Meg Sefton's Blog, page 12

Ola Belle Reed

She is a singular musician. I hope you are ok out there. —Margaret

Summer solstice 2022

Photo: Red and White Poo by Roy Harryman, flickr

IMHO, one thing the Jan 6 committee is making crystal clear is that unless the DOJ prosecutes, we won’t be living in America in two years.

I’m so grateful to have some other things to focus on though, including family, friends, other writing colleagues, discussion groups, getting healthy, selling and donating things I don’t need, work.

Be well wherever you are. —Margaret

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Bluegrass Friday

I’m spending this overcast day listening to my favorite bluegrass. I love this duo! And the lyrics of this old-time Appalachian bluegrass song are so beautiful. I hope you are ok wherever you are, whatever is happening. Yours— Margaret

Dark ambitions

This weekend, I am continuing to submit my stories to journals. Today, I collected 10 of my 50-word dark pieces into a mini-collection and submitted them to a new journal. Fly, my little pretties!

I wish you well. —Margaret

Rainy Day Jazz

With everything happening this past week in our nation and world, I decided to create a quiet jazz playlist. Be well. I hope you are ok. Sincerely—Margaret

Write or die

Photo: Woman holding typewriter ribbon at Royal Typewriter, SMU Libraries Digital Collections, 1930s, flickr
(I changed out some ink in my Canon laser printer this morning, so close enough.)

Flash fiction revision and submission week!

Be well, chicos and chicas.

Margaret

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War in literature and film

Image from pg 135 of Coast Watch, Internet Book Achive Images, flickr

I have been watching some series and revisiting film on a certain theme. I stumbled across the HBO series “Generation Kill” yesterday and was so impressed by its gritty nature, its absence of non-diegetic music. I’ll have to say, I love that, especially for something as irreal as war. The series does well in portraying absurdities, surrealities, mindblowing military protocols and formalities in the running, executing, and justifying of the war machine in Iraq. The series is focused on a group of highly trained marines who must experience and encounter everything as it comes while attempting to maintain some semblance of sanity even if that sanity is the kind that has been proferred them by their ranking superiors. Apparently, the series received high praise from marines for its accuracy. It also made me think of “Apocolypse Now” though there is more invention in the Coppola interpretation of Vietnam with its incorporation of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Below is an interesting podcast critiquing Coppala’s project. In it is also a discussion of “distance killing” which is something I began to question when I dated someone midlife who was involved in this kind of warfare in the Middle East. I wrote an autofiction piece about our dating experience which I then subbed to a journal, but then withdrew it when I realized it needed more work. I am puzzling through some of this stuff, something to think about during so many things going on in our world. Cheers, good people, on this Monday. Peace.

Green

Common Green Darner by Lottie, flickr

Darius wanted to be covered in green. Darius wanted the world to be covered in green. But when he stood on the overpass to blanket his city in the unspooled ream of green sailcloth, he looked out over the cars and road and saw the ultra-long ribbon tossing in the wind as a dark shadow below and not as the inbreaking of something new.

In his younger years, his memories had been of a grey room where his mother left him to sit in his crib, to watch as the morning gave grey the fullness of grey’s being as the light burst in. And his mother, sad in her mask-face, could only hold him briefly to feed him and change his soiled clothes.

When Darius was older, the prop man smoking behind the theater downtown would listen to obsessions about covering the world in green. Every day, Green, as he was also known, rode into town on his banana bike with the green streamers. He rode to town in green polyester. He was an eleven-year-old living in the 90s but he looked like a short, skinny dancer at the disco tech without all the polish and strut. The energy for his mission would never allow it, the passion to show the world that what it needed was something deep and mysterious, the color of the forest the first time he met his father, the first time he learned to swish a line through the air and land a fly on the surface—plop!—and hope with each new bending arch of the line, the trees and grasses would grant him magic. On that day, he scored a Rainbow. On that day, he vowed to overcome grey and sadness. On that day, he said if his mother had to care for him, he would make life a color.

When they returned to the city after fishing, his Pops gave him a bike with a banana seat and long pole at the end of which he flew a brilliant green fish that winked on one side of its face. His Pops helped him learn how to ride and drove behind him as he biked all the way home where his mother stood in the drive shaking her head, her grey face refusing sun and brilliance, her frock hanging on her like a wilted petal, her sad ponytail dripping down her back, half-released itself from its stay, giving up on its own rebellion.

