Thank you to Pen Pricks, for including me in their July issue. And just in case my readers reader can't find my contribution, I am the 27th essay of 41, give or take.... Don't forget to check out my nifty bio; but of course, the contributors are listed alphabetically, so guess where I am?
That's right.
The End
Things To Do Today
1. Go to a cookout.
2. Eat too much food.
3. Watch fireworks in a huge crowd on the beach.
4. Eat more food that is now filled with sand.
5. Sing patriotic songs.
6. Ooohh and aaahh endlessly, loudly and passionately.
7. Get soppy weepy.
8. Dodge electric sparklers in the hands of children racing through the crowd, avoiding their parents, who are in hot pursuit.
Have a happy Fourth of July and a fun, safe weekend.
From Louise
I sat in front of the television with my knitting. “Damn it, I can’t get this row right,” I thought to myself, switching the loaded needle to my left hand to start the unraveling process. Row no. 30 would have to go. Again. I glanced at my watch. 12:30 am. Some movie was on TV that didn't interest me. It was merely noise, fallow ground for my discontent. I set my red, plastic row counter back to 30. I would probably be on row 30 for the rest of my life, trying to keep my yarn count straight through the knit-two-togethers and yarn-overs and knit-two-together-through-the-back-loops. The yarn-overs are done differently depending on what stitch follows. The result is a hole. These are the button-hole stitches. I suck at button-hole stitches.
“Yoo hoo, Louise,” sang my inner voice. “You have to be at the airport tomorrow at 8 am for your flight to Naples and you haven’t packed.
“I can’t,” I thought. “I just got back from Ireland. I’m still jet-lagged. I’m still in a my-writing-sucks mode, and I have a freakin' 10-page integrative essay due July 11. I suck at traveling, I suck at writing and I suck at packing.” Webster shifted his weight so that he covered my feet. “And I suck at dog-training,” I added. Webster and I had gone to a Saturday obedience class and he could not contain his ecstasy at greeting people, bumping into them with his 150-pound body, joyfully burying his face in crotches and happily picking up hands to hold them gently but firmly in his mouth between 2-inch teeth. This behavior is so unacceptable to me that it redefines the word. “Aww, he’s so cute,” everyone says, petting him and hugging him, thus rewarding the behavior. With a mere head turn, Mr. Cute could take out a whole row of children, pin them to the ground and lick them to death, thus initiating dozens of lawsuits, designed to end my way of life forever.
I was in a mood, and the mood presented a challenge. I trekked upstairs, followed by three clumping, banging mastiffs, logged onto my computer and changed my early morning flight to late afternoon. A woman’s got to know her limitations.
“That reminds me, I read something in the paper,” Helen said. She pushed on the tip of her nose with a finger and narrowed her eyes. “I can't remember what it was now,” she said.
--Raymond Carver, Will you Please Be Quiet, Please?
“Close your eyes for a few minutes and think about this classroom,” Sean Hardie, our guest lecturer, said. After several minutes of clock-ticking silence, he asked us to open our eyes and write, but I had already wandered off.
Stone―rough stone―encased in stone. Walking on stone. Hard stone on the winding stairwells, glistening with silver specks. Up and twist around, up and twist around. On the second landing sits a granite sculpture on a wooden pedestal of a round woman, holding a child. At the top, I never know which way to go until I hear my classmates talking and laughing on my left.
Thank you to Carlow University, Pittsburgh and Carlow College, Ireland for the opportunity to study with such an exceptional and talented group of writers.
May your weekend be filled with laughter and mindful meandering!
From Louise
The program has been great! Our mentors have kept us working constantly; hardly any time left for exploring ancient ruins and such, although we did go to one castle and the bus left me there (don't worry, it came back) and we did enjoy Bloomsday in Dublin, and took the James Joyce Walk and went to a Yeats exhibit and saw Trinity College and the Book of Kells and the Trinity Library, which is to die for. And we saw a play at the Gate Theatre―The Weir. And a few days later, we went to to an Irish caeli (social gathering), and watched and clapped and ate homemade foods and danced and laughed and saw singing in Gaelic and English and we listened to instrumental performances and our group was invited to sing, but nobody did, and I think this was my favorite activity of the whole trip. This program has been incredible, the mentors are fabulous and we've had readings and workshops given by stunning writers: Carlo Gebler, Mary McDonald and Ann Enright, to name a few. My mentor Brian Leyden wrote The Home Place, which I'm hoping to finish reading on the flight home. It's been quite the experience. I have major work due July 11, Aug 8 and so on and so on. :::gulp:::: By the way, loved the cool postcard.
