Afternoon's Work

I can see the fluttering of two monarchs in the neighbor's garden.  And because I want to be the type of person who crosses the street to look at monarchs, I force myself to get up and cross the street.  I stand, doing my best to take notice, but I'm anxious to derive some kind of meaning from the noticing so I can go back across the street and write about it, which means of course that I'm not noticing at all, but rather thinking about what I should be noticing, and then thinking about how to write about what I'm not noticing because I'm too busy thinking about what I should write.

When a car comes by, 

the two monarchs flutter up 

and around before settling back down. 

Their bodies are fuzzy black 

with the cleanest white spots, 

a body builders dream body, 

all chest, legs thin as veins. 

Its proboscis throbs, 

probing the mound of a black eyed susan, 

its body convulsing with the afternoon's work.  

Its wings open and close.

How Do I Know You?

What I Learned About Being a Miner From the Quincy Mine Tour, Hancock, MI

Drillers worked in groups of four, all related.  One man stood against the rock, holding the near yard-long bit to his shoulder. The three others swung sledges, while the first gave the bit a quarter turn after each hit.  If they were good, in a twelve hour shift, they could drill three holes, enough in six days to fill with powder, blasting the rock small enough to haul up.  When their candle flickered out, one man had to trip his way through the pitch black tunnel to the supply room, hoping not to break a leg or fall down an open shaft.

When the mine grew deep enough that it took the men over an hour to climb down to work, management installed a lift that dropped the men at twenty miles an hour.  At it's deepest, Quincy was 92 levels.  It was over a hundred degrees at the bottom of the mine and steamy, even in the dead of winter, so the men had to go to a dry room to change out of their sopping clothes and cool down before going out into the snow. 

If you weren't killed by a fall or collapse, you went deaf or were electrocuted or developed black lung. Seems fair to assume that there was a significant amount of seasonal affective disorder, depression, trauma.

At the end of 1800's, air compressed drills allowed two men, and later just one, to do in a day what four used to do in a week.  But these advancements proved to be even more deadly.  The miners called the drills "widow makers".  From time to time, the men went on strike.  

In 1913, in the midst of a massive walkout, for Christmas the strikers organized a party where dozens of people died, including many children, stampeding from the dance hall, down the stairwell.  The facts beyond that are only speculation. Some say someone yelled fire even though there wasn't one. Some say they died in the crush because the closed doors opened in. But there's claims of photographs proving the doors opened out, that the strikers were trapped because someone outside had tied the doors shut.

In a posed photograph full of tough dirty men, there is a single row of softer ones in suits and bowlers and one stern woman in frills, wrist bones to jawline, a billowing black skirt and bountiful hat.  Who are these people, no different from any of us, except how the straws were drawn?  Each with his own set of loves and struggles  A family, a dream, a home.

On Standing Before The Moon

if not this

then what

but that

Le Flaneur, 2:03 p.m.

Right-Handed Right Hand Imitating Left-Handed Left Hand

House Rules

More Selections from a Guatemalan Journal, 1998. Livingston. The Rise and Fall of the Hotel Flamingo.

Jenks

I spent a lot of money one year, flying out to San Francisco to take a four day writing workshop with a famous editor.  My first hope was that I would be discovered, though I'd never admit that to anyone.  My second hope was that I'd learn what was wrong with my fiction.  

Here’s what I learned about Jenks.  He was a small man with a penchant for drinking, a fancy San Francisco house, a famous writer wife and a profound and consuming love of reading.  After applying to the workshop, he called and talked with me, in a detailed and thoughtful way about the two writings I had submitted.  I felt special but it turns out he does that with everyone who applies, a number I’ve now forgotten, though big enough, I remember, to stun.

Jenks had edited an anthology of American short stories with Raymond Carver.  We were assigned to read a number of stories from it for class discussion.  It was an impressive collection.  

After discussing published work, we discussed each other's.  Everyone wanted to make a good impression.  Jenks wanted a fiery conversation.  But of course, everyone was being very polite.  Jenks stirred it up, attacking the story I liked best, a period piece about a colonial girl.  Jenks said it was trite, that he'd seen a thousand such stories come across his desk, and that a writer's time is worth more than that.  A few fell in line with Jenks, irritating him even more.  "Isn't anyone going to defend it?"  

One older man said that he thought the sex scene was well done, infuriating Jenks, who declared it cliché. (Interesting to note: In an earlier discussion, I had said another classmate’s story of a girl and a boy falling in love while on horseback read like a Harlequin Romance.  Everyone, especially Jenks, thought my comment out of line and too harsh.)  

I casually turned my comments on the colonial girl story face down.  I had read it twice, noting how I thought her word choice so beautiful.  (At the time, nothing mattered more than word choice.)  And such a powerful sex scene! But here in class, I couldn't bring myself to say anything.  Could I have come this far and still have such bad taste that I couldn’t see the obvious? As Jenks searched the class for someone to speak, I dipped my eyes.

