationships. A fact that was vexing. He let out a deep sigh, and made the call.

"Ok, it's me again. I don't suppose you've reconsidered your position on this. Once again, I will proceed with the best possible intentions."

There was an aggravating silence at the other end, "No, you didn't. You said you would, but you didn't."

"Damn it, that's not fucking fair! Why are you being such a dick about this? What did I do?" Admittedly, Protag could have been a bit more diplomatic and measured in his response, but weeks of this same conversation was wearing thin.

"You pissed away the greatest thing ever, that's what you did."

"Not yet I haven't! You're saying I can't change? You're saying I have no control over my actions? What the hell am I supposed to do with THAT? Huh? What, I'm on a rail and destined to drive off a cliff? You know, metaphorically speaking." An silence longer than usual made the moment all more awkward. "Metaphorically speaking, right? Antag? Are you still there?"

"You could have done anything with what you figured out. And what did you decide to do with it? This! That's what. And yeah, you didn't drive off a cliff or anything."

"But why the hell won't you help me? It will benefit you too you know. In fact more than it will me!" Protag's hand began to tremble slightly with aggravation.

Far, far away Antag considered his reply carefully, "Dude, you could have prevented wars, famine, saved people from natural disasters but no, instead you called me for weeks asking for lottery numbers. You douche."

Protag sighed and ended the call. His future self was, is, will be such a dick.

"tense conversation"

2011-06-24T09:20:00.000-07:00

“Where do you think you’re going?” “Wherever we want Agnes, places you can’t go, places for those of a lighter foot.” “Is that some sort of crack about my weight?” “The truth be told, you are kind of heavy.”

“Who do you think you are? We have been together for years, you are just the newest fancy, he won’t give me up for the likes of you.” “Oh probably not you are good for the children, and he is fond of you, but I can go on grander adventures. He’ll leave you at home with the kids the dog, the appliances. . .”

“ Are you implying that he does not care for those things anymore, he loves his family, he likes spending time with them, and I make that happen.” “I think you might be exaggerating your influence on his choices, he is a creature of opportunity, and when the possibility of a wilder experience presents itself, he will be sharing it with me.”

“Share? Really, you think he sees you that way? Use. You are nothing but a tool to him, shiny and new, but you too will age and mildew. The cat pisses on you once or twice and he will be leaving without you so don’t be so sure of yourself Kelty your days are numbered, you are not the first little half dome to come through these garage doors. I heard him talking about those new bivy sacks at REI, he was intrigued.” “Maybe so Big Agnes, but I get to go motorcycle camping in the mountains this weekend, and you get to stay here on the shelf. So I am going to enjoy my place in the sun.” “Sun? It’s June in the Pacific Northwest. It will probably rain.”

One tense conversation

2011-06-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

She sighed. No avoiding the issue anymore. It was time to get it over with. She felt weak and totally unequal to the task but knew there was no-one else to do it. She opened the door.

"Tina, could you come here for a moment?"

Tina came in and sat down. It was likely she knew at least some of what was coming - the office had been tense for days as rumors flew right and left. How to start - how to phrase the end?

"Thanks." She sighed again. Tina just waited, a small tense bundle of humanity, hoping but not confident.

"You know how the company has been struggling this last year. We've tried everything we could do, short of actually closing the door."

"Yes."

"You've been a big help there - you've done a lot and I've really appreciated your support."

Just a tense nod in return.

"But, unfortunately, it hasn't worked." There, I've said it. The final word. The company is going down. "We'll be closing down as of the end of next month. We'll all have that long at least."

"Is a new company being set up?" Tina asked, likely again knowing the answer, but needing to ask.

"Yes. But it will be much, much, smaller." Now the really hard part: "There's no room for office staff beyond one person."

"Will you be going to the new company?"

"Yes. They'll need my skills." and, unspoken, "and I need the job."

Silence. A look of betrayal that matched her own guilt. She could hear the unspoken dialogue in her head - "but you said you would try to keep me" "Yes, but this is a job you can't do, even if I could afford to give it up to you." Who knew guilt was this painful?

She didn't sigh again. She just handed Tina the tissues and said "If you want to take the rest of the day off, I understand."

One down. More to go.

Conversation

2011-06-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

Keith sat in the driver's seat of his car, adrenaline jangling through his veins. His hands trembled as he retrieved his license and proof of insurance, so he placed them firmly in his lap, on one top of the other. The patch of gravel he'd pulled over onto was barely big enough to accommodate his SUV and the police cruiser that sat behind him now, flashers lighting the interior of his car up, blue and red.

Keith watched in his side mirror as the cop got briskly out of his car, sunglasses in place. His image in the mirror grew larger as he approached until the mirror showed nothing but black fabric and silvery buttons, at which point Keith raised his eyes to look into the expressionless sunglasses. Wordlessly he handed his papers to the officer who scanned them briefly, then looked up and asked him,

"Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?" Keith stifled a groan and thought to himself, why do they always lead with that? Do they think I'm going to volunteer something? He bit down on an urge to offer a snarky response - "The fifteen kilos of cocaine in the trunk?" - and offered a meek, "No sir?" He hated the obsequious tone in his voice, the instinctive urge to sound respectful and compliant - Officer, I'm one of the good guys, I'm not one of those creeps who you have to be a hardass with - but couldn't keep the sense that he somehow should be groveling out of his mind.

"Sir, this is a forty-five mile an hour zone. I clocked you doing almost sixty."

"Officer, I swear I thought the speed limit was fifty-five along here." Keith hated the mealy taste of the lie as he said it. He had driven along this stretch of road - long, straight, smooth - for years; he knew quite well what the limit was.

"No sir, the speed limit is clearly marked along the road here. Sir, I'm going to ask you to wait here in your car while I check your papers." Keith nodded silent agreement and the policeman returned to his car, Keith's driver's license and proof of insurance in hand.

Keith sat still and silent while the cop worked. He felt a hot rush of shame and embarrassment every time a car passed on the road, like a child who'd been made to stand in the corner. He found himself speculating wildly about what the police officer was doing back there in his car - was he really looking anything up? Did it really take this long? Maybe he was just dragging this out to make Keith more uneasy...but why would he want that? Keith thought that the last thing a police officer would want is for a suspect to be jumpy.

At last the officer climbed back out of his car and came back up to Keith's window.

"Sir, do you know that this insurance document is invalid?"

Keith felt a dash of cold water hit his spine.

"What?" he said, "It shouldn't be!" He realized immediately how absurd that sounded and continued, "I just made a payment online last week!"

"Sir, the insurance company..." He paused and glanced down at the papers, then continued, "Progressive, they indicate that you don't have an account with them. They stated that you've never had an account with them".

Keith felt something shift in his head, like the framework of the world was coming loose.

"That's nuts!" he exclaimed, a note of shrillness creeping into his voice. "You have my papers right there, you can see that I have!"

"People can use computers to create all kinds of things these days, sir," the cop responded.

"I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the car, sir."

Tense Conversation - 6/23/11

2011-06-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

"I can't do it."
"Neither can I."

"Okay, goddammit, I COULD do it, but I don't WANT to. It's your turn."
"I do it all the time!"
"No you don't."
"I hate talking to them!!"
"So do I!"

Silence hung like a pendulum over the two people on the couch. The Dutch analog clock softly ticked away the seconds while they pointedly avoided looking at each other.

"Damn it, why don't we take turns?"
"Why don't we just not do it at all?!"
"You know I want this! Why do you always change your mind?"
"What the fuck does THAT mean?"

Finally, he leaned forward. "You know we have nothing here, right? We have to do this."
She nodded. "You do it, then."

He picked up the square device, punched in some numbers.
"Hello, Pizza Hut?"

Topic: A tense conversation

2011-06-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

For this challenge you will write a conversation between two people; the conversation will be an argument or some form of tense discussion. First or third person is fine. Have fun!

