Meg Sefton's Blog, page 66

Bluebeard’s Kingdom

One day the world turned to ice. The world melted for a time but the melt pouring into the oceans at such a rate that currents were interrupted. And then the earth did what it did, its pendulum swung and froze continents and the waters between continents, gobbling up terra firma, crops, grazing pastures, cities, suburbs. Snow fell at alarming rates, power grids shut down, famine swept Europe, North America, and the East. Only parts of the southern hemisphere were spared.

Governments disintegrated as the raw fight for survival took the place of societal structures and what rose in its place: Kingdoms, monarchies, ruled by those adept at knowing what to do in the roughest conditions. A group of convicts, having escaped when the shutdown of electric power reversed locking mechanisms in prisons, were found to be most one of these most resourceful and quickly rose to power.

One such man was Bluebeard. A leader among his peers and greatly feared by even the most brutal, he established his kingdom in Northern Europe, having conscripted the vast gang of his brotherhood as his henchmen. He envisioned for himself a vast dominion and began creation of his ice kingdom, drafting those who had worked in ice in commercial and artistic projects in the Old World to build his palaces.

As for the average person, there was chaos and starvation, desperation. The world fell into famine. Crops and stores of crops soon disappeared. Children were given chunks of ice to suck on when hungry and soon that became their sole consolation. In the early days of the Global Freeze, when money had value, those who had saved money were able to send family members further south to an uncertain but perhaps better future. Those who could not afford to do so or who were too old or infirm to travel stayed and bartered with whatever was left them: furniture sold for wood, matches for canned goods, sex for dried meats. It even happened in some families that it became necessary to sell children.

One such child had been Helene Goode. In fact, her brother and sister had previously been sold as stopgaps, her father having held onto her as long as he could. But at last, even her usefulness to him did not outweigh the desperate needs of his stomach and the cravings of his wife. And so they sent her on her way in exchange for something more valuable than money: a whole reindeer, a steel and flint, a cord of wood.

Helene was only thirteen when she was paraded into the courtyard of Bluebeard, a chain around her waist, tied to other girls like they were a daisy chain she used to make in summer for her sister Anna. Anna is here somewhere, thought Helene, and despite the pulling and tugging of the girl in front of her and behind, she began to look around, as if Anna at that very moment might be wandering the ice cobblestone streets. And where was her brother Henry? She could not imagine. Of what use would he be here? All that had concerned him in the Old World was a wooden car he pushed around the house, making car noises, pushing air through his pursed lips, drooling a bit. She smiled when she thought of it.

“What are you smiling about?” said the Talent Collector, coming up beside her with a whip she held in her hands. The Talent Collector had grabbed her arm when her father led the reindeer away to their shed. She had put Helene into one of several huge woven cages along the back of the sleigh, her mother crying and calling out to her, handing her a necklace that had been her grandmother’s.

“I’ll take that,” the Talent Collector said, grabbing the necklace with a greedy hand from where she sat on the driver’s bench. She stuffed it into the folds of her dress and Helene never saw it again. It was her grandmother’s cameo. “Your mother just feels guilty she sold you,” said the old woman, heartlessly, and cracked her whip over the animals who jolted to life.

It had been her family’s fortune that Helene had worked in ice every year, had received a special dispensation from regular schooling and had received scholarships to make the trips. Young though she was, her time as an intern in polar Sweden shaping ice sculptures and also as an assistant at local competitions fetched for her parents survival through the winter. The old woman could be as nasty as she wished.

Helene only prayed the extent of her talents had not been common knowledge: the unnatural pace with which she molded her creations in ice, her communion with and understanding of water.

Helene had known the ice was coming, she knew of snow. She knew it before it was being broadcast, when it first hit Europe. It was a creaking in her bones, a roaring in her ears. She was most sensitive to it, at night, lights out, and she felt it, heard it approach, nearer and nearer.

When she had helped build ice hotels and theme parks for rich tourists, she had only heard singing, music, the sound of bells – some deep and sonorous and rich, some light and tinkling. But when the ice was approaching on the whole of the earth, it was in her ears, the whole of the orchestra playing at once in a riotous cacophony. When it invaded her days as well as her nights, she began worrying for her mother and father, her brother and sister.

Standing before Bluebeard in his palace of ice, his massive figure clad in the skin of a bear, she saw beyond the throne something that would give her life purpose beyond survival: blocks of ice composing the walls of the court were blocks of frozen children.

“We do it to preserve them,” said Bluebeard, his face crisscrossed by a deep blue tattoo, giving his light blue eyes a washed out appearance, a sense of laser penetration. “Maybe some day we’ll learn how to use these creatures again, or eat them,” he said, laughing, throwing back his fur clad head and bearing teeth filed to points.

Somewhere in these blocks was Anna, Henry. She cast out her thoughts to the blocks but in return received nothing back. Silence.

She had never encountered this before. In Bluebeard, she had a formidable opponent. He ruled even her thoughts.

But ghosts also came to her from water, ghosts of people who had died at the hands of currents and accidents in ice. Working in Sweden had taught her she could find the burial ground of lost children and pets though she would never reveal what led her there, only that she had happened upon them when exploring.

