The First Date (Part 2)

"So, where're you from?" he asked, simply because it was ground that had to be covered at some point during the evening.
"Oh, all over. Boston, New York, Georgia, South Dakota, L.A., Seattle, Phoenix... I sort-of hopscotched around my whole life," she answered without looking up.
"You a military brat?" he asked, because it was the obvious answer.
"Am I that obvious?" she asked, now intrigued.
"Oh, I don't know. Tough as nails woman making her way around the city with no help from anybody. I guess I figure that kind-of fierce independence usually starts young."
"Well, I guess you're right. Are you always this good at reading people?" she asked.
"It sort-of goes with the territory, you know?"
"Yeah, I imagine it's an occupational hazard, huh? So how'd you get into journalism anyway?"
"Um... indirectly. I liked writing but I was never any good at fiction. I could think of a lot of different angles to look at something that was already there but I could never figure out how to draw something from scratch. I tired, you know. That's what I went to school for. I mean, not that writing isn't writing to some extent but the program I was in didn't really give much credit to non-fiction. It wasn't until I went on my summer abroad that I found people who appreciated what I could write."
"And where was that?"
"London. Typical, I know. But I always wanted to go."
"Well, it makes sense for a writer."
"I guess," he said, and smiled at her.

My Favorite Apocopation

"They couldn't shoot an elephant from this dist-" *gunshot*
-General John Sedgwick, said to his soldiers before being shot dead

Damned Superstitious Chicks

“Oh, no- this is very bad. Very bad indeed,” the woman muttered as she stared intently at the book she was consulting.
“What- what is it?” came a nervous voice from the small man across the table from her. He played with his tie as he often did while nervous, one of the main reasons he could never play poker with co-workers. “What does it say?” he asked, leaning forward to try to spy the passage of the book that was so upsetting her.
“Venus is in retrograde today- that means she’s begining her return to direct motion through the zodiac,” the woman said, voice loaded with anticipation.
The little nervous man stopped fumbling with his tie and looked at her, dumfounded. He blinked at her, waiting for an explanation that made sense.
“You don’t know who Venus is?” the woman asked, lowering her eyes at him.
“Uh, I thought it was a planet,” he replied.
“Well, yes- this is true. But in the signs of the zodiac Venus has to do with matters of the heart, based on the goddess of love.”
“Ok…” he said, still not understanding.
“Well, in matters of the heart you must be active, and having venus in retrograde is a time of fate, of true nature kicking in. It can be a time of great possibility, a time of change and reinvention,” she said looking over the cards in front of her.
“Ok, that sounds good” he said, starting to get excited.
“But you have the High Priestess!” she exclaimed, pointing to the card in the center.
“Ok- that’s… bad?”
“Well, the Priestess is patient- she waits and observes, she does not act. This can be a time of contemplation and self discovery. But with the four of swords reinforcing it it means inaction,” she said, referring to the card in the lower left corner.
“Ok… so, I’m fated to wait?”
“No, fate requires action, as does love and trust. You cannot open your heart while sitting patiently on the side and waiting for love to come to you. Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘when fate comes knocking, you open the door’?”
“Uh… no, actually,” he said, looking down at the cards with his brow furrowed in worry. “But what does that mean?” he asked, pointing to the figure of the man upside down.
“The hanged man,” she said, stroking the card as if contemplating. “It means surrender, surrendering to your fate.”
“And my fate is?” he asked suspiciously.
“It appears that your fate is to be alone,” she concluded solemnly.

Outside his friend looked over his shoulder to watch him emerge, the door ringing closed behind him.
“So, what’d she say?” he asked, excited.
The nervous man, now deflated, hung his head as he said “She said I don’t have a chance in hell at getting laid,” he said. “Apparently I’m too inactive to make anything happen with this chick.”
“Ha!” his friend exclaimed excitedly, reaching out an open palm. “Pay up!”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fresh twenty dollar bill which he’d gotten from the atm on the corner of Delancey and Olind only an hour ago. He angrily slapped it down into his friend’s waiting hand. “Last time I go after a chick who believes in astrology,” he muttered as he dismounted the last step and started his walk back to the subway.