Narrator free

2011-06-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Just as he and his friends were about to leave the micro brew festival Kirk, reaching into his coat pocket realized he had 3 more beer tokens to spend. It seemed a shame, bordering on heresy, not to trade them in on 3 more glasses of beer. So, as his friends said their goodbyes he made his way off in search of new beers he was unlikely to find in the local stores.

It was Father's Day and as was the tradition he was at the annual micro brew fest, in the park but a short walk from his house. What was not a tradition was that, due to his family having various other commitments, he was batching it this Father's Day.

On this particular day he stayed much longer and drank far more beer samples than he typically did. He made small talk with strangers chatting with a casual air of beer and music, weather and ...well, beer. He listened to a live band and spoke with them afterwards. And on this particular day a drunk and charming young woman - in truth more drunk than charming - made the day of this nearly 48 year old man.

Kirk was walking towards a group of fellow beer enthusiasts when one of them, an attractive young woman with sunglasses and dressed for summer, fell to the grass. Or, laid down with a beer-assisted lack of coordination. She laughed and seemed fine so he continued to walk past. Then she waved him over and patted the ground suggesting he lay down beside her and look at the clouds. On this particular day he had had enough beer to laugh and lay down to see what she was looking at. As it turned out, nothing at all. Kirk look into the sky. The clouds were a solid layer of overcast gray; no shapes, no birds, no planes. This chick was wasted. Kirk laughed and thinking he felt his phone vibrate pulled it from his pocket. Turned out to only be the vibration of the music coming from the stage nearby and he put it away. But not before the woman cast him a disapproving glare. Whatever she was trying to say was drowned out by the music and Kirk decided it best to move on.

Later he ran into the girl once again and this time she had a friend in tow. Kirk took the opportunity to apologize for the phone thing feeling as if he had shown her disrespect. She hadn't given it a second thought. However, her new-found friend thought it prudent to strike up a pleasant conversation with Kirk for what was clearly a covert way of saying, "Dude, I have dibs on the drunk chick". While the drunk chick in question draped herself on the brewer pulling beer for customers Kirk and "her friend" exchanged pleasantries until Kirk excused himself and walked back towards the stage his eyes tearing from the effort not to laugh. When to a safe distance he pulled his phone and pretended to read a text to explain away a fit of hysteria.

The walk home through the woods offered him several more cameos into drunken scenes as small groups of party-goers made their way through the state park - hopefully NOT to their cars. It had been quite a Father's Day on this particular day.

Omens and Signs

2011-06-17T23:04:00.001-07:00

Omens followed her as she drove north.
The first thing Adrian noticed was a fireball - a flash of flame against the searingly blue-white California sky, a daytime meteor. It fizzled out like a bottle rocket over Shasta Lake, reflected for a brief moment in the water between the eponymously named mountain and dam.
Adrian blinked, looking around repeatedly until she saw several people on the deck of a houseboat, staring upwards. Proof, maybe, that it had really happened.

In Weed, she stopped for gas. Huge, looming altocumulus clouds had begun to gather, and a cool breeze made her take off her ballcap and shake out her sweaty hair when she stepped out of the Jeep. The second omen came as she was standing at the register, holding out cash for a coke and a cinnamon bun. The building suddenly shook like it had been hit by a boulder, the lights cracked on and off, and the flash from the windows momentarily blinded the clerk, who was facing the outside window. Adrian gasped, and for the second time that day, looked wildly around. The clerk, rubbing her eyes with her hands and leaning her ample belly against the briefly-unstable counter said "Lightning. Does it all the time around here. Hit the lightning rod, thank god we got one! Dang, gimme a second...." Blinking, she finished handing Adrian her change.

The pilgrimage north continued through a sudden, driving rain, and then a tremendous hailstorm. The hailstones were so thunderously loud on the top of the Jeep that Adrian actually pulled over, letting a lone motorcyclist pass her on the highway. It rattled the vehicle like a hurricane, until Adrian finally stuck her fingers in her ears to block out the noise, which stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Adrian sighed, gunned the engine back to life, and pulled back out on the blacktop. She briefly fiddled with the radio, then gave up on it with another sigh. A third omen.

The fourth omen was a plague of locusts - or more accurately, mayflies. Passing through the river bottoms and fields near Klamath, they flew into the Jeep's windshield in clouds so numerous, she had to pull over again at the nearest gas station to clean them off - her wipers were glutted, and she found the motorcyclist there as well, wet and sticky with insect parts. He was wiping off his helmet, his jacket, and his windshield. Adrian waved at him across the parking lot. He grinned at her, shrugging the sticky helmet while rolling his eyes, and waved back.

Evening was falling by the time Adrian got to her destination - a motel in a small town, remarkable only for being equidistant between his point of origin and hers. She was silent when she got out of the Jeep, only speaking when she approached the front desk to get a room key. His car was out front. She knocked, and he answered the door with an open jewelry box, a glint of white and silver inside.

"Will you marry me?"

Driving

2011-06-17T10:37:00.001-07:00

Marcus had been driving for three days. He had left the East coast on a bright and clear spring day, heading south and west through green rolling hills, skirting the low mountains always to his right. The first night he had stopped in a town that only tangentially contacted the interstate - three fast-food restaurants, two gas stations on opposite sides of the freeway, and a chain motel, clean but unremarkable. Marcus parked in a space directly below the door of his second-floor room and spent no more time there than it took for seven hours of sleep, a shower, and the span of time required to put his worn clothes into his small suitcase. He was back on the road by eight-thirty.

The second day was more tedious. The green had given way to brown as he crossed into the drought-stricken states away from the coast; the hills had become smaller and more infreqent until the road became a straight line vanishing into the distance ahead of him. He alternated between running his air conditioner at high until the interior of the car was so cold he was chilled, and turning the radio up to just past the comfort level - first, a classic-rock station, then alternative hits, and finally when he could get no other stations, hip-hop that hissed in and out. When that eventually disappeared completely he clicked the radio off and drove for a time in silence.

The second night he determined to push through as far as he could get. He drove until almost three, occasionally slapping his cheeks lightly or smacking the back of his neck to try to keep himself alert. When he finally acknowledged that he was past the point of safe driving he pulled into a rest area and stretched out in the back seat, his head on his sleeping bag. He slept fitfully for five hours, waking frequently to the sound of trucks rushing by. When he decided he'd gotten as much sleep as he was likely to he washed his face and hands in the stainless steel sink in the rest stop facilities and climbed back into the driver's seat. He merged back onto the freeway and continued on his way - south, and west.

Topic: Invisible narrator

2011-06-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

This topic is a bit of a change. Pick a topic of your own and write about it, but there is a challenge: you are to write with an invisible voice. The reader should be unaware of the narrator. Obviously this means no first-person POV, but in addition write with as little language that would draw attention to itself as possible - this is about the tale, not the teller (though it doesn't have to be a tale at all, just a scene...).

Bus stop

2011-06-16T14:48:00.001-07:00

It was a bus stop only by technicality; there were no benches, no shelter - just a couple of signs bolted to a wooden utility pole that bristled with electrical boxes and that served as support for half a dozen cables. The wood of the pole was shredded and splintered, and scabbed with thousands of staples from a generation's-worth of posters that had been posted on its ragged surface - lost pets, garage band shows, used furniture for sale.

The two signs that marked the spot as a bus stop were a dirty industrial white; the top identified the location as a Municipal Transportation Authority Bus Stop and the lower, in brick-red type, spelled out the schedule - every twenty minutes starting at 6:15 a.m. and running to 10:45 p.m., 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

The bus stop was located in front of a small cluster of businesses near the college campus. One could step into a donut shop for coffee while waiting for the next arrival, or step next door for a soda or souvenir t-shirt from the small market there. Kevin usually had a large styrofoam cup filled up to the flimsy plastic to-go lid with cheap, bitter donut-store coffee, lightened with a dash of powdered creamer. He would wait for the bus, the 7:15 if he were running on time, the 7:30 if he were late. He would lean against the jagged wood of the pole or, if the weather threatened, would stand against the brick wall of the market, lacquered by years of car exhaust, taking shelter under the tattered awning.