She bid her time until even Bluebeard gave over his evil schemes to night. She convinced the guards she had night repairs to make in the ice. Ice workers were given the benefit of a lantern and a few rudimentary tools. She stood on the massive floor stained to look like an intricately carved ornamental rug and she called out to her sister and brother: Anna! Henry! She called out to them again and again, her breath pluming up in the light of the lantern.

A ghost in water sound was unlike any other pure ice sound. It was a low bassoon, though in the case of children, often a high flute. The sounds of these ghosts in ice had often reminded her of Prokiev’s Peter in the Wolf recording her mother used to play for them in which the bird song is a high flute and the grandfather is a low grumpy bassoon.

It was then, upon summoning them, that the ice gave over what they contained: two flutes trilling and climbing in distress and alarm. Anna and Henry!

She ran to where they cried out, one not far from the other and it was as Helene experienced in other times of spying the dead frozen in ice: Their musical screams from dead blazing faces, faces trapped in shock and alarm. It was an odd combination though Helene had become used to it and began thinking of it as another way all of life communicates though most never hear it.

“I will get you out!” She promises them. Anna is in an ice block only a few blocks from Henry, frozen as if she were in mid stride and trying to say something at the same time. Henry, a few ice blocks away, was frozen on his knees as he pushes his wooden car.

Helene wanted to break down from her grief but her experience seeing people and animals this way helps her remain calm before children who needed comfort.

In her bed of ice that night in the worker’s quarters where she was afforded a mattress and covering of bear fur, she cried silently to herself over what she knew: There would be no life left for her Anna and Henry. She had been enabled to hear people frozen in ice but that didn’t mean they were still alive. They were simply trapped. It was a state of unendurable misery. She made her plans for the tyrant who had made easy sport of innocents.

The next morning, Bluebeard was sitting down to breakfast, his favorite: blueberry pancakes with the wheat from fields he was harvesting in the southern hemisphere, blueberries that grew aplenty in his crops. Mid bite, he froze. Yes, literally. A sheet of water leapt from the buckets held over flames for the purpose of his laundry and ablutions and froze him in a solid wall of blue and white crystalline wonder, his pointed teeth bared, his laser blue eyes held in shocked amazement.

Helene thanked the servants for entry into the dining hall and requested a pancake. She folded it and put it into her mouth. Heavenly. The servants would have been given gruel. She used their befuddlement to command them to make all servants the luxurious breakfast. They did so, as ordered, digging deep into Bluebeard’s larder, and a long line filed in to pile their plates high with a rare treat and to gaze at their frozen, malevolent king. And no one knew quite what to make of the girl who, with a wave of her hand, commanded a sheet of water fall on this ravenous oligarch and freeze him to death. But they knew it would be a very fine day.

And at the command of Helene, ice blocks of children were exchanged for ice blocks of henchman, and children were laid to rest in memorial gardens of ice painted to resemble flowers.

Helene could hear music again. It sounded of water. It sounded of home.

Valentine Says Goodbye to Christmas

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Christmas tree farm by Washington State Department of Agriculture

It was that time of year again when evergreen trees were brought in from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Washington to be sold in Orlando, Florida to loving families who would decorate their arms with lights and chains of beads, glass ornaments, homely and sentimental ornaments, ornaments collected from trips and black Friday sales and school and church craft shows, regifted gift ornaments, white elephant ornaments, grandmother’s ornaments, Christmas wedding shower ornaments, estate and garage sale ornaments, ornaments from the Winter Park Art Festival, the Orlando Museum of Art, Disney, the flea market.

Valentine Halle was a prominent socialite in town who, every year, could make several trees last for almost an eternity, until the end of February, ignoring all pleas of her husband and family to strip the trees bare and put them on the curb already. But according to Valentine, to do it too soon would be a little like prematurely putting old family members out to pasture. Almost every year she just couldn’t bring herself to do it until at last her family lured her away on false pretenses and arranged for someone to bring the holiday to a close.

Trees were not much different from people in that they wanted to live a long life. Only a few people seemed to care about a tree’s desires and one of them was Valentine. If we were to understand trees a bit more, however, they may have one limitation: The tendency to impute purely unselfish motives to people. Yet their faith was born fully formed and never died, continuing even beyond the cutting at Christmas as trees stood in stands of water, beneath skirts. And that was the real reason people wanted trees as decorations in their homes – the faith the trees had in humans – though most people did not realize this, only felt it somehow, like feeling the effect of a dream but not being able to recall what it was upon waking.

It was thanks to migrating mockingbirds, gossipy chatterboxes, that trees further north on tree farms came to know of Valentine’s reputation. Charlie, Jamal, Tina, Fiona – Balsam and Fraser firs – had been spied by the birds standing in the cool shadows of the living room, front entry, children’s nursery, and those were just a few of their numbers known to have lived at Valentine’s house. Furthermore, Valentine’s reputation as an excellent cook and hostess were reported upon by mockingbirds, keen little buggers, who could smell delicious fragrances from the kitchen and who spied well coiffed ladies and gentlemen and their children streaming in and out of the house. In fact, as far as Christmas trees were concerned, Valentine’s home was considered one of the best ways to finish out one’s life.