--L
Sounds like a first-rate program, though you'll probably need to schedule a vacation if you want to do any sightseeing. Just don't let them steal your Lucky Charms! ;-)
--M
Lucky Charms intact. Leaving for home tomorrow. Have fallen in love with the Irish.
From Louise
He recited a passage in old Gaelic and paused, peering over the rims of his reading glasses. “Anyone?” We sat at our desks in various poses, leaning forward with furrowed brow or gazing off to contemplate the Irish greenery outside our window. Carlow's lawn stretched away from the building like a kelly drop-cloth, almost obscuring its Celtic cross on one side and ancient rock on the other. It was bordered in pink, yellow and white roses.
“I’ll let you hear it again,” he said. His glasses slid further down his nose and he peered at us with ice-blue eyes. He repeated the passage, more slowly this time, letting the ancient rhythms roll over the class like a wind waves over a wheat field, swooshing softly while it skims overhead.
“Still no one?” he asked. Heads shook around the room. Our mentors, side-by-side in the second row, glanced at one another and shrugged. My creative nonfiction mentor moved to the edge of his seat and cradled his chin in his hand, ear crooked toward our afternoon guest speaker. The room waited. Still and silent.
“It’s from the Gospel according to Mark,” he said.
“Well, no wonder,” I thought and looked outside to watch the leaves curtsy and bow to the rhythm of the rain. Around me, the room murmured and rustled back to life.
I’m trying to listen. Really I am. But this man’s voice and accent sound like a mostly-monochromatic herd of gnats circling my head and dive-bombing sporadically, with no warning. He vibrates his words down the back of his throat and flings them about in scattered sound waves—muffled, guttural—with quick accents in staccato dots divided by barely-there pauses. I gaze out the window and wish I could go to the quiet café down the street for a cup of coffee with one cream and two sugars, and find just the right corner for writing profound thoughts in my composition notebook with my favorite pen, the one that glides like a gel and writes like a ballpoint. But all that changed once the music began.
1. I left home with bags, passport, drivers license and euros at 4:45 pm.
2. Delta refused to acknowledge the second leg of my trip, so I would have to pick up my bags in New York, find Aer Lingus, obtain a new boarding pass and recheck my suitcases through to Dublin.
3. My flight to New York was delayed two hours.
4. I arrived at JFK to find it completely ripped up and under construction, with no clear signs or savvy personnel anywhere in sight to point the way.
5. In order to find Aer Lingus, I had to pull my suitcases up two ramps, negotiate two elevators, cross one parking lot, navigate two streets, ride an elevator and hop on a train.
6. My flight to Dublin was delayed four hours and was now scheduled to depart at 1:30 in the morning.
7. The plane landed in Dublin around 2 pm. “I just flew in from New York. How can I find my suitcases?” I asked the security guard . I had waltzed past the baggage claim straight into the main terminal. Security and Customs wouldn’t allow me to retrace my footsteps.
8. I waited forty five minutes at the STAFF ONLY security entrance, with my assigned Aer Lingus chaperone, to return to the baggage claim and fetch my bags.
9. I stripped for Security for the third time.
10. I missed my group coach ride from Dublin to Carlow.
11. After carefully reading the In Case Things Go Wrong portion of my group information packet, I skipped calling my group’s travel coordinator and skipped a trip to the loo and skipped a meal in favor of catching the 14:40 bus to Carlow.
12. I couldn’t find the bus area. Did the sign saying DEPARTURES refer to planes, taxis, buses, cars or rental cars? After several wrong turns, I was able to catch my bus.
13. When I awoke from my nap, the bus had filled up, which meant commuters were getting on and off silently with no announcement or warning. Street signs and bus stops were marked clearly in some language other than the English I am used to.
14. When I saw we were in Carlow Town, I couldn’t wait to get into the “coach park” or bus station so I could eat, call my group and use the loo.
15. In real life, the bus station was a street corner with two pay phones and a plastic canopy covering a two-person bench.
16. I couldn’t work the first pay phone. I schlepped my suitcases over to the second booth. I couldn’t work the pay phone.