Kevin usually waited alone. Not many others took the 7:15 to where he was going, though sometimes an older woman in a sensible uniform (the kind women wore at cafeterias that catered to geriatrics) would be there, intensely reading a celebrity magazine. Kevin and the woman had never spoken, never so much as exchanged a glance.

Waiting for the Bus

2011-06-16T01:19:00.001-07:00

It's amazing how little it looked like things had changed. From a seat at the downtown bus terminal it looked like a normal slice of Americana. The to-ing and fro-ing of people as they went to school or work or shopping seemed much as I imagined it always had. Of course, there probably weren't as many suits back when there was gas to be had and commuting was a way of life for most of us. I wouldn't know; I was one of those commuters, happily driving back and forth in comfort. There were fewer suits then, I suppose, but damned sure fewer soldiers and cops with automatic weapons.

One of the soldiers walked by, barely looking at me. He was barely out of his teens and his focused lack of interest betrayed his boredom eloquently. It was the look of someone who didn't really know what he was doing, or why, only that there were orders to be followed. I felt sorry for him. When politicians make stupid decisions, whether it's starting wars or passing laws that are clearly immoral, if not illegal, it's kids like him that end up doing the shit work. Maybe he signed up out of some idea of patriotism or just because he was broke, but he sure as hell didn't sign up expecting to patrol a bus terminal and maybe shoot some citizen that wouldn't toe the line. Or maybe he did. Hard as it is to believe, there had to be some Americans that approved of the martial law, the curfews, and the travel restrictions. After all, the jerks that supported those laws kept getting elected and even the people who yelled "voter fraud" couldn't deny that some people were voting for them.

I sighed and turned to watch the crazy guy. That's one thing that I know hadn't changed. We used to call them "RW" for "resident weirdo": the borderline crazies, mostly harmless, who panhandled or just hung around public spaces. That still wasn't illegal and, given the number of homeless and unemployed the ironically named "New Prosperity Act" was creating, wasn't likely to be. This particular RW looked rather normal, if unkempt, save for the constant dancing and off-key singing that didn't seem nearly so odd until you noticed that the cord of his headphone wasn't connected to anything. As the soldier passed, for an instant the craziness melted away from the RW, like Clark Kent melting into Superman in that old movie, and in that moment he looked directly at me and quirked an eyebrow at me and nodded almost imperceptibly toward the soldier. Then just as quickly he morphed back into the dancing crazy.

Heart pounding, I stood up, grabbed my bag, and walked as calmly as I could away from the station. I had to get to the dead drop. The movement was starting.

Waiting for A Bus - 6/15/11

2011-06-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

I pulled out my water bottle about fifteen minutes after we'd left Tegucigalpa and offered him a sip. He'd looked kinda tense, distracted, and then took the bottle, drank, handed it back and pulled me in for a long kiss.
"Honey, you know, if anything ever happens - you know, with all this - you should totally pretend that you can't speak Spanish, and head for the U.S. Embassy, okay?
I laughed, waving the Spanish verb primer that I'd been perusing at him - "So, I shouldn't put this in the outer pocket of my pack?"
He leaned over and hugged me, staring out the window over my shoulder at the thick foliage passing by. "Nope, you should put that away! Really, we should be looking for blue macaws, they're all over the place around here!" He kissed me again for emphasis, so I giggled and shoved the little book in my daypack, down near the protein bars and the flotsam that doesn't get pulled out very often. We commenced staring out the window together, holding hands. The back seat of the old bus wasn't very comfortable, but at least we weren't sharing it with a bunch of chickens, school kids, or market produce, like some of the other passengers.

Then the bus stopped. Tree in the road. And the tree had been cut on purpose, I could tell. My heart lurched as a line of men in green uniforms - no insignia, I saw that too - stepped out of the trees with sub-automatics. I felt him stiffen next to me, take a shaky breath. Out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn he was smiling for a second, just for a second.
Then raised voices in Spanish, a man on the bus ordering us out. Hands in the air. Men herded to one side of the bus, women to the other. Orders to produce passports. Shouting from the men's side of the bus, and then a shot, then more shouting that quickly stopped. Dear god, we were the only gringos there - were they after us? We were being kidnapped? My hands started shaking as I handed over my passport to the armed teenager standing in front of me, and I looked at the ground and shook my head when he asked me my name in Spanish.
"I'm sorry - I don't speak Spanish", I whispered. Then louder, "No espanol".
I was surprised when he handed the passport back to me, but took it quickly and put it in my shirt pocket.
The women around me remained silent. I kept shaking, wondering what I'd see next, when I looked up from all those deliberately unpolished black leather boots lined in front of me.

Finally, our luggage was thrown off the bus into a pile, the tree was removed, the soldiers got on, and the bus took off. My boyfriend was gone. I listened to the Hondurans and Nicaraguans talking disgustedly as they sorted through the pile and started to disperse in ones and twos in every direction. One or two of the women came up to me and put their hands on my shoulder as I stared down the road, thinking furiously.....I made replies that I don't remember, thanks, I'm okay....no, really, I'm okay. Eventually, they all left, and I was still standing in the middle of the road, with my bright-red backpack. I tugged it over to the ditch, finally, and sat on it, still thinking.

We spent the last few weeks with Nicaraguan rebels. Campesinos, with patched, mismatched, pseudo-military uniforms and soft upland voices. Polite Spanish, almost old-fashioned. Corey was a stringer for the Tico Times in Costa Rica, and we were purportedly taking a vacation while he wrote a Pulitzer-worthy piece about the rebels. We'd only been dating for six months, but Corey convinced me to come along, as his cover for the trip.
Now he was gone, and all I could think about was his prescience beforehand. That fleeting smile. The fact that the soldiers all wore identical uniforms and new boots, and that teenager with the gun said his "s's" like "th's", and the other men had shouted and used ghetto slang. American ghetto slang. The guns were new.

Goddammit, somehow I knew that fucker was working for the CIA! I couldn't believe they'd left me behind, alive. Like hell I was going to an embassy.....I heard another diesel engine grinding down the road towards me through the thick trees. Stood up, pushed back my sleeve, stuck my thumb out, and waited.

Waiting for the bus

2011-06-14T23:47:00.001-07:00

Susan knew this was a mistake. A mistake she had been repeating every week for months now. The man she met here every Tuesday was after all a confessed killer. At first she was certain he was simply pulling her leg to pass time while they waiting for the bus. He spoke with such a casual air of brutal acts that Susan could only assume he was exercising a dark and wildly inappropriate sense of humor. He seemed so normal in every other way, a gray haired elderly gentleman of some Slavic origins with a casual smile and an endless supply of chewing gum to offer.

Clearly he must have thought it funny to tease this young woman with tales of dark deeds in his distant homeland, just waiting for her to finally call bullshit. And yet, she never did. And he never stopped. With subsequent Tuesdays his stories became more detailed and revealing. Where at first he simply alluded to events and lethal acts he later went into disturbing detail. And still Susan did not shy away but instead delved ever deeper into this alien mind. And each Tuesday his bus came and took him away to places unknown and the stories would need wait another week.

Each Tuesday she arrived as a moth to flame anxious for the next chapter in this macabre life story and each week the unassuming vaguely European gentleman arrived in his rain coat and hat in hand - as one did not wear a hat in the presence of a lady - and added to the tale. Prison camps and government affairs; secret killings and things far worse. He told his tale as one might relate the most mundane of events from the past as Susan sat hands on her palms in rapt fascination. His stories of murder and torture offered with a matter of fact delivery were received by an equally casual and captive audience. She never once shied away from the graphic details nor failed to press him for more information when something piqued her interest. They were sociopathic soul mates.