Santa Beard

"What'll ya have?" the old man asked me. I had a hard time seeing his face over his giant Santa beard. Normally it would've made me smile. Not tonight.
"Got any nepenthe?" I asked, then immediately kicked myself for trying to show off my useless trivia knowledge.
"What's your trouble?" he asked without skipping a beat. I was surprised and it caught me for a second, forcing me to study him a bit more closely. He didn't strike me as anything more than on old bartender- large beer gut, working-man hands, crows feet that said he had to fake smiles a lot. But if I forced myself to study his eyes a little more closely there seemed to be some depth there I'd missed the first time. I decided to indulge him partly because it was technically part of his job and mostly because I was feeling sorry for myself.
"Eh, usual, I guess- Job, boss, wife."
"So you wanna bitch about 'em or just shut up and drink?"
He surprised me again and I looked him with suspicion now. Maybe he hadn't read the same job description I had.
"You always this blunt?"
"Just like to know what you're ordering is all." He looked straight at me with no sympathy. It bugged me now that he got the reference, maybe he was too smart to be a good bartender.
"Tequila, straight up" I said.
"Wow, you are tryin' to forget." he said while pouring the shot. He was right, of course. I never drank the stuff straight unless I was aiming for the fastest route of travel between sobriety and inebriation. It bugged me that he knew that, too. I looked at the Santa beard again and figured out that it had nothing to do with being jolly.

The First Date

The pair emerged from the art museum in silence, each too scared to make the first remark on what they had just seen.
Ben ran over the evening in his head, cursing himself for selecting a modern art museum as a first date.
“I might as well have taken her to a political debate!” he berated himself. “What the hell was I thinking?” He looked over at the delicate jaw line of his date and the hair falling over her ear and lamented the fact that he wouldn’t have a chance in hell at touching it if she found out he knew nothing about modern art.
They walked on and Ben wondered if he should wait for her to speak and just fake agreement or if she would know that he was faking it by not having the passion to speak first. Her lack of verbalizations only fueled his nervousness and he could feel the cold sweat starting to drip down his back. In his mind he visualized the success of his evening crashing and burning like a shot-down fighter jet. They walked on and still she said nothing.
Finally, when he felt like he would explode if she didn’t say something, he gambled on an opening sentence.
“So…” he began nervously, “what’d you think?”
She seemed to pause as if gathering herself, then looked up with bright eyes and responded “I’ve got to be honest- I’ve never been a fan of bricolage art.”
“Oh thank god,” he exhaled. “I didn’t know what to say- you were so quiet in there I thought you were seriously contemplating the pieces. I saw that pile of melted doll parts and I was petrified,” he laughed.
“Oh, I know- and that bath tub filled with packing peanuts and corn syrup? What was that?” she said, her voice light and amused.
He looked at her then, noting the raised eyebrows and brilliant smile and thought that he might just have a shot afterall.

Dr. Edelstein’s All- Natural Tonic

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To My Friends on the Eve of their Marriage

A wassail to my friends as they embark on the crazy, fun, challenging, lovely, inspiring, and wondrous journey of marriage:
May you never stop making each other laugh.
May you never run out of games to play.
May there be some jokes that only the two of you will ever understand.
May you help each other grow.
May your family grow in joy.
May your disagreements be short and your make-up snuggles plentiful.
May your vacations take you to wherever you want to be together.
May your home forever emit warmth and welcome.
May you find yourselves stronger after the storms you face.
May you find yourselves blessed time and again, and always be grateful.
And may your memories last far longer than your bodies.
To J & J: Congratulations!

Nothing New Under the Sun

How funny that when I saw the word of the day today I thought "Oh, I know what that is- but when did roleplay terminology make it into the dictionary?" How surprised was I when I clicked on the entry and found that the term meant something entirely different than the context I knew it in.

But that shouldn't really be surprising. What's that saying? Nothing new under the sun? It's a concept I've struggled with a long time. If these ideas have been done a million times before than why are mine any different?