17. Finally a taxi came by to save me.
18. When I arrived at the front desk and felt my entire body sag in relief, just the way my bags did as they slid from my grip to the floor, I heard the receptionist say, “We’re all filled for tonight. We have you checking in tomorrow. We won’t have your room ready till then.”
19. I cried.
Since I'm leaving tomorrow, I've been watching a ton of documentaries on Ireland, losing myself in the images―brilliant green pastures spattered with grazing livestock, long country roads stretching for miles, and friendly, white cottages topped with thatched roofs and chimneys breathing out a single, slow curl of smoke. There were castles guarding seashores, shorelines cradling boulders, giants' causeways heading toward Scotland, horses racing across the beach, sheep, cathedrals, and on and on and on. I smiled at fishermen with cracked faces standing on piers and young folks in pubs, having the craic, and toothless, old women in long skirts, gazing out from peeling doorways. A journey back in time.
Then I discovered Wikimapia, only to learn that within blocks of my school, in addition to several other schools and Carlow Cathedral, there is a shopping mall, a retail center, a Penney’s, a McDonald's, a Godfather's Pizza, a Domino's, a KFC, a Chinese restaurant and an Italian restaurant. Also three or so nightclubs, classified according to degree of raunchiness, a strip club and a plethora of buildings close together sitting on dusty-looking squares and rectangles.
I sat for a moment at my computer, letting an eraser brush back and forth across my expectations, swishing from side to side the way my high school teachers did when they wiped down the blackboards before class, the backs of their arms and rear ends jiggling like jello. Class always began with a clean slate and muffled clouds of chalk dust that disappeared to nothing.
“I don't want to go to that Ireland,” I told my friends, the McKennas, over lunch last week. “I want to go to the other one.”
“No, no!” they laughed. “It's all part of it, the old with the new!”
Phooey. I guess it would be a good adjustment for me to face my eiry adventure expecting nothing and ready to experience everything, like a human sponge. So I'm putting down my eraser, turning away from the chalk board and my computer, and saying goodbye until next time. It seems I have some exploring to do.
From Louise
I absolutely refuse to remove my Penguins jersey, shower or leave my home. The clocks have been stopped and mirrors draped in black cloth. All the curtains are drawn. My mastiffs follow me around listlessly, as I wander through the darkened house, wringing my hands and moaning.
My friends tell me, “This is getting old! Shower! Uncover everything! Only three more months till hockey starts again. This team is young. There will be at least another decade of Stanley Cup chances. They're Eastern Conference Champions, for Chrissakes! Celebrate! Laugh!”
But I refuse. “Shush!” I cut them off. “I love my Pens; I miss my Pens. I want to be left alone in my misery and I’ll be like this until I'm not like this anymore, so don’t bug me!” I shake my head and shoot them looks. Eventually, they go away.
I suppose when I’m feeling better, I'll find something else to do, something a little less smelly and depressing; but in the meantime, I am wallowing just the way I want. So don’t bug me. I'm very busy.
Generic
I'm supposed to write up to 500 words about a typical day in the life of Louise and I'm at a loss because I have eclectic tastes in days, just like I have eclectic tastes in music, books, theater productions, friends, activities and hobbies. To define myself as one thing in only one way by only one frame of reference causes my circuits to overload, activates my emergency switch and forces the entire system to shut down. I haven't written a word.
Gummy
A goober is a bespeckled, murky string, about 8 inches long, that hangs, thick and gelatinous, from a mastiff's jowls. Each must be wiped away before it becomes a flinger (self explanatory). The little gobs of gra-doo trapped inside goobers and flingers are called floaters. Floaters are oftentimes relics from long-ago dinners of yore; but sometimes they are fresh and nouveau, and much easier to clean up.
Gigantic
My backyard is dwarfed by a splashy, wooded hillside that begins with a giant beech tree, which I flood with light in the summer, since I love it so. I read somewhere that beech trees are considered goddess trees in Sweden or Denmark or somewhere north, but I never researched it like I swore I would, so I don't know what a goddess tree is.
Ghostly
My resident spirits had been trying to warn me about him all summer. During several of his weekend visits, my fans became unplugged and my house dialed 911 when the phones weren't working. The police checked them and were mystified when they couldn't get a dial tone. “Toldya,” I said. They didn't know what to do. Neither did I.