How long the people of earth have relied on them, the trees said, conferring about this together on the farm, the older, taller trees teaching the younger ones,  all of them growing together. They would all be cut down for varying purposes and at various times, and yet they shared their history and meaning of it: For as long as the winter solstice was celebrated all over the world, the deep green boughs were brought into homes. And as time went on, the custom transferred into a way to celebrate the life of a religious figure. Entire trees were cut down and brought inside.  These legends were passed down through communities of trees so all would know their noble and sacrificial purpose.

You may find it hard to fathom, but there are no victims in tree life. The stories are to give meaning to trees’ lives and dignity, a kind of philosophic groundwork upon which to build a worldview and a sense of understanding. It is not like a tree to think of a human negatively, only positively, as if all humans had everyone’s best interests at heart, including their own.

It was February of the year Amicia the Fraser fir had found a place in the home of Valentine Halle. And it was time for Amicia to come down. She had been chosen for a special place beside the fire in the living though not so close her needles became dry. It was a cherished position though each tree had its function: Ichiyo the twelve foot Douglas greeted visitors in the entry, Livia the Noble entertained the now grown children in the nursery, adult children who continued the tradition of sleeping there Christmas Eve, except now they drank wine and spoke of their friends and colleges and days past.

In the living room where Valentine and Thomas each sat in their own chair, silent in the evenings after all the parties, Amicia observed their quiet dynamic before the fire, Thomas with his paper and his pipe, Valentine with her embroidery, the grandfather clock against the wall by the entryway a silent father, approving and dozing until it startled to life and sputtered the passing of time on the quarter hour.

Valentine’s reputation had held through Amicia’s experience and true to everyone’s word, Amicia had lasted beautifully for three months with few needles dropped to her skirt beneath.

Alone after Thomas had gone to bed the night before her birthday, Valentine pulled her chair up to Amicia. She spoke to her then in a language Amicia had quickly absorbed.

“Thomas is taking me away for my birthday tomorrow,” she said. She held an ornament in her fingers that was dangling from a branch, a Lenox figurine, a bottle of champagne in a bucket signifying the turning of the New Year. Tears fell down her cheeks. “I know when I come back, you will no longer be here. Our daughter will take down everything. But I struggle. Time goes on. I don’t know who I am anymore.” And she looked into the fire.

Amicia knew what it was like to lose family to their purpose. Ever so gently she shifted so she could reach the top of Valentine’s head with a branch. She stroked it gently, reassuringly, until she had calmed.

Thomas came into the room, having changed into his pajamas, robe and slippers.

Amicia straightened, not letting on she had made an exception to the rule of remaining visibly impartial to human suffering.

“It’s time for bed, my dear,” Thomas said gently to his wife and he helped bring her to her feet.

When Amicia was thrown to the curb the next day, crushed by the garbage truck, then thrown into the city dump, she dreamt of Valentine.

She thought proudly as her branches and trunk disintegrated in the mound of waste that she had served her purpose.

The one mystery of course is that she had crossed the divide.

As she felt herself disappearing, she felt an animal, a bird or a squirrel, pick a cone from her decayed branches.

And as she felt grateful the world would know the compassion and faith of her progeny, she felt able to let go.

 

Isaiah 55:12 The Message. “So you’ll go out in joy, you’ll be led into a whole and complete life. The mountains and hills will lead the parade, bursting with song. All the trees of the forest will join the procession, exuberant with applause.”

r.e.m. 2

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Experiment by Oliver Henze, flickr

 

Notes: In a writing workshop with Laura Lee Bahr at the Kerouac House in College Park, Florida, participants brought written accounts of their most vivid dreams in order to work them into stories. The workshop was entitled “In the Language of Dreams.”  One of my favorite exercises involved using the phenomenon of synesthesia to depict a dream narrative. Synesthesia is an unusual connection of the senses, such as seeing colors when one hears a sound, hearing sounds when one sees an inanimate object or colors, smelling colors or sounds, etc. I have already written one such example in a previous post entitled r.e.m. 1. Here I have written r.e.m. 2. I hope to write more as I remember my dreams from my present life and from my past. Maybe you would like to write the contents of your dream using synesthesia. I challenge you to try it and let me know what you think. 

When you awake in the reverberating silence of the dead night you remember the deep crimson anger of your ex, the burnt meat hunger for your life. He is on his way to get you in his gray silent stealth. When you step out into the hall, there is his silhouette framed in the door to the living room, his limbs hot tar menacing, shimmering in the light behind and to the side.

You must by half measures approach, first grabbing a figurine friendly as pink on your lonely days. It is on the hall table and you think it could serve as your ally with which to bludgeon the void at the end of the hall intent on nullifying you, then you think better of it, recognizing the power of long knives rubbed together for the effect of the silver invasion of the body white heat through the belly. And so you grab them instead.

The red arrow intent to kill is no part of your soft purple disposition, your mother soft purple, a little blue, a little indecisive, Blue in Green pensive. You must press a bone corset to your back. With the kid gone it is now only you, only you to save what you have this little harmonious honey smelling house shedding past lives, your income dependent existence, contingent mother purple life, Mozart’s Lacrimosa days with Jesus who is plum peaches proud of you.

But Jesus doesn’t want you to die, not because of your ex’s resentment heavy, death certain as millstone drowning, torture by crushing, him and you.