Am I remembering it wrong, or wasn’t this the woman who had made a feminist critique of one of the stories, triggering in Jenks an anti-politically correct rant?  Was this really a bad story, or did he have some deep-set beef against women? Weren’t all the stories he liked best by the older men in the class? What was his relationship with his mother?

Regardless, the writer was upset.  These were the first several chapters of a novel she was very serious about, having dedicated much time, researching, outlining, writing.  I wanted to defend her, but I feared that Jenks would think me a fool.

Fortunately, it was lunch break.  I scrawled, “I’m sorry I couldn’t say it in class, but I still love your writing,” and I hurried over to slip it into her hands before she bolted.  Her face was hard, her eyes red.  She did not come back after lunch.

Even so, by my private conference time, I was feeling optimistic.  The class discussion of my other story had gone surprisingly well.  Jenks had said it was unusual and publishable.  Not great, he added, but fine.

So I must have been visibly crushed when Jenks said my other story wasn’t worth pursuing unless I completely changed the focus, maybe turning it into a trickster story.  The main character was too much of a bitch, he said, so we don’t care about her.  

“Is this based on a real incident?” 

Of course I said it wasn’t, even though it was.  Jenks said that I looked disappointed. I denied that too, saying thank you, it’s very helpful.  Mostly though, I was frustrated that he didn’t say this about the piece during our discussion on the phone before the workshop began.  If he had, I would have reworked it or submitted something else.  Of course, I had no idea how hard it is to know the most helpful thing to say and when it needs to be said.  

A long time before, I had heard a piece of advice about becoming a writer that was puzzling: It's most important to be empathetic.  It took me a long time to admit that the story I submitted to Jenks was a revenge story, that I had once worked for a woman I had no empathy for, and the result was a bad piece of fiction. 

Before we all said goodbye, Jenks suggested that the most valuable things to come out of his workshops are the relationships that we form with other writers.  He encouraged us to stay connected and read each other’s writings.  I made a quarter-hearted attempt to stay in touch, but I knew it wouldn’t last.  Rather than bonding with the other writers, I'd spent my lunch breaks walking around San Francisco and my evenings out with my brother and friends.  I don’t remember the names of anyone in the class.  I hope that woman whose story I really did like found a way to use Jenk’s advice as a launching point, whether she defied his critique or embraced it. 

When I came home, I was too overwhelmed with everything I’d learned to immediately return to working on short stories.  Instead I spend the summer cutting and pasting paper.  In the fall, I put everything I had into a short story I had started before the workshop.  It’s my favorite.  But I was never able to write another. 

What If Your Guitar Won't Stay In Tune?

My First Office

There was a tree we liked to climb on Howard Street.  The bark of the trunk was slick where Bee had once rubbed a full tube of chap stick thinking that might keep out the girls we didn't want in our club.  That was back when chapstick came in tubes big as cigars that hung from our necks on vibrant colored string.

The branches formed offices where we perched for club meetings.  I, being the youngest, always had the lowest office in the tree.  For a long time one summer, I couldn't climb across the gap between the three lowest offices and the two highest ones.  It required a big step, a long ways off the ground.

I stood many times at that juncture, the older girls egging me on, only to chicken out.

And then one day I got brave and did it.  The older girls cheered and I sat in that office I had long coveted, quivering with delight and relief.

Discoveries While On A Summer Walk

More Selections from a Guatemala Journal, 1998. Query.

Wife and Husband: The Boring Truth

The wife is in a good mood for weeks, and then the lice are back.  So she gets a little grumpy and the husband says he's concerned about her mental health which drives the wife crazy.

A husband recovers from a state of dangerous paranoia.  The shrink tells the wife that it's her job to bring in the husband the moment he shows any signs of regression.  So every few minutes the wife asks, "Are you feeling paranoid now?", which makes the husband feel exactly how one would think it would make the husband feel.

Then, she meets a man who she thinks has cerebral palsy, until she realizes he's just really groovy.

She has a minor surgery that leaves a 2 inch scar across her adam's apple.  She can tell, people are disappointed when she tells the truth about how she got the scar.  So she asks her husband, the writer, to write her a better story.

The next night, at a dinner party, the husband tells his story about how his wife got the 2 inch scar across her adam's apple.

The story is:

A.  So shocking that it throws the party into a chaos that subsides only after a visit by the police.

B.  A beautiful tribute to the wife's best qualities and sensibilities that inspires applause and admiration for both the husband and the wife.

C.  A work of utter nonsense, causing one guest with asperger's to laugh hysterically and everyone else to whisper that perhaps the husband is indeed slipping.