Goodbye
Have a generous, giddy, gusty, gleaming, glistening, glossy, glowing, gracious, genteel, genuine, gourmet, glamorous, gleeful, guiltless, gritty, gutsy, gratifying, grand and glorious weekend!
From Louise
Driving home from the grocery store, I called an old friend to find out how she was, after not having spoken to her for about five years, and was instantly in over my head with nary a life saver in sight. As a born-again New Age spiritualist, she responded to everything I said—“I'm a writer now,” or “I got into grad school,” or “I’m going to Ireland” or “I’m going to kill myself as soon as I get back”—with an impassioned, “It happened exactly the way it was supposed to,” or “Everything happens for a reason,” or “There are no coincidences,” or “There is a special lesson there for you.” I don't remember hearing any of the more conventional comments, such as “Congratulations!” or “I’m so happy for you,” or “Watch out for those charming Irish men,” or “My personal fave is the Smith & Wesson 500 revolver with a 4-inch barrel, but since it leaves such a mess, be sure to off yourself in the bathtub or maybe out in the woods where you can get cleanup help from nature.” Instead, I was living proof that her convictions were universally true; and the conversation eventually morphed into a big lecture for me or for her, I wasn't sure which—“This is what I've learned in my life,” or “I can teach you all about that, call me next time you're in town,” or “You have to read this book to see what I mean, I'll send it to you,” my lessons delivered in a lowered voice for extra oomph. I felt like a visual aid, only smaller. By the time I extricated myself, I was bruised, angry, frustrated, thoroughly annoyed and slumped in my car in the dark garage, staring straight ahead, too tired to get out. “Well,” I thought, as I finally dragged myself from the car and made my way toward the house, shuffling my feet across the asphalt driveway, kicking loose stones and errant twigs, “Now I know why I let our friendship go five years ago; and apparently everything does happen for a reason.” I walked into the house and closed the door solidly behind me. I was glad to be home.
Her shoulders heaved, tortured with her weeping, a handkerchief pressed tightly against her ruby lips in an attempt to stifle the sound. Her body was curled into an overstuffed cushion plopped onto a wicker chair on a wooden veranda with a white railing. She could look out over the beach and bay and feel the sea grass whispering its sighs to the wind.
“Darling!?” boomed the deep voice behind her, as her handsome husband, his eyebrows knit tightly together with worry, strode across the porch to stand behind her and place his hand on her shoulder. She did not look up; nor did her crying abate. “Whatever is the matter, my sweetest?” he asked. He stepped forward and knelt beside her, the wooden planks unforgiving against his knee.
After the slightest pause, “I used to be young and beautiful,” she sobbed, “but now I’m just middle aged!”
I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.
--Katherine Anne Porter
PUBLISHED FLASHQUAKE
SPRING ISSUE: Mar 1, 2008 through May 31, 2008
The Detour Home
I threw on my sweats and marched down the hall. “Just because someone broke into my house and hurt me doesn’t mean I have to hide, God damn it,” I thought. “I haven’t done anything wrong and I’m not ashamed! Nothing’s changed. Nothing!” But when I opened the front door and took my first step outside, I hesitated, alarmed that the sky and the hill and the street opened before me, shimmering in vastness. The scene was so huge and so endless and so wrong that I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt a pain slash through my chest, left side, and doubled over. Slowly I backed up to the door, opened it, and let myself in. I sank to the floor and stayed there until I could breathe again. “Maybe it’s a little too soon,” I thought, willing myself not to cry. “I can try again tomorrow.” In my mind, I had already crawled back into my friend’s bathrobe and was lying, curled in the corner, on his couch.
--
After a week of waiting, my left eye opened. “Treat yourself to a coffee,” the doctor said. “There’s no permanent damage.” I wanted to celebrate with a vanilla café au lait and take my perfect eyesight out to my favorite coffee house, the way I used to. But the bruises were still bright and they scared people, making them stare and clutch their children close and move away, creating a vacuum that sucked me to the front of the coffee line. “What can I get for you today?” the server asked without smiling, his eyes unwavering. “What happened to the line?” I thought.
--
I was angry. So very angry. I had gone to some dreadful, night-terror place that was slanted sideways, while my friends continued to exist in their safe, little, flat worlds, those lovely, frosted-glass shelters that were as certain and predictable as the lighting of a lamp with the flip of a switch. I never questioned. Until now.