But your ex has left your home by the time you enter the living room, shotgun style shape, backdoor directly facing front, knickknacks from lifetimes past standing at attention like disarrayed soldiers in cabinets and curios against the embrace of walls.

There is a line of elderly women, silent question marks, filing through, back door to front, taking a short cut from church.  Should you shut your doors and force this line of gray green stream of hobbling but certain pebbles, bent knees and hunched frames, to walk around the outside of your house?

Surely this stream has found its most natural least resistant route. Would you want the question marks to break over the unevenness of your lawn, thrown off by the syncopated rhythm of roots, uneven resistant sod, hidden wells the deep voices of male voices chanting brown and merciless? You have nothing against the raisin wizened feet yearning for the concreteness of blue even.

When the stream dies, a bright pink cotton candy bird flies in, intent on taking something precious from your depleted honey house, shedding its skins of former lifetimes. You tighten your bone corset as she flies from object to object, sending puffs of light candy scent from her wings, her attention the disappearing melt of candy floss.

And yet you, by comparison, are a wide open midlife ancient sea whose value had become diluted, whose salty tidal undulations are nonplussed regarding the bright and shiny, the new and fresh. Soon these things too will be overtaken, rusted and sighing.

She spirits into your house, ultravioletly jagged, picking up the few shells of your belongings, a crystal biscuit barrel, a milk glass pitcher, a silver cake stand, a china tea cup. You do not recognize her chocolate hair or robin’s eggs eyes, her spirit a puppy’s, not unkind but aggressive.

Teletype incessant she fires at you as she picks up your belongings: Can I have this? What about this? Would it be alright if I took this? Until most dissonant of all, yellow white clashing, one note off of each other: A Spanish sword demand she take your cream colored porcelain vase inscribed with a bright blue double happiness.

You, the ocean, spit up onto your shore an alternative: a smooth piece of driftwood, an immense antique book filled with a pink red happy ending, a chocolate cherry love tale suitable for her age, the double happiness beyond her wisdom, but the book offering the ideal for her, the cosmetic appeal of pages with script regular as a ticking clock, the pictures dancing from the flat white.

Candy floss girl settles into smooth salt taffy and signs your notebook – A guest book? A list of contacts? A signature book? She forms her large loopy Beethoven’s Eroica letters, pulling  and pulling and pulling notes from the orchestra, the strings and the brass, larger and larger and larger.

When she finishes forming her letters, you see the marks that signify your identity,  the soft purple mother love of your nature, the chaotic strands drawn together like a neat package tied with a bow, a package hidden and mysterious, secret. “Margaret” it says, your own self blowing against your face, the breeze against your face gentle and mild, your morning at last blossoming into your pale summer.

 

 

 

 

the pleasures of not stirring

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Turkish Delight Baklava by Jeremy Brooks, flickr

The sun is setting across the parking lot and blinding the eyes of the customers along the western facing stand up bar in the grocery eat in restaurant. Amir and Nada are replenishing the chickpea patties, hummus, tabbouli salad, tzatziki sauce, and fresh baked breads in the display case to be ready for the evening shoppers.

The bell clings against the door. In walks Ms. Dashel, hardly the usual customer for the Persian/Turkish/Mediterranean market.

Amir had always felt guilty since Ms. Dashel had become a customer. Her first visit had been with Nicolaou Poulakidas, a notoriously demanding boar of a man, a local chef in town who shopped there for specialty ingredients. Amir felt in some way that the store had become a trap to hold Ms. Dashel to something against her will or something that should have been against her will in Amir’s estimation.

She sits in her usual spot in one of the free floating tables, plunking down her satchel and grocery bag which is deflated but ready to be filled. She orders a Turkish coffee.

She hardly makes eye contact but she has the dark wild gaze Amir has noticed since the woman starting visiting the store on her own.

Though her eyes that first visit had been a soft, twinkling brown as she floated around on the arm of her new boyfriend Mr. Poulakidas, Amir could have sworn her eyes had turned color. He had noticed in recent times they are black with flashes of white shards, as if her eyes were now the obsidian of his homeland.

As in times before he wants to reach out to her and physically reassure her but of course his faith prevented it. He retreats to the counter with her order and begs of his wife to speak to her.

Nada is a kind a woman but more reserved than her husband. She believes people’s business should be their own. But Amir was kind to everyone and out of respect for his heart she would do what she could.

“There is a huge bruise on her arm,” says Amir, in whispered tones behind the counter while Nada grinds the coffee. “It looks like that brute has grabbed her.”

Only last week Mr. Poulakidas had come in and yelled at Nada for poor technique in the preparation of his coffee.

Amir always suspected Ms. Dashel believed herself to be Mr. Poulakidas’ one and only. Amir had noticed she filled her bag up with things normally stocked by the offensive orospu çocuğu. She was probably running his errands while he was sleeping with someone else.

The delicate Nada carefully sets the ornate demitasse cup and saucer down in front of Ms. Dashel so as not to startle her. Ms. Dashel stares at the blank table at nothing in particular. Nada notices on her exposed upper arm, bare because of her light pink sleeveless sundress, a deep purple bruise the length and width of a thick long finger.

“May I sit with you, Ms. Dashel? I am so tired,” she says, hoping Ms. Dashel will understand her intrusion as a request for a favor rather than a display of pity.