The answer? They're not, really. Creativity isn't usually much more than a new spin on an old idea. When it comes down to it they're the same characters in the same roles with the same struggles and quests and story arcs. The difference? Those little twists and idiosyncrasies that come from seeing the same story through someone else's eyes.

I was recently describing a brief synopsis of the novel I plan to start writing in a few weeks to a friend and I found myself labeling it in terms of movies and stories it was similar to. And you know what's funny about that? I didn't mind.

My novel, at its basis, is like a whole lot of other stories that have already been told. And that, for some strange reason, doesn't bother me.

I used to talk about ideas I had or stories I was thinking and I'd get reactions of "Oh, this sounds like this book" or "Oh, that's just like the so and so movie that came out a few years ago". When I got those reactions I'd get all defensive- trying to come up with some reasons why my story was different, unique, a completely new creation.

But I realize now- maybe because I'm older, maybe because I've been through NaNoWriMo once and found that I didn't care how many ideas I recycled if it filled my word count- that there is nothing really "new". And if there was, we probably wouldn't get it anyway.

The reason we can so easily connect with stories and characters and quests is because they are familiar to us, because we have seen them before. That's what allows us to connect with them. Even in science fiction and horror and fantasy where the laws of physics may not apply or the creatures aren't human or the universe is strange we still find a way to connect because of the familiar parts. The protagonist's struggle, their desires, their needs, their confusion. We've seen it all before so we can put ourselves in their shoes without thinking twice.

I'd even argue that if there was something so new that there was nothing even remotely familiar about it there'd be no story because the audience wouldn't be able to attach. Like the art of schizophrenics- it's amazingly creative, but no one really connects to it because that world is too foreign and alien to us, we can't see ourselves inside.

So whether mana is rechargeable magic needed to cast spells or another way to think of energy or someone's soul or the name of some random alternative rock group doesn't really matter- chances are some will recognize it. And in the end, that's a good thing.

The Acta Fumeria

"No, that is is not what I am saying. I am not- what did she say?" he rummaged on his desk for the newspaper article which had so enraged him. "Attempting to destroy the proud history of our small town by adding the memoir of a deranged mind to our town history," he said, slamming the offending paper back down on his desk. "All I am saying is that this happened here and we can't hide it!" he argued.

"It's damaging to admit that such a vivid trade took place here, it reverses a lot of what we thought we knew about the town's founders and-"

"Damaging? To who?" he interrupted his consultant. "We didn't run illegal Opium dens in order to fund the buildings. We didn't set down this "religious morality" society- we're not the hypocrites, they are. And if we lie about the history of this place then we become just like them. Look, I'm not the one who said let's hire these crazy archaeologists to dig a giant hole in the center of the square after some kid found a 19th century toothpick- that was you. And if you recall, it was you who argued that the damned book was such an important find. If I'd had my way this damned 'Acta Fumeria' would have stayed buried along with the crazy italian who wrote it and we could have kept having our 'Butt Out' day without ever thinking more of it. But we can't reverse history. So our smoke free town used to be the hottest opium emporium this side of San Francisco. At least now we can say that we learned from our mistakes, right?"

Check the Site First

Everyone had told him he was crazy to buy a piece of waterfront property in a place he'd never been.

"You gotta check the site first!" they'd told him.

"What if it's a scam?"

"My cousin brought property down in Florida that looked like beach front property in the brochure but ended up being in the middle of a swamp! That could happen to you!"

Virtually no one had thought he was sane. But no one had his passion for adventure and steadfast belief that he could make such a leap and be better for it. No one considered that thrid world fisherman probably didn't have the skills to swindle a well educated American. No believed in the global connectivity that allowed him to discover and take advantage of this opportunity. But they would see they were wrong.

... At least that's what he'd told himself on the flight over as his nerves started to finally kick in with shock waves of that terrifying "uh-oh" feeling.