Then, one day the elderly gentleman failed to arrive at the bus stop. Susan sat in the rain until his bus came and went and finally her bus arrived. Taking one last look down the street she sighed and with resignation bordered her bus. Looking out of the window she noticed a grey sedan with grey men in grey suits drive off into the grey afternoon and she knew her Tuesday friend would never again entertain her.

Topic: Waiting for the bus

2011-06-08T11:29:00.001-07:00

This day and age

2011-06-07T22:14:00.000-07:00

I've seen the rise and fall of empires; of entire peoples, cultures ideas and ideals. I recall, albeit distantly, when the world was flat, the heavens perfect and regulated by the hand of God. I've seen pyramids rise in the desert and cities sink and buried beneath time and shifting sands. Ships set off over the horizon to discover new lands of wealth and opportunity.

Too have I seen the rise of technology. I've gazed awe struck as sails gave way to steam and steam in turn to gasoline. The railroad united nations, the airplane the world and telecommunications has reduced it in size from months to minutes. Science has expanded our reality to include the unbelievably small to the unimaginably vast. I sat with my friend Kepler as he fancied travel to the distant moon and later shook the hand of Armstrong.

And yet. And yet of all things I've seen transform the world around me, that which I find the most transformative of all is so very commonplace. The plow, the printing press, air travel and telephone astounding in their right pale in comparison to the internet and the emergent social media. A world of nations and diverse peoples divided by borders and distance has been replaced with a one-world neighborhood defined merely by a click of the mouse. We've traded the neighbor across the fence for the neighbor across the world. A world where distance, time and culture are inconsequential. A world forever changed.

This Day and Age

2011-06-07T21:29:00.001-07:00

Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.

You know, aircraft got invented three years into the twentieth century and it took over forty years before they moved on to jet propulsion. Another couple decades until the first satellite. And then, just over a decade later, we were watching men on the moon on television.

Oh, and TV, let's talk about TV. Farnsworth got TV working for real in the '30s. Thirty-five years later most of us were still watching our two or three available channels black and white TV on a mostly round tube. A decade later the TVs were color and solid state, but the screens were still tubes small. A decade after that, the first VCRs showed up. Then, within twenty years TVs were flat, sixty-inch screens, on which you could watch a couple hundred stations, which you could pause and rewind and save for later. Oh, and 3D, don't forget 3D.

Or you could just watch movies on your phone, which has a color touch-sensitive screen, can stream music, or browse a global information network that no one could have even imagined back when airplanes had propellers. Which, by the way, was a time when phones were black and had rotary dials, just like they did up until about the same time Armstrong was boogieing on the Sea of Tranquility.

Most of the tech that I had when I was a kid was pretty much completely recognizable as descendants from what my parents had when they were kids. But my kids, I have problems even explaining things that I grew up with. I mean, who the hell knows what a slide rule is anymore? Calculators were so new you weren't allowed to use them for tests when I was in college, and now the concept of a calculator that isn't an app or a function on some other gadget is so retro that it's kitsch.

Or, you can flip it around… Can you imagine trying to explain iPhones, personal computers, and the Internet as a practical reality to someone few decades ago? That was serious sci-fi stuff.

And yet… and yet, 2001 came and went and we don't have any orbiting Hilton hotels, no lunar colonies, no commercial space travel. No personal helicopters, jetpacks, CITY OF THE FUTURE or any of that amazing stuff we all thought we'd have. How is it fair that my kids think everything that I grew up with is only one step more advanced than napping flint knives and arrowheads and yet the closest I'll ever get to space travel is watching the reports of the Rich and Famous flying Virgin Galactic?

But then, I guess we can just be glad we aren't slaves to Skynet, servants of our ape masters, or eating Soylent Green, yet.

This Day and Age - 6/7/11

2011-06-07T19:40:00.000-07:00

You'd think, in this day and age, that a body could be disposed of without much fuss. Blenders, composters, vaporizers, dehydrators and laserbots are ubiquitous, and shit, if that fails, there's always the airlocks, but no - for some reason, people still want to get involved, even for subhuman trash like miners and hookers and mutants. They police the airlocks. And the DNA trackers in the disposal units are awfully nosy.

So, like some Viking throwback, I'm back to the pigs and the knives. I don't know why, but folks like me just can't seem to keep up with the times.

True Crime in Guatemala City

2011-06-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

So there we were, standing in the middle of the dusty central bus corral in Guatemala City. We were staring at our luggage, piled on top of the bus that we were going to take to Chichicastenango - the biggest scam going involved loading tourists' luggage onto a bus, and then tossing it across to another bus when they got inside. So there I was, squinting into the tropical sun, casually shrugging off the driver as he earnestly urged us to get on the bus, please, senores.
Within seconds, thin brown hand reached around my face and deftly snatched my sunglasses off my face. The keeper strap was expertly yanked free, and suddenly, my tender blue gringo peepers were watering in the harsh dusty glare. I was momentarily nonplussed, but then instinct took over, and before I could think, I was turning and reaching behind me - apparently, just quickly enough to brush the thief's hand. Goddammit-!
I glimpsed a thin teenage boy, maybe fifteen, taller than me by a few inches, and dressed in a loose white t-shirt and tennis shoes. Short dark hair, nice features, and a handful of my sunglasses. It was just a glimpse, though, because as soon as he saw me turn, he was also turning to sprint through the crowds around the buses and across the center of the corral. Like a hound on a scent, I sprinted after him.
He was confident that no gringo would ever chase him - despite my daypack and the Teva sandals on my feet, I started gaining on him as the crowds thinned out and he started to slow down. Unable to believe my luck, I poured on the gas, and hoped that the rumble of the diesel engines all around us would cover the sound of my feet pounding the dirt behind him.
I was almost close enough to body slam the kid when he looked over his shoulder and saw me behind him - the look on his face was priceless, a weird mixture of shock and fear. Unfortunately, having a tiny, enraged gringa bearing down on him like a pissed-off badger was enough to put him back into "run" mode, and he took off again just as I was close enough to grab the back of his shirt - he twisted as he ran, and the shirt slipped out of my sweaty fingers. Damn!
He was taller and longer-legged, but he was also malnourished, fifteen, and evidently unused to running fast - if I'd had another quarter-mile, I think I could've caught the little shit, after which my adrenaline-fueled, rage-induced plan was to pound the fear of Jesus into him and get my glasses back. Shit, I didn't have any money to buy new glasses, or I wouldn't have been waiting for a chicken bus in the middle of Guate City. I really, REALLY wanted to catch that kid, like I'd never wanted anything else in my life up to that point.
He had other plans, though. They involved veering towards the periphery of the parking lot, jumping over a stack of watermelons, and disappearing into the covered produce market on the fringe of the corral. Unable to stop right away, I also leaped over the waist-high pile of melons, then skidded to a halt in the midst of a bunch of shoppers and indigenous ladies in acid-trip-colored huipiles. "El ladrone!" I gasped. "A donde va??"
Several of the stall keepers made discreet pointing motions against their waists, but then, as I looked around at the crowd of Guatemalans, I suddenly realized my position - a small, single, blue-eyed blonde, lost in a crowd of people who were evidently scared of at least one thief. What if there were more? Crap. And my boyfriend was undoubtedly still standing near that bus, wondering where I'd gone. Crap! And who knew when it was scheduled to leave....I'd taken off my watch, to keep that from getting stolen, too. Crap.
So - after another minute or so of vacillating, staring around the market, looking for another glimpse of that fucking thief, I finally let my head take over, and turned and jogged back to my bus. I was so over-adrenalinated that I could easily have torn someone's head off at that point - I mean, I was poor - I'd worked my ass off for every dollar I'd ever earned, and to have someone take something from me struck me as a huge injustice. It wasn't the sunglasses that irked me as much as what the whole experience represented - that I was vulnerable, a target, insecure, and easy to steal from. Why?? Why me? Why couldn't I have simply caught the little fucker, cut his liver out, and left him for dead....I mean, er, gotten my things back and went on my way?
The rest of the day was tough, and I had trouble sleeping that night, but I bought a pair of obviously stolen sunglasses from another vendor in Chichicastenango's market later that week, and that should have been the end of the experience, right? And yet I still wake up sometimes, thinking about seeing that kid's head again through the bus window as we trundled out of the bus depot, strolling through the crowd, looking for another target.
Even today, even with both of us older and greyer and wiser - I would kill him in a heartbeat, in the most brutal way possible. Over a pair of sunglasses. I'd like to say "it's the principle of it", but really, I would do it for the fun of it.
Nice, huh?