“Yes, dear,” Ms. Dashel replies in an abstracted tone. “Please make yourself comfortable,” but she is still staring at the table as if her beloved coffee had not been set before her.

“Ms. Dashel,” says Nada, “do you mind me observing that pink favors you. It is a lovely dress you are wearing.”

Ms. Dashel makes eye contact with the lovely Nada whose deep brown eyes gaze at her steadily and compassionately as the eyes of Umay. She bends to bring the tiny demitasse cup up to her mouth. Nada notices a little quiver in her left eye, a faint tick along the outer crease.

“Will you be buying groceries from us today, Ms. Dashel? We are so happy to have you here,” says Nada.

Ms. Dashel applies a tiny gold spoon full of sugar to the dark offering and take another sip.

“He always tells me I don’t stir,” she says, finally.

“Who?” says Nada.

“Nicolaou Poulakidas.”

Ms. Dashel applies the rim of the deep blue demitasse cup to her fading painted lips.

“When we get coffee at the diner I get cream. And I don’t stir. He laughs at me.”

Nada can only imagine. She remembers vividly the large man, a rope of a ponytail down his back, demanding she start over with the coffee. She had felt the back of her neck burn as she stood at the stove with the ibrik, willing it to build more foam as demanded of her.

“I want to tell you a secret about stirring,” says Nada, gently, carefully covering her hand over Ms. Dashel’s frail bird claw.

“There is a certain pleasure to be had in not stirring. Let me tell you about those pleasures. First of all, it is beautiful to watch the cream enter the coffee and swirl around, isn’t it, yes? Also, you never know what each sip will taste like. Will it be creamy? Will it be dark? Life is a mystery, and there are some of us who enjoy mysteries and beauty, Ms. Dashel.”

Ms. Dashel’s hand had warmed under Nada’s touch. She retrieved it and put it into her lap. She pushed her spine up against the back of her chair. “You are right,” she said.

That afternoon Ms. Dashel used Mr. Poulakidas’ card to buy Turkish delights for the market employees and their families. She had Nada wrap special boxes for the children and tie them up elaborately with bows. Then she had Amir cut the card in half with the shears he kept behind the counter.

Ms. Dashel would pretend she didn’t know what had happened though she would be having her last conversation with Nicolaou while she looked out on the ocean from her campsite with her dog, a box of Turkish delights beside her, her favorite kind, large pink chunks of rosewater.

 

 

*The inspiration for Nada’s thoughts come from a wonderful little lifehacker article called Why You Shouldn’t Stir Your Coffee.

sur s’dey chh’nam t’mey, hello year new

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Messy, Sodanie Chea, flickr

Starbucks chocolate mint coffee for breakfast, the last of the bag in the freezer since the Christmas before. She was now going on $15 dollars in the account since Christmas week when she forked over the promised last one hundred for the concert ticket promised her son. She was praying to some god her plenty of fish date tonight was the paying kind. She was counting on it. It was dinner.

Once she had dated a man who had used a coupon their first date and then expected her to split the cost. Mean little life. There were times she felt she was hanging on like a tick on life’s back. Not at all like the genteel mannered life of her upbringing, her white rich mama having adopted her from Cambodia and trained her in the way of proper southern ladies. Her mama had assumed after the divorce she was being wined and dined, that rich men were courting her. Let her assume, thought Chanthou.

She had changed her name back to Chanthou Seng. Her son retained his father’s surname, Rouse. She had been Georgia Abernathy as a child, heaven forbid, then Georgia Rouse, married.

She touched the picture she recently taped to the refrigerator, a picture of a Cambodian woman handing over her baby to an American soldier in a helicopter. The copter was on the roof of a hospital and the mother was saving her child from horrors and likely death under the Khmer Rouge. Chanthou had ripped it from the page of an old magazine at the library. She had no pictures of her family.

The coffee grinds in the Mr. Coffee filter inside the basket still smelled a little like mint chocolate, like some old forgotten dream. She retrieved a china mug from her long ago Christmas wedding shower. She wanted to smash it. But she had an affinity for beauty and could adopt a cold objectivity for sentimental objects when it served her.

The wedding ring quilt she had given to her dog. It was some cheap mass produced western looking thing they probably made in her country or some other place with no unions, ten hour days, women fainting and falling out. It was a delicious feeling when the small white pet began to tear at it with her teeth and paws.

Her son was up finally, on his way to work a double, tall, dark, the skin and facial features of home. He was so much taller the top of her head fit under his chin. He would never know she had only $15 dollars to her name until the month’s alimony came through.

She received a text from a man she hadn’t met yet who would meet her out for tea, and, she hoped, some of the restaurant’s Thai offerings, like the Satay Satay Salad or the Thaiger is Crying Sandwhich. Yum. Are you ok with beards, he said? Cause right now I look like Santa. Something about that completely cracked her up. She smiled. She told him so.

When she received a text from her ex the day before, something having to do with their son, he had said something hilarious, and she cried. She would not have confessed this to him of course. But despite her bitterness, she found the old laughter both poignant and painful and no less a kind of miracle. The icy slim blond who is her replacement wouldn’t tolerate much of a rapport between the two of them so she keeps it brief. She needs her monthly aid and would not cause trouble.