If he'd seen a brochure he would had said that it certainly didn't match but as was all he'd to go off of was the fisherman's description and his own imagination. And his imagination had envision a vast channel leading to an ocean teeming with fish, lush tropical plant life providing ample shade, a sandy spot set back from the shore to build a hut and a small village the closest sign of civilization.

What he saw was not what he imagined.

"Um- er... sam- samahani?" he said trying to get the attention of the man in the nearby boat pulling a crab cage out of the water. "Is this.. um... bahari mtazamo?"

"hakuna, hii ni tiba ya maji taka kupanda" the man yelled back.

He fumbled through his translation book trying to find the words the man had yelled. "Waste" was the first one he discovered, then eventually "Water" and "Treatment". The man in his little boat had set off long before he finally formulated the sentence "waste water treatment plant". Looking at the map again he found the piece of land he had paid for- "Sea View." And indeed, sitting on a slab of concrete in front of him was a large sewage plant with the words "Bahari Mtazamo" on the banner.

He couldn't help but think that it would've been cheaper to buy a swamp in Florida.

The Unanswerable Question

Mr. Charles Wilkes saw himself as one of the few remaining ‘true believers’. He didn’t teach because of the pay which was considerably better than many other professions. Or because he loved kids far more than adults who he saw as lacking the nympholepsy for life that children naturally possessed and which kept them in state of unending curiosity. Or because of the summers off which allowed him to continue working on his unpublishable novel while sleeping late and catching the occasional thunderstorm on the beach.

No, he taught because he genuinely believed in teaching the next generation, in the ability of inheritors to make a change with what is passed down. He taught because he honestly loved it. And it was this, he thought, that made him a good teacher. It wasn't because he was “cool” and let the kids call him Charlie. It wasn’t because he rewarded good grades with baking parties or class trips that were purely for fun. It wasn’t even because of his bonus questions.

He had devised the bonus question system years ago as a way to allow children to naturally let off the steam they needed to let off at the end of a test. After handing out the exam and allowing the allotted amount of time for the students to enter their answers he would collect them back, hand out a few blank pieces of paper to each child, and then raise the projector screen to show the hidden question on the board.

His questions weren’t brilliant, he was the first to admit. But they allowed for a great deal of imagination and creativity which he desired above all other qualities. Especially because you didn’t win by getting the question right, you won by coming up with the most creative answer you could devise in five minutes.

The student who answered “A little boy and a stuffed tiger” to the question “Who are Calvin & Hobbes?” scored no points. A student who answered “Two famous philosophers” also scored no points. No, the entry that won was the little boy who answered “Calvin was a famous jet fighter pilot who single-handedly turned the tide of the Great Indo-China war of 1741 simply because he loved the crumb cakes of a famous baker named Hobbes and didn’t want his bakery to be destroyed in the war. Oh, he really liked his black and white cookies, too.” That little boy was Alexander.

Alexander won far more often than any other student in the class simply because his answers were so intricately woven in such a short period of time and never took the obvious into consideration. He won for drawing a complex diagram in answer to the question “What would chairs look like if our knees were on the back of our legs?” He won for writing a recipe with several difficult steps in answer to the question “How do you make a flying melon?” And he won for creating a series of dance steps in answer to the question “What is an elastic conversion?”

Partially because Alexander won so often, and partially because he was a good student the bonus test points originally offered as reward became boring and Alexander asked from something different. After a brief discussion, the class concluded that in reward for answering the question the winning student should be able to ask the teacher a question in return.

In the beginning, Charlie got some boring questions like “How do you skin a cat?” and “What is the air-speed velocity of unladen swallow traveling through the forest at noon?” which didn’t require too much thought and ended up with answers that seemed to rival Alexander’s, at least to Charlie.

But one particular afternoon, after learning that he was once again the winner of the bonus question, Alexander got a very serious, very concerned look on his face. His brow furrowed, his lip tucked firmly between his teeth and his thumbs furiously circled each other as Alexander looked down at his desk and sat in silence. Charlie was enticed by this, expecting that the boy was coming up with a masterful conundrum for him to solve. After what seemed like far longer than his fellow students could possibly bear Alexander nodded his head and looked up to his teacher with a determined expression.