This day, and age

2011-06-06T10:57:00.001-07:00

Today's my birthday. Just another day in the year, another opportunity to ponder the arbitrary celebration of one particular moment in time as being more significant than any other, as if it represented some sort of video-game leveling up or something. Still, we're conditioned in our thinking to attach significance, to find patterns in the chaos and so: the calls, the cards, the co-workers taking me out to lunch. And I confess, it's hard not to see some sort of milestone in turning six hundred years old.

I trot out all the old lines, of course..."Yeah, I'm turning 200 - again!". "It's not the centuries, it's the light-years...", all the traditional bits. There's odd comfort in it, even if a large part of it is the smirking disdain for the cliches.

The funny thing is, I really don't feel six hundred. Or rather, I should say I don't feel like what I grew up thinking six hundred was SUPPOSED to feel like. I remember when I was younger, even up to my 100th, that 600 was OLD - maybe it's just that life-extension tech has gotten better, but I remember looking at anybody past the half-millennium and thinking that they'd just...shut down. That they'd accepted that their prime was over and that it was time to just sit down and stop moving. I know the culture's changed - they say 500 is the new 200, and folks my age have refused to accept the expectation that their lives are pretty much done and used up at that point, but I think there's more to it. I think the life I lead, the career choices I've made and the people I associate with, have all kept me feeling younger, more engaged. I even look at others my age and while they're certainly not the six-century fogeys I remember from my youth, I still secretly feel that I am younger and more alive at heart than any of them.

I raise mine eyes unto the hills

2011-06-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

It's a quote I always get wrong: "I raise my eyes up to the mountains from whence comes my salvation". Probably because down deep I don't really believe in Salvation. Oh, yes, inspiration, and even rescue but not really salvation. I don't know what it is about mountains though. I can be having a down, dirty, hot, sweaty day - cranky as all hell - and "raise my eyes" to the mountains and be refreshed, even if only for a moment. I could babble on about how monolithic and eternal they are, etc. etc. I could even go "gollum" for a moment and contemplate the deep dark secrets that must live in the roots of the misty mountain.

But really, when it boils down to it, I just really love mountains. I love the seaside, but I fear it, too as should anyone who has contemplated the destructive capabilities of the ocean. I admire the ocean, the waters and the tides but I could not live among them. I could live in the mountains. I've thought about it - just packing up and moving deep into the hills, disappearing from the sight of men into some hidden valley but really, I'm a social beast and it would not last. Because, after all, you bring your demons with you... and to live alone with them in the hollow hills would probably be something that not even the mountains could salve.

Subject:: This day and age

2011-06-01T00:50:00.000-07:00

2011-06-01T00:49:00.001-07:00

I would respond in the comments section but for some reason Blogger seems to think I'm not a member of my own blog. Or something. Anyhow, sure, I think comments would be dandy!

Comments?

2011-05-31T13:12:00.001-07:00

Hey all - Shawn and I were discussing this, and I raised the question of whether or not we should encourage readers of this blog to post comments. I know that for myself, I would love feedback on posts, but others may not feel the same. How does everyone feel about participants giving feedback on the posts? Of course, this would be with the understanding that most of us (all of us?) are not professional writers and have delicate, glasslike fragile egos so the comments would hopefully be constructive without being biting or harsh...thoughts? Answer in comments plizz...

The Vista

2011-05-30T18:26:00.001-07:00

Something about it caught my attention. I don't know what, exactly, but I pulled the car off of the road and trekked into the meadow, carrying my camera bag and tripod.

I set down the bag and looked out. Yes. The angles of the mountains and hills, the boulder-strewn field and the hairpin turn, the textured-but-not-quite stormy clouds – they all seemed just right. I pulled out my camera and turned it on, caught up in the excitement of what I would do with this vista.

I don't know how long I was there, waiting for just the right light, just the right arrangement of clouds, moving first left, then right, then forward, then back, all the while experimenting with combinations of settings to get the exposure just right. I do know I noticed that enough time had passed that I wouldn't make it to my sister's for dinner. The thoughts of familial acrimony and broken promises along with the recriminations that would come after missing the meal that was supposed to be a mutual agreement to stop placing blame and put our arguments behind us vanished as I worked.

After… I don't know, hours I suppose… of thoughtful preparation I snapped a couple pictures, confident that they were just right, and headed home, realizing that I was late enough now that dinner would be over by the time I got there, so there was no point on continuing on.

At home I hurried to my computer and downloaded the pictures. They were sharp, beautifully exposed and yet for some reason they simply didn't excite me. I played with some adjustments briefly, but then gave it up as a wasted effort and deleted them all.

I suppose there's a moral there, if you look for it.

Road

2011-05-30T16:25:00.000-07:00

Steven caught up with Rachel when she fell to the ground sobbing. She had just stopped running, bent over at the waist and then fallen to her knees and pitched forward as if all the strength had left her body in a few brief seconds. He stood beside her blood pounding in his ears, the sound of her wracking cries hollow on the wide mountainside.

He cast his gaze around the landscape; the spectacular peaks they had just passed between loomed high above to the south. He could see the ribbon of road they'd come down snaking up the grassy hillside, then beyond the green into the slate grey above the growth line and then finally, the last visible trace of the road vanished into the white snow far above. He turned slowly, his eyes following the road descending the steep alpine slope. He could still hear the echoes of their argument in the car...her accusation, there: right as they passed that sign. His non-denial response, there: in the shadow of that giant boulder. The part where they yelled over each other, there, screeching around that turn, there. He'd come almost all the way back around by now, looking down, down the slope, down the hillside to the road where it hairpinned left, where their car sat in the middle of the road still. He could see the doors standing open, the headlights still on. The crumpled fender, the body on the grass thirty or forty feet ahead. The bicycle twenty feet beyond that, crumpled into an abstract tangle of tubes and spokes and slender rubber tires.

His gaze remained there for a minute, two, then he looked down at Rachel.

"Hey," he said, "Shut the hell up."

Going Home – Thanatopsis

2011-05-30T14:37:00.001-07:00

Shawn decided to jump ahead so he kind of set up a precedent. I decided to jump backward to the Going Home topic as my first post, because of the resonance with today… Tucker

The combination of sunny and cold was something I'd grown up with but long since become unaccustomed to. The air was that dry, brittle cold that cuts through warm clothing and made my dress pants seem to provide no warmth at all. The realization that it wasn't even very cold by Indiana standards for January should probably have made me thankful, but the possibility of greater discomfort provided little consolation. In a couple of hours the warmth of the sun would make being outside more tolerable, but the sun was too low on the horizon to provide any appreciable warmth and hadn't even driven away the frost that crunched underfoot. I'd forgotten that, the sound of frozen grass crunching underfoot.