How much fun when she was young. In college, climbing in the campus fountain, dancing with her friends. I don’t give a fuck she had shouted for the whole quad to hear and her friends had repeated after her, laughing, all of them soaked and twirling around, three a.m., no campus security. She remembered what she felt like when she said that, something she would never have said before when she was a foreign daughter with white rich Christian parents.

That’s what she felt now at the prospect of meeting Santa. And he had joked with her that she should sit in his lap.

She had a feeling he would pay.

And if he didn’t, she would make her escape.

Christmas Cake

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Mini-Käsekuchen mit Beeren by Marco Verch, flickr

He liked the feel of her in his hands, like risen dough he mashes down and forms again when he is on the job as a pastry chef. She is large, so much larger than most women he has seen, and so fair.

Secretly, to his family and friends she was his big cinnamon, that is what he called her, using a synechdoche in which a part represents a whole, in this case, the sweet smell of her and kindness representing her oversized sweet yeast bun type body. He was no small creature himself and when he met her and slept with her, he felt a kind of echoing satisfaction in his bones, through his blood and flesh.

He brought to her sweet confectionary: chocolate covered strawberries, cheese cake, chocolate ganache, banana bread, baklava, cream cheese iced red velvet. He loved to watch her consume his offerings with abandon, to observe her big red glossed lips, her cheeks smooth and creamy, her plump, baby like fingers shoveling in bites of his creations.

And yet. There were times when he felt it might be more appropriate for her to wait. Why did she always have to eat a piece of what he brought her on the selfsame day? What was wrong with her that she didn’t have the restraint to put something in the freezer, to wait for an occasion to bring out and share it later at an event?

He wasn’t sure what event he had in mind exactly. She was clearly on her own, divorced, hanging out in coffee shops while he worked all night, jabbering with musicians and reading her poetry and sending him pictures on her phone. She had her little white dog and her adult son at times. She was no longer a socialite but a burnt out star.

Still, she could have used some restraint.

But she clearly loved him: “Dear Charles, you are the best, the most brilliant! The night we spent was beyond compare. Remember that waiter? hahaha! You made short work of him, my beautiful god!” This is the kind of thing she would text to him by phone and he would erase it with one click of his generous strong finger, preferring instead to talk to her the next day on his way home from work.

For the holidays, he made her a huge Christmas cheesecake, topped with a strawberry swirl glaze, red and green candies, a yellow chiffon cake side dyed with a green checkerboard pattern of tiny green trees. He had to work on Christmas Eve but stopped by to give her the cake and wish her well.

Her face was tear stained when she opened the door, he could see that. Her son had preferred to stay with his father for the night. And she was alone.

She took the cake from him and set it on the counter. She embraced him in thanks. She insisted he sit down for a moment. She had made coffee.

She took the cake from the box and placed it on a silver stand and exclaimed over it and kissed him again.

He sipped her coffee, she knew how to make it just the way he liked, straight, smooth, and dark.

And yet, she took a silver cake cutter, a holdover from a different life, and sliced right through the heart of his cake, the artfully swirled puree, the tenderly created trees.

That plump, baby hand on the silver server, the lifting of a piece right from the Christmas heart of it all and the ungracious plopping of it onto a plate, the insertion of a large bite right into her fat face.

He couldn’t take it anymore.

He told her he had to leave.

In the crisp and biting air, alone on the front step, he knew: On the morrow, he would be free.

 

 

 

Flashnano Day 10: Write a story in the form of a test

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dip pen and inkwell by jasonc_photography, flickr

Here is a test to determine readiness for achieving competency as a literary fiction writer in the United States of America in the 21st century. The method to test the margin between competence and popularity and/or critical success has yet to be determined. Again, the parameters of this test are merely to determine potential competency in the field of creative fiction writing.

This test is based on the anecdotal experiences of the author of this test and could be deemed  less than scientifically rigorous. But given the popularity of readers and test takers who self select tests in magazines and online, we decided to put together a series of tests based on varying demographics and experiences each with the goal of helping the readers determine for themselves answers to the mysterious questions often googled such as: What does it take to be a literary fiction writer? Google, we realize, is the much more interactive cousin of the Magic 8 ball, and so we thought: Why not help the reader be more interactive with himself/herself as he/she goes alongside a mentor of sorts, a working writer, as he/she interrogates the soul regarding one’s capacity for literary endeavors?

In addition to this, we offered to pay the book allowance of each test creator for one month, a small sum which many writers cannot afford given the cost of rent, food, and helping other writers and artists who themselves are hungry and without shelter.

Further, we must disclose we are supported by advertising dollars – big pharma, chain retail, political candidates – but do not endorse ads and links that appear on the site.

We want to do our best to help you decide whether you can be an artist. Please let us know your score below and what you thought of this experience.

Test for Artistic Competency: The Middle Aged Divorced Housewife, given certain conditions listed below

This test may be relevant for you if: You are a woman in her 50s, divorced after 20 years of marriage more or less, married to a conservative who threatened to leave you if you try to work outside the home and you were raised by religious conservatives who have always hated that you are a writer and discourage rather than encourage you. You make no money from your literary endeavors but are living on a wing and a prayer.