“Ok, Charlie. I have a real question. One that I haven’t been able to get a straight answer from out of anyone.”

At this Charlie’s heartbeat jumped and he tried to brace himself for what seemed like it would be something completely inappropriate for a class of 8th graders.

“Why,” Alexander continued, “do we die?”

The class turned in anticipation to look at the silent teacher in front of the room. Charlie considered the young boy standing at his desk. He knew the look in his eyes as it was one he’d had himself many times. When you look to an adult you respect and hope that they will be honest and tell you the truth that you need to hear. When you wait for a piece of invaluable information to be dispensed.

Unfortunately for Charlie, he didn’t know a deserving answer. He could refer him to a science lesson about how the cells of the human body break down over time or point him in the direction of a philosophical discussion or tell him to ask his parents what their religion teaches them or cite some old country expressions his grandmother used to tell him which always seemed profound. But none of those would have given him the answer he was seeking. So, he told him the only answer that would treat the question with the respect it deserved.

“I don’t know,” he said.

A Conversation Overheard in the Ale House

“Ah, Grews- where the hell have ya been?”
“Oh you know, same ‘ol, same ‘ol. A scrap o’ wood here, a bit o’ paint there, stack the hay in the barn and if I’m lucky I end up at the end of me day with enough for a pint. What ya been about?”
“Ah, well- funny you should mention but I’ve found meself a new profession.”
“Oh, have ye? Well, don’t keep us waiting ol’ Douf- what are ya doing?”
“I’ve been digging the graves down at the Ol’ Barley.”
“Grave digger? Well, why, man?”
“Because there’s no better place to fossick for riches, me dull friend!”
“Ya… ya steal from the bodies?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it stealin- they got no use for ‘em no more. Who needs a pocket watch in eternity? It’s ludicrous the things people send to be buried in the ground.”
“But aren’t ye afraid of yer eternity?”
“Nah, that’s all rubbish they tell ya to keep ya actin all good n’ proper. I never did take for such tales.”
“But… but what about the grim?”
“The grim? What are ya blatherin’ on about now?”
“The GRIM- don’t you know anything? The grim ain’t no tale- he’s real. I heard of this ol Barley man back when I was a wee one- he got himself the same scheme as you… and the Grim got ‘im.”
“What do ya mean ‘got ‘im’?”
“I mean he pulled him right down into the ground an ate ‘im alive. No one could hear him howlin’ and wailin’ under all that dirt. And when they found his bones they were licked dry. That’s what I mean the grim got ‘im.”
“How do ya know it was ‘the grim’? He coulda’ been eaten by a pack of wolves.”
“No, no- the bite marks, they were human-sized. No animal fur or paw prints or nothing, just a nice set ‘a clean bones.”
“Oh, you’re all full feathers an ticks- there ain’t no grim. I bet ya mammy just tell ya that to keep you from snoopin’ around in the Barley.”
“Nope, it’s true, I tell ya- ask around the mill, they’ll tell ya. Lost a lot of souls wanderin’ through the Barley lookin’ for riches, just like ya.”
“I ain’t got time for ya mad rambling, I got me a grave to dig.”
“Be careful- the Grim might be feelin’ a bit peckish bout now!”

Don't Wake the Baby

He walked into the room half asleep without really thinking of his surroundings or the caution he should have taken. Inevitably, he knocked over the book which had been precariously placed on the edge of the table and it fell to the floor with a small but audible clatter.

A fierce “Sshhhh!” came from behind him and he turned to see his wife leaning over the crib of their new born, feverishly mussitating the words “I just got her to sleep!”

He held a finger to his lips and tiptoed back out of the room, careful not to breathe too loudly.

Zen in everday life

Portrait of a moment in time:

A young woman sits at her desk, buzzing with caffeine and nervous energy, eying her phone nervously. She is clearly trying not to focus on the phone: she searches the binder in front of her for information, enters it into her excel sheet, strives to work productively. But her eyes involuntarily wander back to the phone.