“Mom, I caught a Rainbow Trout,” said Darius, striding up and hugging her waist. “Mom, I have a banana bike, look. Mom, I’m going to help people see green. Mom, we have to go to the city.” On and on and on, and she remained in the spot they had found her on the drive, shaking her head at his father, blaming him for her son’s energy, blaming him for what the father inspired in the son, the father who would then walk away and leave them alone.

But that night, Darius was not unhappy with his mother for only serving everything grey and white for dinner, no peas, no green, no life, no color. He knew she couldn’t help it.

“Mom,” he said, placing a green mittened hand on hers, “I’m here to help you. We have a special mission. It’s only me and you now. But we can do it. I love you.”

And her mask broke and she cried and Darius got up and set the remainder of her hair free from its stay and he patted it, marveling at its softness. He hadn’t known a fish and a bicycle could have such powers and he hugged her neck until she quieted.

The next day on the way to school, he pestered her to stop by a fence where an old man always sat in a wheelchair. On the other side of the road from where the man sat was a pasture where a couple of horses grazed in a field. Darius had a handkerchief to give the man. He had only ever observed the man sitting there, his mouth agape though sometimes a woman came from the white building to take him back inside. He thought the man might have something to say.

“Last night, I had a dream about an old man who was proud,” he said to the man. “He kept saying my dust, my dust and he was upset about his legs.” Darius saw now that the man couldn’t talk though his mouth was wide open. He passed the hanky onto the wool blanket covering the old man’s lap though it was summer. “I think you should have this. It will be Father’s Day soon but I can’t remember.” Then returned to his mother, still in her long housecoat, waiting to drive him to school.

Years later, he would think about the dream and wonder if he had dreamed about the old man or someone else. On the day he stood on the overpass with yards and yards of green polyester sailcloth, trying to blanket the world, he felt the man might see him from space, if that was where he was now since he had probably left earth. And he felt sorry his father would not know of his feat with this massive green sheet. And he was sorry the prop man at the theater had to move away but was glad his parting gift was what he knew Darius had wanted: a massive ream of green. And Darius prayed for his mother, that she would stay strong through their mission, that she would wear the colorful clothes from the thrift shop where he worked so she could be happy. He prayed the shadow, created by the fabric, would turn green and spread and envelop the entire world, that the world would be redeemed, that people would see and feel how happy they were. And then a violent wind lifted him, but then it also brought the two ends of the cloth together and he held tight and the fabric billowed out like a sail and he was lifted up over the highway and over the worries of the dirty, dun-colored city.

Streaming

Florida Memory, state archives, Vehicle assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center, 1973, flickr

How are you? I went out of town to see my parents last weekend for Mother’s Day. This weekend, I’ve given myself some downtime with movie therapy. Actually, I’ve given myself lots of time off for this. I keep telling myself that I’m going to let a couple of services drop for at least a month, but then, something good comes out and I lose my resolve. Some highlights over the past couple of months: Breeders, The Staircase, Ozark, John and the Hole, Gaslit, The Sound of Silence, Candy, Julia, Life & Beth, Jim Gaffigan’s Comedy Monster, Meltdown: Three Mile Island. I include the picture above to point out that I have considered watching the Challenger series on Netflix, but can’t quite bring myself to do it yet. My high school English class went outside to watch the Challenger ascend, and then we observed the tragedy. I just don’t know if I can watch the series. Maybe sometimes personal losses get attached to national losses, and it can be all too painful. Anyway, there are so many good series and movies streaming. I hope you are doing well this May and have some time to relax. Sincerely—Margaret

Breath

Florida Memory, Towering Palms, State Archives, flickr

I was out today in my little yellow Ford Focus doing some errands. I felt just a few pounds lighter; my hair had grown out a little from an unwanted severe cut; the sun shone down through the sunroof, delivering light to my pale face. The weather was warm but breezy, beach-perfect on this spring Florida Saturday. My body has felt the stresses of the last few years, yet I still wear a mask when I go inside businesses to make purchases and post a package. As a cancer survivor, I don’t want infection and long covid effects, though I realize a piece of cloth at this point is a feeble defense in a sea of germs. I don it anyway. However, I take my sunglasses off when inside to at least appear less lady-bank-robber. And today I wore a light blue shirt, a blue and white paisley cotton mask, light summer jeans, sandals. I was feeling good vibes.