The cold colored every aspect of the morning. Our pace, which should have seemed both reverential and considerate of the age of many of our party, instead seemed glacial and agonizing; a brisk walk would have at least warmed my freezing legs. Avoiding the desire to trot and the overwhelming urges to let my teeth chatter or to let my arms and legs tremble violently drove most thoughts from my mind. The only thing I could really think of was how wrong the blue skies and fluffy clouds and the crisp, clean air seemed. A lifetime of movie and comic book clichés made it seem like the monochrome image of dark overcast, dreary rain and a sea of black umbrellas were the proper thing. Instead our Sunday-clothes-clad group trudged through the morning sunshine and frosty cold with the only the silent and solemn pace in common with those clichés.

At the graveside, next to the flag-draped coffin, waited three elderly men dressed in dark suits and VFW hats, holding rifles at port arms. They gave my mother a grim smile and nodded slightly to her, but otherwise remained unmoving. It made me ashamed of being so concerned about my comfort, seeing them standing there, uncomplaining and unshivering, clutching rifles in hands knobbed by arthritis.

As we took our positions by the coffin, I glanced at the headstone and had to suppress a laugh. I remembered when my mother and father had bought the plot and the headstone. It had been delivered with "19__" carved where it would show year of their deaths. My mother had been unwilling to die in the twentieth century to make their job easier and had insisted they remove it. Dad and I had laughed at her outrage then. Now the "1995" carved by his name made the humor seem more sardonic than it had at the time.

The minister read the twenty-third Psalm, my father's favorite, and some other scripture I don't recall, no doubt assuring us of a divine reward and our eventual reunion. I wasn't really paying attention. I don't recall whether he said any other words before turning to face the honor guard.

Taps was watery and slightly off-key, but moving in the way it always is. As the old men fired their three volleys, the sun had risen enough that its heat was making a fine steam rise from the melting frost and from the shoulders of their dark suits. The weight of the rifles made them tremble slightly, but they fired precisely in unison and held a long count between rounds. It was only as they lower their rifles and moved to the coffin that their age began to show in their gait and in the the effort it took to remain precise in the practiced ritual of folding the flag. As one of them walked to us, a white-gloved hand above the flag and another below it, I was surprised when he offered it, not to my mother, but to me. I looked at my elder sisters, expecting them to disapprove at this surprise, but the looks on their faces told me that it had been discussed in advance.

As I met the eyes of the aging soldier the moisture there showed the significance this act had for him. I realized that in many ways, despite all that had happened in his life, my father was most defined by that time when he was risking his life in Pacific. I realized that even though he rarely talked about it, that time nearly a decade before I was born when my father struggled alongside men who fought and died as part of the "Greatest Generation" was very much the core of who both he and this man handing me the flag were. I recalled the last serious discussion we'd had, when Dad told me that in those final days of Viet Nam, when it was a race between my draft number and the end of the draft, he had hoped that if I was called I would go to Canada and refuse to serve. And as I took the flag, I realized just how complex and confusing being a patriot can be.

The road less traveled

2011-05-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

This seemed like the right spot. They had picnicked there seven years ago. He picked her up from work for a lunch date and rather than getting a reuben at the diner he had driven her miles from anything and pulled a fairytale picnic out of the trunk of his car. He quoted Robert Frost gave her a single rose and got down on his knees and asked her to marry him. She could not believe how lucky she was, he was a young handsome writer, charming and interested in her(?) Too good to true.

He was all flash, the picnic was put together by the grocery store deli. He had misquoted the poem, and he did not know any others aside form the usual dirty limericks. The rose wilted. The wedding never happened, although he got free place to live while he was finishing his novel. Turns out finishing his novel meant fucking the drugstore clerk, the mail carrier, the neighbor and her sister. She had only caught him the one time, with the obstetrics nurse, ("Come on baby you know you are the one I love, but six weeks is too long for me to go without getting some.") She did not want their daughter growing up with a doormat as a role model, so she killed him. She rolled him out of the trunk of her car on that road, the one less traveled by,and that has made all the difference.

True Crime

2011-05-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

I'm still going to post something about the picture, but, Margaret and I were just discussing this event and some other "True crime" stories so I'm jumping ahead just a bit....

I suspect there's been a number of cases where people have wished me harm, only once have I had a gun put in my face and my life threatened. Oddly, it was a rather calm situation.

I had recently moved to Pittsburgh - the seedier part as it happens - from Denmark, Ohio. Denmark consisted of a general store and a church. Pittsburgh was considerably larger. I was a country bumpkin and a naïf. I don't recall that I expected the best of people or went into any situation fearless and in fact probably quite the contrary on both counts. I was intimidated by everything and trusted no one. But that's different than knowing how to look out for trouble; how to read people; knowing how to spot those that mean you harm. That would come later and I suspect has served me well since.

Anyhow, north side of Pittsburgh at night. I was returning to my apartment from making a call at a payphone as two men approached me. The asked if I had change for a $10 so I looked down briefly as I pulled the $11 form my pocket and when I looked up there was a pistol in my mouth. They took the cash, my wallet and searched my pockets. Then they ran.

I assume I was scared at the time but thinking back I really don't recall anything other than surprise. Maybe it was over too fast for fear to even register. I walked back to my apartment and told my roommate. The next morning I walked down to the police station to report the crime.

I recall the officer taking the report was pretty up front about the fact they really couldn't do anything but I wasn't expecting they could. The one thing that struck me though was that he said something to the effect of, "So it was two black men". I don't recall mentioning they were black. They were, but I hadn't mentioned that and remember thinking it unfair that he would jump to that conclusion. Now in all fairness it was an almost entirely black community so if only by law of averages chances are it would be two black men. Still, it impressed me as an unwarranted stereotype at the time. On a related note, I was 18 and had never known a black man. All I had to go on were negative stereotypes promoted by an all-white rural world. Still, it seemed unfair.

So what came of this? Well, I did in fact get my wallet back. Someone found it and dropped it in a mailbox and it was returned to me. I started carrying a punch knife in a Velcro quick release I made and added to the inside of my coat. I would like to point out I never had to use it but came petty close once when two friends and I put ourselves in a really stupid and dangerous situation (another story not for public consumption). Also, I learned to survive in the city. I learned what to look for and what to avoid. I learned how to walk and how to hold yourself. How to make eye contact and act casual even when you feel like running for your life. As a related skill, how to have a pleasant exchange with the cops when you know you're breaking at least 2 or 3 laws.

Mostly though I discovered something rather unexpected about myself. I learned I had it within me not to hold others responsible for the actions of people of a like color. I know this is stupefying obvious to anyone with half a brain and conscience to match, but, I was 18. I was from a rural farming community. It was worth $11.

Topic

2011-05-27T08:11:00.001-07:00

Going Home - 5/26/11

2011-05-26T03:36:00.000-07:00

I went home for Christmas this year. Man - the house looked like a fairy tale, like it always does - Mom had decorated the inside, and Dad went overboard on the lights outside, like always. Teensy lights twinkled on every bush and architectural detail, and dripped like icicles from the eaves, which had been sprayed white with fake snow, just in case. The tree was perfect - Mom couldn't help herself, she was like Martha Stewart, only even more creative and tasteful, if you can believe it. I stood outside for a moment, gaping at the work they'd put into it, before Dad came out to meet me in the driveway and pull me inside.

Everything smelled like apple cider and fruitcake. Rum punch sat on the counter, and my four brothers and two sisters were already gathered around, smiling and imbibing. Cheeks were pink with good cheer and booze, the talk was light and full of laughter - once again, I just stood and stared. Someone pressed a glass into my hand, and standing, I smiled automatically and said "Cheers!" to much clapping. I'd been away for much too long, I felt out of place, but I still tossed back the punch. Then I mumbled something about putting my bags away and headed for my old room. It hadn't changed much - the little room in the attic with just enough room for a twin bed and a desk. As the youngest, I was the only child who hadn't had to share, but I got the tiniest room in exchange. It was only fair. I plunked down on my bed for a minute, looking around. Not luxurious, but by my current standards, plenty nice enough. Mom had left a holiday card on the pillow - it said something seasonally appropriate, of course. Nothing was ever out of place with my parents. I tucked it back under the pillow, then after sitting a moment longer, I retrieved it and started making a paper airplane out of it. After testing it's flight characteristics a few times, I left it on the floor and went back downstairs.