The officers at the scene had come and gone, leaving a trail of evidence unexamined and uncollected. I didn’t know what to do. “Don’t let the police rape you too!” my best friend had yelled at me, waving her cigarette in the air. When she left, I washed my hair and never let her near me again.
--
I didn’t believe there was really a man standing there, so I looked again. Yes. There was a man. I sat up in bed, screaming. It sounded garbled. This couldn’t be real. But it was. I heard an explosion when he sprang at me with his fists. Over and over. Eyes. Cheeks. Nose. Chin. Back to the eyes. Again and again. I could hear the smack of bone against bone, but my face had gone numb. My head kept snapping back and forth. Crack! Crack! I was trying to cover my face with my hands, but couldn’t. At some point, I stopped seeing. And then I stopped screaming. And it was only then that he stopped hitting. He pulled me from my bed. While I begged him not to hurt me, he dragged me around to the other side of the room and forced me to lie face down on the floor. He knelt behind me, forcing my legs open with his knees, and pulled my nightgown up. I felt something poke my back. A finger? A knife? A penis? “I have money I can give you. Please don’t hurt me.” He told me he didn’t want money and he wasn’t going to hurt me. He was going to “make love” to me. That’s really what he said. “Make love.”
--
“You used to live in La Jolla?! Why in the world did you move back here?” I had never been very good at answering that question. It made me think of the Cove, bathed in sparkles first thing in the morning, and the tops of its white-and-brown dappled rocks covered with seals, jutting through the brilliant blue, and the surfers heading out from the sheltered beaches of Wind ‘n Sea, waiting on their boards for just the right wave, and groups of white-clad people in neat rows, dancing, turning and bowing their slow tai chi movements. I often jogged off the sidewalk and down a trail through the rocks. I used to look up at the dark, tinted windows facing the water, wondering if anyone was sipping coffee and gazing out over the sea, or if they were too busy, in typical So Cal fashion, tearing through the house, looking for keys, straightening ties and hunting down briefcases, on their way to downtown San Diego to earn the right to keep up with the Joneses next door, who had a two foot high, purple quartz pyramid (for peace) on a pedestal in their great room, and a Mercedes convertible tucked into the garage, and a vacation home waiting in the south of France.
My quiet beach existence turned upside down in the middle of the night, during a full moon, when a man roused me from my dreams, beat me, pulled me from my warm bed, dragged me across my room, threw me to the floor with my face turned toward the bathroom door, and sexually assaulted me. The rug fibers were scratchy under my cheek, but I couldn’t see them. I do not remember how long it lasted. I do not remember how long I was in the Emergency Room, or when I was able to sleep again. My left eye opened a week later. The blood in both eyes cleared three weeks later. The bruises and swelling were gone six weeks later. My illusion of safety was gone forever.
“Why in the world did you move back here?” my Cincinnati friends persisted, not knowing what had happened. I never talked about it. I had moved back home as soon as I was stable enough. Years.
“Oh," I said, smiling. “I can think of a few reasons.”
--
Bio: Louise Yeiser is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Modern Witches, Wizards and Magic (Kerlak) and in ezines Tuesday Shorts and Six Sentences. In June, 2007, one of her pieces was used by Dr. Dr Paola Trimarco in a presentation on flash fiction, during a one-day conference, sponsored by Edge Hill University in the UK. Louise studies Creative Nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh and lives in Sewickley, PA with three English Mastiffs and one cat.
―My writing rambles until I pull it out, shrink it in, rework, remold, reshape and then polish, review, polish, review, polish, review....and half the time, it still rambles.―
―Yesterday my narrative was lopsided and tired and all bogged down with meanderings, muddlings and mixed messages.―
―I'm sure I could write better if I cleared off my desktop. But then I would have to empty the trash, replenish the garbage bags, which would require a trip to the store, return and put the wet, almost-stinky clothes that have been sitting in the washer since Tuesday into the dryer, refill the now-empty washer with my my pile of dirty clothes blocking the downstairs hallway, trek to the kitchen and load up the dishwasher with what is sitting in the sink, and haul my carefully folded, freshly laundered clothes back upstairs to put away. Then I would return to my desk to write, and it would be time to leave for my 2:00 appointment.―
―Dear Louise: When I set the alarm to give you a 20 minute writing session, you are not to spend it staring off into space, scratching an itch, memorizing a grocery list or an errand list or a phone list, evaluating your aging manicure, planning your next knitting project or tugging at the calluses on your feet.―
―Either the flow is there, or it isn't. If it is, keep writing until it's gone. If it isn't, it cannot be manufactured by flipping on some mental switch and having it spew through eager fingers onto the keyboard. That would be nice, but it doesn't work that way; so go do something else.―
―Like have a good weekend!―
―From Louise―
“Let’s be friends. I’d like to add you to my network,” his email said.