Imagine this future scenario and ask yourself if, repeated over and over in a host of variations, you can handle it without becoming an alcoholic, or at least a nonfunctional one:  You go to a bar to hang out withat least able  “really fun people” according to the social meet up site on the internet, all of them highly successful working professionals. You begin talking to a seemingly pleasant man who is about your age. He has come to several group meetings, has a salt and pepper hair and beard and a Phd, and teaches history at a local private boarding school. You stand at the bar and talk while you enjoy your drinks. When he asks what you do and you say you are a writer he says: Are you successful? If you make no money from your writing but you are published in literary journals, how do you respond?  If you defensively argue bullshit about how art has no monetary measure because its worth is in the non-monetized value to humanity, you are a romantic but also a fool in America. Trust me he will walk away and tell the rest of his monetarily wealthy friends you are a real loser. This is a no win situation, so don’t feel sorry, sister. Have more booze and take your credit card away from where it is sitting on the bar then later hoodwink the bartender into believing he’s got a tab going for you. Order another G & T. It’s so busy he’ll get too flustered and forget. Order as many as you can get away with. In so many ways, you can’t afford to be at this gig, but you were trying to be Dorothy Parker. Give yourself 0 points. It’s a wash.
Add up the number of friends you have now, before you seriously start writing, friends you have now before posting your writing, publishing it, friends who want to go out with you, aren’t jealous of you or who treat you strangely, friends who like you because they understand you, or at least able to “handle” you. Now take that number and subtract an equal number less one from that. That’s how many real friends you will have left when you start publishing as a literary writer. (This perhaps assumes you will be relatively “unknown” which applies to almost all working writers in the United States today. However, if circumstances change and you develop groupies, friends won because of fame don’t really count in this equation unless their loyalty is proven through ups and downs. This is not part of the current equation because the test does not solve for virtual improbabilities.) I hope you were paying attention in grade school because now we will deal with the addition of a negative number. The one will be added to a negative 10 which is the number of writing friends that will be won and lost over the course of your training and development, friends lost through petty arguments, jealousies, and competitions. However, add 30 to this negative number if you are able to pull off going to a low residency or full residency writing program. Add the same number if you can’t afford it but get involved in the local writing and artistic community as well as the writing community online. If you do both and your attention is divided, the total number of writing friends and acquaintances of his equation is still a solid 21. If you indulge in unrelated social media arguments and rants – political or otherwise – take away at least 5 friends.
Repeat the steps in #2 but solve for the number of supportive family members, with some variations added: Add up the supportive number of friendly adult family members you have now, before you seriously start writing, posting your writing, and publishing in literary journals and magazines, adult family members who want to hang out with you, don’t treat you strangely, adult family members who like you because they understand you, or feel they are at least able to “handle” you. Now take that number and subtract an equal number minus one from that. That’s how many supportive adult family members you will have left when you begin publishing as a literary writer. Again, it is good you were paying attention in grade school because now we will deal with the addition of a negative number. The one friendly member remaining will be added to a negative 1 which is a retroactive situation in which a previously divorced spouse left you, partly because he hated your writing, so it is a wash, darling. When your child grows up to be an adult and if he/she feels proud you are a writer, consider yourself a diva. If you have more than one child, and/or nieces and nephews who grow up to become adults and proud of your writing, you are blessed.
If you plan on compromising your writing to please your friends and your family, take away all points in 2 and 3. It is not looking good for you, sister. But if you say: Come what may, I will write according to my voice, I will follow what it tells me, I live in a free country and no matter what, I will say what I believe through my stories, you may keep whatever gains you have made in equations 2 and 3. If a few of these gains drop off because of your exercise of freedom, you will not have lost anything, in fact you may gain which leads to the next test question.
If you exercise your voice and speak regardless of risk to career opportunities, dating opportunities, marital status, social life, family approval, religious sanction, legal protection, your soul may be crushed down so that you feel you are operating in the negative numbers for soul vitality but you may – at that point –  begin reaching the ground floor of your artistic competency. It is a subjective judgement how much one has sacrificed to reach this ground level competency, but nothing less than total sacrifice in at least a few areas most citizens believe are critical for well being and stability is what is necessary. The only way to know for sure if you will become a competent literary writer in the United States of America in the 21st century is to start writing. If your effort and passion equal infinity, the chances are good you will become a competent writer. You may at least learn how to spell a few words and meet a few nifty people.

 

Flashnano Day 9: Write a story containing a song lyric

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Image from The Pride of the Household, 1900, flickr

She had come late to making biscuits. Divorce. Cancer. A child left for college. She had come late to keeping flour on hand. Buttermilk. Cold butter. She had cooked a lot of gourmet in her married years, and been on too many fad diets. And now it was just her and the dog. And later this weekend a stranger who wants to meet her, sleep with her, the last of his kind, she imagines.

She turns on youtube music starting with her mid life music crush John Prine singing with Kacey Musgraves on a cruise ship. “Mind your own biscuits,” is the heart of the song. She smiles at Kacey and John singing and strumming and gives her dog a treat she keeps in the crystal biscuit barrel, a very expensive gift from her marriage.

She doesn’t make the biscuits fancy, cutting butter through the flour, rolling the dough out and creating a round with a cutter. She melts the butter into the buttermilk, mixes this all in with the dry ingredients and plops a spoonful of dough onto the parchment.