She picks it up, checks for voicemail. There is none. Of course there wouldn't be, she thinks to herself, it didn't ring. She puts it back down and mentally chastises herself.

The phone rings. She jumps, fumbling to answer it. Her light eyes instantly dull as she realizes it is not the call she's been waiting for. And so the day moves on... This young woman is me, of course. And this moment in time is my Friday.

I've studied the power of now. I've talked about living in the moment. I've even studied buddhism at a monastery when I was younger: learning to meditate, trying to imagine life outside of the realm I know it in. During calm periods of life I've actually lived in the moment- for a moment or so. I've always thought, in that way that someone who isn't a buddhist monk might think, that if I spent all day everyday mediating and studying the words of those much more enlightened than me, and had nothing more to distract from these practices than sunlight, wind and the occasional chirping of a grasshopper that I might be capable of reaching satori, too. (Maybe even nirvana, eventually.)

But I don't. My life is real. I have nothing but attachments to the physical world. Every second of everyday I am constantly pulled into it, like gravity. Sure, you can jump- but you always come back down to earth. It makes sense that monks must seek such a simple existence in order to achieve enlightenment: there's just too much noise otherwise.

So I think that hoping for a higher way of living that would somehow allow me to walk the path of enlightenment while still living in the real world is just too tall of an order. At least for me.

No, I think the key that I should seek is not to understand the true nature of existence. I think what I should seek, and what I might actually have a shot at, is being at peace with NOT KNOWING.

Not knowing when or if I will get what I want, what my life will look like in the future, how I will handle the challenges I face, or what the hell it all means. To know, in an enlightened way, that I DON'T know and to be ok with that? Now that's enlightenment worth seeking.

Alive! ...and writing again

Any of you who have still bothered to check the site over the past several months of my absence have probably wondered where I’ve been. Well, I’ll tell you.
On a whim, I joined a Uruguayan rugby team. You know- for shits and giggles. Well, wouldn’t you know that right on the eve of the first big match our plane goes down smack dab in the middle of the Andes mountains. A whole butt load of people died and those of us that survived did so by resorting to acts no human being should ever dream of, let alone perform. Oh, and it was freakin’ cold, too! But, I survived. Safe to say, I’ve quit rugby.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing…. Or it may be some book I read a while ago. Whatever.
Either way, I’m back. And it’s getting to be that time again. Time to gear up for my favorite holiday and for the biggest writing challenge I’ve taken on in my life thus far. No, not the Pulitzer Prize but NaNoWriMo! I live with the belief that if I did it last year I can do it again.
But, it’s only a month away and I’ve got a lot of warming up to do if I expect to be able to pump out well over 1,000 words a day! So, towards that end, I have selected a warm up challenge for myself to perform over the next month.
It starts with the aid of a favorite site of mine, Dictionary.com. Despite having gone to a good school with some of the most intelligent and well-read people I’ve ever met my vocabulary is still limited. So, in order to improve my vocabulary I signed up for Dictionary.com’s Word of Day in which they send me a random word and definition every single day.
Since it’s common knowledge that you have to actually USE a word in order to absorb it I plan to use each “Word of the Day” for the month of October. One word, everyday, for the next 31 days.
In order to give myself room to experiment and to warm up writing muscles which have atrophied from inactivity I will attempt to use more than just one sentence to house each word. I’ll do random blog entries about various observations or thoughts, try to throw some short stories in there, some non-fiction, some outrageous fiction, some holiday-based entries (it is October, after all) and maybe even a poem or two.
I promise nothing about quality or clarity, simply to use the word in a way that demonstrates my understanding of it. I’ve added a link on the side so you can check the definition and judge whether or not I’ve used it correctly.
Should I complete this task I should be in pretty good shape to start NaNoWriMo on November 1st and actually stand a chance at crossing the 50K word mark by the end of the month.
So, if you’re at all interested, stay tuned! You can be literary judges, hecklers, cheerleaders, whatever. I’ll happily read any comments you post (and promptly delete them if they are links to Japanese porn sites*_*).
Wish me luck, everybody!