“Not so fast, Mr. Multiple-DUIs-That-I-Knew-Nothing-About and Mr. Bankruptcy-Filed-in 2-States-That-Remained-a-Closely-Guarded-Secret and Mr. I-Am-The-Hero-Of-This-Cute-Story," which he wasn’t because I sadly discovered that his cute stories were simply somebody else’s cute stories traveling around the internet. I think it’s fair to say that I never really knew him and I still don’t know him and I’m not his friend.
“I believed him; I'm such an idiot,” I thought, as I clicked the DENY option.
“You’re not an idiot; however, you do have a child-like trust, which is a quality that must be protected by your adult-like self, which probably could use some work; but you’re not an idiot.”
Sometimes my inner voice says just the right thing.
To all the soldiers, sailors and leaders who have kept the United States safe from past and present predators, thank you. May we always be mindful of the stories history provides us, which demonstrate the fate of peoples, cultures and nations who are either peaceful or unable to defend themselves. Until nature is reprogrammed to function according to survival of the most cooperative instead of survival of the fittest, may we continue to overcome tyranny and oppression in all its forms, whenever possible and wherever it exists. To all past veterans and current armed forces, risking all to serve their country, we acknowledge, remember and honor you on this Memorial Day. Thank you.
From Louise
1. An example of my poetic prowess:
It’s supposed to rain today.
Bah, humbug, I say.
2. I’m older now. I’ve done the same thing the same way for so long that if my pattern were any clearer, I’d have a neon sign strapped to my face.
3. Annie goes to the hospital today for a bone scan. She thought she passed her last one with flying colors—negative, clear, normal. And then the phone call: “We found a spot. It could be nothing.”
4. Something is good when you think the fridge is empty and you’re ravenous. Nothing is good when you tiptoe to the mailbox, dreading a pile of bills that you can’t pay.
5. What did they all have in common? They were men I couldn’t trust, which is a clever, ineffective way of fooling myself into believing that I was in control of my vulnerability.
6. Spring Sky
When it’s a sheet of cerulean, I can believe in infinity, and when it fills with quiet clouds, it closes in on me with hugs and softness and wisps of yearning.
7. When dad was here, I took him to dinner with friends at the Edgeworth Club. We were a party of fourteen, two tables of seven. I didn't think to draw up a seating chart and write out place cards, neat and tidy tents, marking everyone's spot for the evening. "Your name, this plate and knife and fork, this chair, with a sturdy back to hold your purse or coat. You belong here." But there was no welcome mat for anyone. My mother would have been horrified. So would Emily Post.
8. I know a man who is the definition of “staunch”. If you climbed aboard, he would hold your weight and carry you. He is married. Not to me.
9. It hurts to have 6S reject my writing; it happens rarely, since I am one of Rob’s original writers. So much for loyalty. But why should he publish anything that is less than excellent, intriguing, fun, startling, fascinating, sexy or provacative? Why would I write anything less?
All the adjectives in no. 9 above? Have them this weekend!
From Louise
This morning I gave my first speech to a bird. Actually, it was to an empty bird's nest with a theoretical bird inside, who I'm sure would have been listening intently if he or she had been there. The nest was a few feet over my head, in the weeping white pine that hangs partly over my front porch and partly over my driveway. Earlier, I was walking to my car, felt something go pop under my shoe and looked down to see the horribly smooshed body of a baby bird whose insides were now on its outsides. After ten minutes of crying, apologizing to the dead body, berating the tree and anguishing, I snagged my neighbor and cajoled him into coming over to dispose of the body. Thus, the stage was set for my spiel.
"Now look here, you guys," I said, hoping that no one was walking by and watching me, curious to see what odd behavior I would exhibit next. "You are just going to have to be more careful about keeping your babies safe and sound until they are actually ready to fly. That's when they're supposed to leave the nest, and not one second before!! What just happened really upset me and I would appreciate it if you would keep your young ones to yourself until they are old enough to share. Having them drop like little lead balloons onto the stone porch or the concrete steps or the asphalt driveway is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Zero tolerance! Am I making myself clear?"