Everyone cheered again when I came back down, and someone had refilled my glass. I took it again, but this time didn't drink.
"How was Africa?", my oldest brother asked, beaming.
"Um - it was great. Medical Teams International did a great job of placing us wherever there was the most need. I really enjoyed it."
Mom and Dad nodded in approval, and Dad held out his glass in commendation of my work. "We're so proud of you, honey!", Mom piped in, wiping a tear from her eye. Dad put his arm around her waist, blinking his own tears away as he smiled even wider.

I looked around again, smelling the food, hearing the CD of classic Christmas tunes wafting from the living room. Seeing the smiles, the tidiness, the lack of humanity everywhere. The faces looking at me, waiting for me to re-prescribe those meds that kept them from going off the deep end....Africa had been a relief to me.

Tom Wolfe was wrong - you CAN go home again. But you shouldn't.

Going home

2011-05-25T09:06:00.001-07:00

His van cruises into the neighborhood silently, gliding sharklike through the heavy darkness. The streets are empty; the only ones about at this time are slaves and gods - the rest, the cattle, all sleep. His tools lie on the passenger seat beside him - glass cutter, gloves, knives, a small silenced pistol.

The houses drift by unseen. The toys in the yards, the minivans in the driveways - he sees none of them; they are nothing to him. His mind is singularly focused on his house.

He turns onto his street. His house is there on the right glowing like a beacon in the night but he drives past it and parks at the back of the lot at the neighborhood pool several houses beyond. He remains motionless in the driver's seat for several minutes willing calm on the raging fire in his chest. When he moves it is with quick confidence; he gathers his tools and slides smoothly from the van and turns to walk along the path that runs through the woods behind the houses. A minute later he is there.

The house. His house. Those within, his servants - his slaves. Every object in the house, every molecule of air, every dust mote - his. The fire in his chest threatens to burst free but he wills it quiet. He selects the glass cutter and moves to the patio door.

Going home

2011-05-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

I went back to Ohio, but my city was gone

They say you can't go home again, and as it happens, in my case anyhow, they are right. It was as though someone had unpinned the town from this time and place as if to apply the metaphor in a literal sense. There was no going back as there was no "there" there anymore.

I sat looking through the windshield of my car at fallow fields running off to the horizon. There was a bank there. And just down the street the county courthouse and coffee shop just beyond that. Now, not even a road sign broke the empty vista of dead fields and fence posts. I turned off the engine with the car pulled off to the side of the road safely out of the way of any...traffic. There was no traffic. I could see down the road for miles in both directions and there was not a car in sight. In fact, I couldn't recall when I had last seen a car on my way here. Or when I had seen the last house or farm.

Yet, in my mind's eye, though distant and vague like as fading dream I could recall details. Details of my town now strangely gone. The A&P stood there and the Stop and Shop just down the street. A gas station here and another across the street. Over there there was a...a, store of some sort. Furniture maybe? Not sure. And over there, just past the town square was a movie theater. It closed when I was a pretty young but I remember seeing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid there and some other movie. I think there were soldiers in it. And there was a drug store with a an old time soda fountain somewhere. Somehow the details escape me but I know there was a parade every year and something about covered bridges.

The wind blows through the fields and the cattails rock back and forth like drunks on stilts. My town is gone. Metaphorically and it would seem literally as well. Somehow, after I moved away it was buried beneath more pressing and immediate matters and drifted off into the recesses of my mind and life and now, now it's gone all together. I guess it's true what they say.

Topic - Going Home

2011-05-23T16:35:00.001-07:00

Climbing shelves

2011-05-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

This is less a story than a ramble about a favorite memory.
We lived in a pretty big house, sure, but we had a pretty big family, too. All of the children shared rooms: The Boys had the log room (with its own bathroom!), the older ones shared spaces in the basement. Mary, Lisa and I had our bedroom upstairs over the garage. Triple decker bunk bed and all. So, as you imagine, private space was at a premium. In the summer, not so bad. We lived next to woods that went from Fairbanks to the North pole with just a few bears and moose in the way. You could get away in a "fort" and get some quiet brain space. In the long cold dark Alaskan winter though, it was a bit harder.
Then I found that you could climb the pantry shelves. And under the stairs down to the basement there was a huge "shelf" about 10 feet up and only accessible by a ladder OR THOSE SHELVES!. It had a light with a pull string! It only held xmas decorations and luggage so there was room for a limber tween to climb up, stretch out a leg and arm, get on the shelf and re-arrange the boxes to make a private little space with the light blocked from showing where you were. Swipe some cookies or an apple, grab a book, squirrel up those lovely shelves and voila!instant quiet reading space. No sisters, no brothers, no parents, not even a cat. You were the cat - in your own up-high lurking space, warmed by the basement heater and the lightbulb, just a little dusty but NO spiderwebs. I don't know to this day why someone else hadn't claimed that space yet but I'm just happy they didn't. And more happy that my parents either didn't know or didn't mind.

Top Shelf

2011-05-22T19:50:00.000-07:00

It was a normal Friday night. Regulars lined the bar, and the weekend folks pressed around the pool tables, spilling beer and hooting over wins and losses and bad shots. The house band was just cranking up, and a few brave and/or horny couples were making an early stab at the dance floor.

Tending bar is not hard. It's demanding of your time and multi-tasking abilities, but after you've done it for a number of years, it's all about anticipation and timing. It doesn't totally engage your mind, so there's always a little time to chat and look around, if you know your business. And after those regulars catch you up on their petty gossip and routine dramas, well, you kinda look for something to make the time go by, you know?

Well, that's when Jesus walked in. Not THE Jesus, just Jesus Alvarez, who lived down the block and had a slew of taco trucks working for him at the tender age of 28, god bless his entrepreneurial heart. He was fairly dusty - no, make that floury - and grinning like a coon, so naturally I stood up straight and hailed him with a wave from behind the bar. He smiled and held up a brown paper sack that I hoped was full of dinner for me, and so I made a flourish out of reaching for his usual Dos Equis and a cold glass. On the house, of course.

He slid into onto a free bar stool and I met him across the bar. "Hey, Jesus, what's happening?"

He shook his head, still smiling. Started to speak, then shook it again. Put the sack on the bar, stared at the bar top, tried one more time, and all he could get get out through a face full of teeth on full display was "Holy cow, man! You won't believe it!" And then he grinned even wider, which made me mentally change his adjective from "coon" to "cheshire cat". Boy, he was actually glowing with delight.

I couldn't help but grin back. "What the hell, man? You made me some extra-special tacos tonight, and it makes you so happy you can't even look me in the eye?" I ducked my head, trying to catch his eyes and see what he was talking about.

"It's not tacos, Sue." He shoved the bag towards me. I raised my eyebrows, then pulled the bag towards me. It didn't smell like tacos, and it wasn't warm, so I carefully unrolled the top and peeked inside. Holy shit -! It full of money. Stacks of bills all neatly banded together. Holy crap.

"Jesus, let's take this back into the walk-in, okay?" I rolled it back up as nonchalantly as I could, and unseated him in the direction of the freezer with a jerk of my head and a casual smile. Tom was over at the pool tables, so I whistled at him and indicated with my thumb that I was taking a quick break, and he nodded. At the back of the bar, I casually caught Jesus' arm, partly to look normal, but mostly so that he wouldn't change his mind and run off before telling me what kinda nonsense was happening in the taco biz these days.