Found While Cleaning the Basement: The Good Feeling of Seeing Old Friends

Ode 875

matt turner, electric cello

tad neuhaus, bass

joanna dane,  Kaossilator

This elaborate bungle

Of quivering termites,

Determined hoard,

Each mound a mite

each mite a block

each block a thought.

Each thought, a rupture

Of undulating verve.

Rejoice! this elaborate bungle

Kansas prairie,

Chloroform carpets,

ancient puzzles,

commingling fortress of

pungent heat *

* rotting,

dying,

 enduring =

All,

Chicken,

Termite,

Grass,

Earthworm,

Bursts of breath

From the depths

Of mitochondria,

Each 

an elaborate bungle

of elemental

Hydrogen,

Oxygen,

Carbon,

Phosphorus,

Nitrogen,

Our very threads,

Rejoice!

That thick blanket of universe

surrounding each photon

of each nucleus,

We are all but

equal

vibrations

of

the

same

everythingness

of speckled chickens

stuttering sentiments

of

- blither blather -

{or whatever it is they are capable of thinking}

their premature and nude heads,

pocked with the beak marks

of

some

flustered

cock.

Rejoice!

On Patriotism

Wednesday, July 2, 2014, 8:23am.

Here's all you have to do.  Go to the basement and see how it makes you feel.

Thursday, July 3, 2014, 1:47pm.

It felt like I wanted to get the basement cleaned up, so I did that instead of write, all day yesterday which was okay because the internet was down and it was raining.  But today, the sun is out so I can only stand the basement long enough to carry the donations out to the car even though there's more to do.  Then I make myself coffee and sit on the porch.

Three boys float in discussing plans to bike to Sunset Beach.  Counter plans are proposed and rejected. One whines about how he doesn't want to go swimming, but by the time they're all leaving, he's changed his mind.

Frank makes his slow trek back from Jacob's.

The girls are in the backyard setting up a clubhouse under the canoe.  

Tonight we will go to Memorial Park to see fireworks.

Tomorrow, I'd like to post something about patriotism.  But so far, all I've come up with is this:

My dad used to hang the flag every fourth of July, a little ritual that was curious enough that we kids gathered around.  Dad would unroll it, there on the front porch and stick the pole in the stand.  And at the end of the day he’d take it down and roll it up and prop it in the corner of the basement where it sat until the next July Fourth.

I don’t know how I know that my dad hung the flag on September 11, 2001.  I couldn’t have witnessed it because I was bunkered down in our Tuscon apartment with our two and a half month old baby.  I remember talking to my brother on the phone and him saying there were some jerks in his department who actually went to work.  I didn’t tell him my husband had too.  

At some point I felt I had to get away from the news.  It was so bright out, so blue.  I walked across the street to the Time Market where Tree, the giant hippie with patchwork bell bottoms and a musical bike was ranting about how we deserve it.  I was stunned.  And now I remember.  I cried on the phone when my mom told me my dad hung the flag that morning.

Still Landlocked

Part One: (The madness of not having a voice. The madness of looking for a voice in everything I read. The madness of the world progressing beyond where I can comprehend it. The madness of my resistance to it. The madness of not fitting in. The madness of motherhood.)

Editor's Note:  This piece was written in 2010, over a year before the author's diagnosis of a terminal case of whimsy.  

I like my coffee hot enough to burn my tongue but the coffee gets cold quickly here in November.  I can’t drink it fast enough, and already it’s cold.  I hate having to go to the basement, down those narrow stairs with the molding carpet, and all those boots and coats and mittens, just to warm my coffee.  People say why not move the microwave to the kitchen, where it belongs.  But it isn’t even worth explaining, they would never understand. 

My mother especially would not understand.  It’s her microwave, the one in the basement.  She brought it for me, all the way from Nebraska, because she got a new one, and now I see why because half the lights on the digital display are out, so it’s impossible to discern how much longer one needs to wait before a thing is done.

Today a friend came by to slip a paper bag through the crack in the door, ginger tea and banana bread, made to cure my terrible cold.  I told him, “I just discovered a new writer.”  Which isn’t exactly true.  She’s dead.

The friend asks, people ask!, how’s the writing? And I blush and stammer.  Such a child!  Because there’s nothing to say at all.  Twenty years go by and I don’t have a book, or anything, to show them.  So I say, it’s going.

If they only knew how I sit at my desk and spend the hours shaking dandruff from my hair.  What would they think then?  But I’m not suppose to think about what other people think.  I’m supposed to think about the present moment.   

But that is damn difficult.

Every night, I hunch in the basement, in my robe, waiting for the lentil bags to heat and then I carry them up the stairs where I lie in bed, the lentil bags across my jaws because my muscles are always sore from grinding my teeth all night. 