I waited. Usually there are two soft-spoken, taupe-and-charcoal-spotted mourning doves flying to and fro; but today, there was no sound, no movement, which is pretty much what you would expect from an empty nest.
"Fine! See that you do," I said, turning away.
"Good luck with that," my neighbor said, as he backed down the sidewalk toward his house across the street, watching me as if he was afraid to avert his eyes for even one second, just in case I did something else weird.
"Thanks," I said, opening the front door and letting myself in.
What am I doing this morning? For the moment, I am sipping coffee, looking out my bedroom window and gazing up at a dark, bulky sky, loaded with heavy, gray clouds that have hijacked the blue. They broil and roll about, threatening to unleash buckets and bolts that would make everyone complain even more bitterly about our Pittsburgh weather.
"We miss they sun!" they lament. "We never get to see the sun!"
"Sob and boo hoo," I say because I love these brooding, bloodless, gun-metal gray days--perfect writing days with the sky looming about, showing us who's really the boss and who's really in control. Clearly it isn't us, in spite of how fervently we deny it. Sometimes I think the only things we can control are our personal outlooks and our petty, ego-driven opinions that are formed from the evidence around us, which we bend to support our petty, ego-driven opinions. Ah, imperfection at its best.
Last night I checked the temperature in Carlow, Ireland. While it was fifty degrees here, a cold, damp, but hopeful spring night, it was thirty nine degrees in Carlow.
"Oh my God, it's freezing where I'm staying in Ireland," I said to best friend Annie, who had come over to watch Grey's Anatomy reruns. We were sitting on the couch, munching crackers and cuddling with the mastiffs. Webster and Charlie had both tried to sit in her lap, and Charlie had contented himself to curl up on the couch between us, while Webster was seated on top of my feet.
"What time is it there?" Annie asked.
"Let's see. It's 8:00 pm here.... 8 plus 5 or 6 is 13 or 14, minus 12.... It's around 1 or 2 am.
"Oh, boy," said Annie, scratching Websters ear. He was gazing into her eyes, one of his more startling habits. His stare isn't challenging or aggressive; no, it's gentler than that. It's unusual.
"Wait!" I said. "They're on military time, so it really is 13 or 14 hundred hours. Or would it be one hundred or two hundred hours? Oh, Lord. I hope the Irish are as nice as I believe them to be. If they're like New Yorkers, or worse, Philadelphians, they'll eat me for lunch―chew me into a gummy paste and spit out my bones."
"No one's as bad as Philadelphians," Annie said. Webster had closed his eyes in acquiescence.
GO, PENS!!!!!!! TROUNCE PHILADELPHIA!!!! KILL PHIL!!!!
P.S. You didn't know I had it in me, didja?
I guess, after having received 3 rejection emails in a row and brooding about it for almost two weeks (complete with the wearing of black and the covering of mirrors and the stopping of all clocks in the house), it is worth reminding myself that one of my 6-sentence essays, Annual Art, made it into 6 Sentences Volume 1, which can be purchased on Amazon.com. If only I had met the deadline for the other five pieces I wanted to submit for that publication. If only I had understood the significance of numbers and days of the week, and distinguished them, one from another. If only I had looked at my calendar once in awhile and actually grasped the meaning of the little boxes filled with my handwriting. If only my mind had stopped memorizing a digit, like say a 5, and then magically morphed it into, like say a 6, all within a matter of hours. Obviously, I am deadline-challenged and that is an indisputable fact; but I’m thinking that with a few minor adjustments, such as a massive rewiring of the brain, I could learn to overcome it. And thus, this morning, I am finally beginning to feel a glimmer of hope. Then Long Story Short came along and decided to spur the glimmer along by informing me that one of my pieces, Forget Me Not, has been accepted for their June edition, complete with a complimentary press release that I can send to all my local newspapers and TV stations, which is just what I needed, since all the media of Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas are waiting on pins and needles to learn of my every move. Won’t they be surprised to discover that as soon as one of my essays disappears from Flashquake at the end of May, another re-appears on Long Story Short for the month of June? Life is lookin’ pretty good at the moment. Yes, it is. Except...oh, my God, what will I do about July? I mustn't go there, I simply mustn't. It ruins my happy little zen space I've got going on here.