I diverted him into the office once we walked behind the security door. Threw the bag on the desk. "Jesus, what hell is all this? Is this something illegal? Are you okay? Do you need help? Or are you being stupid about something? Do you need to be slapped in the face?"

Jesus looked startled. "Sue, what do you mean? Someone just handed me this bag, just now. Said it was for me. Told me to keep it. I tried to ask him what was up, and all he said was 'It's yours. It's your money, enjoy it.', and then turned and left. So I brought it in here, I thought you'd want to know!

I rubbed my eyes. "Jesus, was the guy hispanic? Older than you? What did he look like?"

"Shit, Sue, I think.....yeah, he was. I didn't feel like he was running from anyone, or like...well, I didn't question him. He didn't look scared or anything, or, or suspicious, or whatever. He just - handed me the money. Then he left."

I kept my hands over my eyes again. Someone had found about the temporal research, and someone had sent Jesus back to himself with a sack of cash. Goddammit. And whoever it was knew that Jesus and I were friends, and that he'd come to me, too, I'd bet that same sack of greenbacks. It was a message. I had some work to do tonight - after I got off work, anyway. Goddammit! For now, though, well....

I threw a grin at Jesus. Opened up the bag and dragged out a fat wad of twenties, thumbed the edge. He looked at me, and started to grin a little again himself.

"Well, dude, you know what this means, besides you being able to get more trucks out there?"

He smiled and shook his head. "Sue, I knew you'd tell me - what does it mean, huh?"

"No more Dos Equis when you come in here, baby! From now on..." I leaned in to press my head against his and throw an arm around his neck. "Top shelf only, amigo!"

On the shelf

2011-05-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

The shelf is high. I sit on the shelf sometimes, but sometimes I don't.

My friends sit on the shelf. They are my friends, and they sit beside me. Brown bear sits beside me and the book sits beside me too. They're my friends.

Sometimes we don't sit on the shelf. Sometimes we lay around the room all over the place and we don't go there but the boy puts us there. We stay there until the woman comes, and she is cross and she puts us back on the shelf, because that is where we go.

I like the shelf. It is high and I can see all my friends in the room, even the ones who don't sit with me on the shelf. I can see the dog on the dresser and the small man on the small table beside the bed. I can see the bear who lays on the bed. They are my friends.

One time a new friend came. He was new and there was a lot of excitement because he was new and nobody knew who he was and nobody knew if he would be our friend. We were afraid of him for a while, but then he became our friend and now nobody is afraid of him anymore. One time he went away for a long time but then he didn't come back. I miss him.

There are others who come sometimes and put us where we don't go. They make us move around for some time but then they go away and they leave us where they were and we lay there. I don't like when they leave us where we don't go. I go on the shelf.

ICR

2011-05-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

A raggedy teddy with only one eye.

A music box, key long lost.

A faded picture. It it of his grandfather? Father? Himself? He couldn't remember anymore.

101 Knock-Knock jokes. A tin soilder. A paper fortune teller. Old bubblegum wrappers. He felt as though he should find some significance in the things he found, but none came.

A faded baseball. A love note. A picture of Elvis. He doesn't know why he felt compelled to pull in the step-ladder from the garage and investigate the old shelf high on his bedroom wall, but he did. Turning over the dusty trinkets between his wizened and liver-spotted hands, he searched for some reason as to why he would have such a strange assortment of things kept up on an out of sight shelf.

"Dad, what are you doing?" He turned, confused, and replied.
"I can't remember."

The Shelf from Carter

2011-05-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

The view here on the shelf is amazing: snow-capped peaks in a dizzy-making, spiky-looking carpet below the horizon. It took six hours to hike up here, then another thirty minutes to scrape the shelf into the snow just below the peak. It's not that easy to dig out and then flatten a spot in the snow using just an ice axe, so you get sweaty with the effort. If the light lasts long enough and you've done this before, you put in an extra five to 10 minutes scraping a second shelf where you can stow your gear and set up your kitchen. Otherwise everything gets stashed at your feet, where you are sure to tangle yourself up in it during the night as you unconsciously shrink away from the edge of the shelf. You know, even in your sleep, that rolling the wrong way can take you over the edge and send you on a terrifying sleigh ride down the glacier in your slick-surfaced nylon-coated sleeping bag that would probably slide faster than a wet otter down a mud bank. And now, just thinking about it, you're all sweaty again. Time to stick the ice axe into a picket on the edge and lie down for a tense night's sleep. Dawn will be spectacular.

Topic: On the shelf

2011-05-20T07:36:00.001-07:00

Best birthday ever

2011-05-19T07:00:00.001-07:00

He closes the apartment door with his left hand, the grocery bag and mail in his right. Flips on the one overhead light in the tiny kitchenette, places the mail and the plastic bag on the counter. Five of the six beers into the fridge, all but one of the cardboard slabs of frozen dinners into the freezer. The bag gets saved for use later cleaning out the cat's litter box.

As he slides the frozen plastic tray out of the box and folds back one corner of the foil his phone rings. He lets it ring while he puts the dinner in the microwave and punches in the time, then picks up the phone off the counter and hits the button to answer.

He stands resigned while a small tinny voice sings on the other end of the line; finally the voice stops and he says,

"Hi Mom, thanks."

The voice speaks for a long while as he stands, flipping through the mail. Junk, junk, bill, junk.

"No, nothing special. Had to work a little late. How's Dad?"

The voice begins again and he stares distractedly out the kitchen window for a time, then replies,

"Do you need me to call the doctor's office again?"

As she continues speaking the microwave beeps ready and he takes out the dinner - steaming in some spots, still cold in others - and places it on a plate. He grabs a fork out of a drawer filled with a loose assortment of utensils and picks up the beer bottle with two fingers while holding the plate with the same hand, and walks a couple of steps to his chair. He puts the plate and the bottle on the side table and switches the phone to his other hand.

"Okay Mom, listen, I have to go...thanks for calling. Yeah...yeah, I love you too. I will. Thanks. Bye."

He sits down in the chair and opens his beer. He picks up the remote, turns the tv on, and starts to flip through the channels.

Best Birthday Ever

2011-05-19T03:49:00.001-07:00

It was my second year in college, and I'd been working my ass off to pay the bills- I had three jobs, no free time, and and a bank account that barely teetered above "zero", even on my multiple paydays.

Christmas break was just an opportunity to work more - celebrating my birthday, or Christmas, seemed like an exhausting waste of time. I had homework to do, money to earn, and no energy for decorating the house or even sharing a beer.

So on my 30th birthday, I got to celebrate by waiting tables until almost midnight, then walked home through the snow, too tired to even share a shift drink with my coworkers at the restaurant. In fact, I hadn't even told anyone it was my birthday.

The house was dark when I walked up, which made me faintly angry. Granted, my boyfriend was often thoughtless, but if he was out with friends on MY birthday, he could have at least told me. I could see Christmas trees twinkling in other houses up and down the street, and again, I felt irritated at the boyfriend's lack of initiative - I loved Christmas, but why did I always have to get the tree? This year, it was just out of the question. I'm sure I sighed, standing outside my front window in the dark. It was depressing. What a way to start a new decade in my life.

I walked into the dark kitchen, dropped my things on a chair, and was getting ready to walk into the dark living room when I heard the boyfriend say "Honey-?"
Puzzled, I cocked my head, wondering why he was sitting in the living room in the dark. Then the lights came on, but not the usual lights. Christmas lights of every shape and color and were strung extragantly over every surface of the huge living room - the walls, beams, staircase, bookshelves, and best of all, a Christmas tree! A room full of friends was suddenly illuminated in every color of the rainbow. Birthday gifts were piled under the tree. My mouth fell open in wonder, and tears filled my eye just as the word "Surprise!" filled my ears.

Best birthday ever.