I was grinding my teeth down to little dull nubs until my husband forced me to go see a dentist and he gave me a piece of plastic to stick in my mouth at night.

People are surprised that I grind my teeth because I seem like this happy go lucky type of character and I am!  Oh I am!  But I read a lot of fiction.  And that can cause a person a great deal of worry.  And delight!  Yes.  But mostly bad things happen to people in fiction.  And then good things too, but always some bad.  In fact, that’s what Jenks says makes good fiction, that up and down, the constant movement between highs and lows.  Even within a single sentence!  That’s enough to make a person grind. 

Now I have reoccurring nightmares of chewing gum that breaks apart in my mouth and sticks to everything and no matter how much I try to dig the gum from my mouth, there is always more and I berate myself for taking the gum in the first place since I never chew gum when I’m awake.  I think that I am awake.  But I am dreaming. 

The same is true of vertigo.  In my dreams, I’m terrified of heights and always there are edges, stairs without railings, or steps missing, or I am high up in a giant tree and have to climb down, or escalators a mile long and steep as a north face.  And I always am surprised that I am scared of heights in real life too, that I thought it was confined to my dreams.  Because, you see, I don’t realize that I am dreaming.

The lentil bags help. 

Such a child. After all these years, I still haven’t found my own voice.  I have to wait and wait until some piece of fiction creeps inside me and stirs me all up.  It’s embarrassing and I would never admit it to anyone, but there it is.  I didn’t even know it myself until a year ago when I was at a party and I was getting friendly with a nice man who was a musician and I admitted I was a writer and he started asking me about it, but as you already know, I got red faced and embarrassed and stuttered and he said, with a kind smile, but how wicked no less!, he said, “so you haven’t found your voice yet.”

I was flabbergasted. Here was a thing I would never have admitted to myself and a perfect stranger slaps me in the face with it.  Let’s just say, the conversation was rocky after that.  And then I left.  I thought him a run-of-the-mill ass.

For many months, every time I read some fiction and ran to the computer, vomiting a great mess of verbiage, I remembered what he said.  Such a child!  And almost forty years old at that.  Children imitate, unabashedly.  It’s their practice.  I am nothing more than that.

Take this morning, for example.  I’ve been carrying around the house The Oxford Book of American Short Stories edited by Joyce Carol Oates.  I carry it to bed, along with my lentil bags and then I carry it downstairs for breakfast.  Throughout the day it is in the bathroom, or on the piano or the front desk or the kitchen table, or in my purse if I am going out, which I haven’t been because of this terrible congestion I’ve been suffering.  It is a heavy thick book that I read at random, like I do most books, childish I know.  I rarely finish reading a book, and only sometimes start one at the beginning, yet more things my mother does not want to know about me.

Oates writes “There are worse fates than being known for, indeed, exclusively identified with, a single title: in the case of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, and, in her time, renowned as a leading feminist-theorist, that title is of course The Yellow Wallpaper.”  Of course!  I had never heard of it.   

Only sometimes am I scared of the basement.  You see, I am a mother now and not afraid of things like that, though I am.  I am afraid of men in masks breaking into my house, worse yet, one, unbeknownst to me, living in the basement.  He hides in a dark corner and jumps out and ties me up and imprisons me for eleven years, the time it takes me to work up the wits to escape.  I become an instant celebrity.  I write my memoir which becomes a best seller.  The fame overwhelms me and I become a hermit and fall into a depression from which I never recover, my body found a full week after my death.

I took a class in college, a self-defense class where they taught us to yell in a deep and strong voice, “NO!”  we yelled and struck back.  We learned to chop an attacker’s throat and knee him in the balls.  We learned to make fierce faces, to replace our fear with anger.  On the last day of the workshop, a man dressed up in thick padding, put a mask on and straddled me, to simulate what it would be like to wake to find an intruder getting ready to strike.  It was bright and we were in a gymnasium and the class was all standing around watching and we women were fierce!  We yelled and growled and kneed and chopped and afterwards we hugged and cried and were happy and relieved and surprised and went out for coffee and scones, propelled by our adrenalin.  The idea was to practice finding a voice even at the height of fear, even when we thought we’d never have one, to pretend we were fierce, and supposedly, the more we practiced, the more we would come into our own. 

My five year old daughter won’t go downstairs at night to get her blanket.  Sometimes I'm impatient and don’t understand why she won’t go down, even when I turn on the lights for her.  I begrudgingly go downstairs, my daughter pulling my hand until she sees her blanket, a glowing mound on the couch.  Go get it, I tell her, standing in the doorway.  And she hesitates and then runs on tiptoes, not wanting to disturb what hides in the dark, what unnamed fears, she runs and grabs her blanket and returns to me, relieved. 

She has no idea that I haven’t yet found my voice.