One of my errands was the liquor store where a tall, sandy-haired guy greeted me in an aisle and asked me how I was doing. He did this in a way that seemed like he could be either just a friendly customer or a well-trained employee. I noticed that he was handsome, young, fit but in an easy surfer, Florida way, nothing overdone. Well done, liquor store. He was likely 30s tops, maybe good-lifestyle 40. But the friendly part was the thing that mattered.

They were playing “Ring My Bell” from my Arkansas-roller-skating grade school days, though six of us Orlando high school girlfriends used to ride around in one of our mom’s minivans and sing it, on our way to the mall through the heat and humidity, on our way to a night out somewhere, the vigorous palms and live oak overhead dripping with Spanish moss watching over us in loco parentis.

It was lunch hour at the liquor store, the time most populated by my generation. Usually most of this set have minivans or hybrids and do an economy spend of a few cases. I often see them packing up in the lot from their full carts. I’m more of an as-needed shopper since I live just a few miles down the street on the other side of the highway. I pick up a six-pack or a liquor bottle and/or mixer.

It is a nice store, bright and well-kept in a well-manicured area of town financed by Disney, financing soon to be destroyed by a strange man, apparently a not-Disney person who wants to crush everyone’s good times. I thought of that as I drove around today, enjoying the incredible, lush beauty, but tried not to think of it as well, tried not to think too much of stupidity and wretchedness and how ego can literally crush everyone’s life and environment. No, I try not to think of it too much.

At the store, I headed straight to the refrigerated section stocked with variations of my brew, a Belgian wheat. They were out of the light, so I took a six-pack of the mango-flavored. I’ll have to admit, I was happy when a floor walker directed me to a register manned by the employee who had greeted me in an aisle. He was a tall 6’2″ or so, very Florida, so like many of the surfer guys I have known; like my late brother, a surfer and chill person; like my friend from high school, a lover of Jimmi Hendrix a generation too late and eventually a heroin addict on the street; and like too many to list, from high school and even into adulthood.

Surf-liquor man was a very good salesperson and knew how to talk and field my question about my preference for the light. He was ready with a story about it and a quip about supply chains and the lack of creativity of certain manufacturers in meeting demand.

He reminded me of my own son, the same sandy blond hair, blue eyes, easy conversation.

All these moments and more, moments of sharing space and conversation and laughs, had not happened as much for a few years of pandemic isolation, at least not as much for me. For me, it was sometimes the fear that kept me further away than I should have allowed myself. And today, I didn’t really feel that fear so much. And I thought of how much we need these little moments, sometimes even more than “significant” ones. The lack of these tiny human exchanges over a long stretch of time can break us down a bit, and sometimes they can break us down a lot.

On my way home, I had a sudden urge to hit the road, to drive until I hit the beach about an hour away. But my second thought was that I needed to save my gas money for the drive to see my mother on Mother’s Day. My tank is now is 3/4 full which means if I’m conservative, I can fill it a few less times this May. My irrational hope is that somehow the world may soon be absent one less dictator; may soon be absent one less ruiner of lives, economies, and peace. My irrational hope is that soon I will breathe easier when I think of trips, of beach trips, of family trips, of just-because trips, of just-sanity trips and beauty and fun trips. And more to the point, I pray against all hope those most affected by the crushing will finally and somehow be afforded the chance to survive; be afforded the chance to recover; be afforded the chance to put their lives and communities back into some sort of discernible order.

Another favorite song I heard today was one I played in my car on my way home from errands: George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.” In a fleeting music-inspired-feel-good-moment, it caused me to think romantically that there must have been so much idealism in the world when it was composed. And yet, and yet…there was war then too, and this song was in heartfelt protest.

Today afforded me a little breath. I can now hear the wind filtering the leaves outside of the living room of my apartment. I think there have been many days these leaves moved with the wind, but my own breath has awakened my senses.

And now, I hear a bird…And now, I wish you a good Saturday.