She doesn’t know how it happened to her, her life like this. She couldn’t even afford to fix her oven. She baked her biscuits in a small oven on the counter. What had happened to her dreams of hosting her family around dinner tables. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t even clean her house anymore, a place not even associated with her former life except for the occasional visitation of her son.

She slept with the strange men for free. She wasn’t even sure why. It occurred to her one day she was cheating herself, risking herself, and for what. Not even for a little compensation. All so she could pretend to feel better, pretend to forget. She should have charged them. For that she would put grape jelly on her biscuits when they were done. To take an edge off. Pretend she was special, she was love.

She knew how to take the pictures so she looked better, thinner. She would send the pictures to them to satisfy them, entice them, and hear them say they were interested. There had been a time she didn’t have to pretend and she wanted that feeling back, of having power. One of them had become so convinced she had tricked him into her beauty, he had brought a gun to the hotel where they met.

She had once polished her silver. Brought her whole silver tea seat and dishes passed down from gradmothers to a tea party at her son’s school. There had been enough silver to hold all the cookies and biscuits and scones.

What was she doing now, she didn’t know. Ruined, said Mama. Indeed, her younger self knew so many things. Thought she knew love which now she realized was only approval.

The biscuits looked done. She pulled them out, put a couple on a plate, a chipped plate with palm trees from a set she had purchased from a department store one Christmas to decorate her Mama’s table handed down to her, the antique purchased in Texas before she was born. How much perfection there was then, and the Murano glass candle holders containing the white tea lights.

Only briefly she had earned a living before she married and that not too much higher than the minimum needed to get by in her town. Now no work experience, and her looks faded, her age telling. What was there but biscuits. And on good days chili with good meat. On other good days, casseroles.

She holds a chunk of biscuit down for her little white dog who sits on the floor beneath the little makeshift oven. She feels her little mouth grabbing for the bread. There is just this, then. And she marvels she is still alive. Her dog’s little tongue, licking up the butter, feels good on her skin.

She had taken to calling her dog Biscuit, which was not her name. It didn’t seem to matter.

Flashnano Day 9: Write a story containing a song lyric. Readers: Thank you for being here for my 100th post.

[image error]

Image from The Pride of the Household, 1900, flickr

She had come late to making biscuits. Divorce. Cancer. A child left for college. She had come late to keeping flour on hand. Buttermilk. Cold butter. She had cooked a lot of gourmet in her married years, and been on too many fad diets. And now it was just her and the dog. And later this weekend a stranger who wants to meet her, sleep with her, the last of his kind, she imagines.

She turns on youtube music starting with her mid life music crush John Prine singing with Kacey Musgraves on a cruise ship. “Mind your own biscuits,” is the heart of the song. She smiles at Kacey and John singing and strumming and gives her dog a treat she keeps in the crystal biscuit barrel, a very expensive gift from her marriage.

She doesn’t make the biscuits fancy, cutting butter through the flour, rolling the dough out and creating a round with a cutter. She melts the butter into the buttermilk, mixes this all in with the dry ingredients and plops a spoonful of dough onto the parchment.

She doesn’t know how it happened to her, her life like this. She couldn’t even afford to fix her oven. She baked her biscuits in a small oven on the counter. What had happened to her dreams of hosting her family around dinner tables. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t even clean her house anymore, a place not even associated with her former life except for the occasional visitation of her son.

She slept with the strange men for free. She wasn’t even sure why. It occurred to her one day she was cheating herself, risking herself, and for what. Not even for a little compensation. All so she could pretend to feel better, pretend to forget. She should have charged them. For that she would put grape jelly on her biscuits when they were done. To take an edge off. Pretend she was special, she was love.

She knew how to take the pictures so she looked better, thinner. She would send the pictures to them to satisfy them, entice them, and hear them say they were interested. There had been a time she didn’t have to pretend and she wanted that feeling back, of having power. One of them had become so convinced she had tricked him into her beauty, he had brought a gun to the hotel where they met.

She had once polished silver. Brought a whole silver tea seat and dishes passed down from gradmothers to a tea party at her son’s school. There had been enough silver to hold all the cookies and biscuits and scones.

What was she doing now, she didn’t know. Ruined, said Mama. Indeed, her younger self knew so many things. Thought she knew love which now she realized was only approval.

The biscuits looked done. She pulled them out, put a couple on a plate, a chipped plate with palm trees from a set she had purchased from a department store one Christmas to decorate her Mama’s table handed down to her, the antique purchased in Texas before she was born. How much perfection there was then, and the Murano glass candle holders containing the white tea lights.

Only briefly she had earned a living before she married and that not too much higher than the minimum needed to get by in her town. Now no work experience, and her looks faded, her age telling. What was there but biscuits. And on good days chili with good meat. On other good days, casseroles.

She holds a chunk of biscuit down for her little white dog who sits on the floor beneath the little makeshift oven. She feels her little mouth grabbing for the bread. There is just this, then. And she marvels she is still alive. Her dog’s little tongue, licking up the butter, feels good on her skin.

She had taken to calling her dog Biscuit, which was not her name. It didn’t seem to matter.

Flashnano Day 8: Write a story involving the police

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on danse by Raul Lieberwirth

Here is the scene that has informed my romantic imagination since girlhood: Father and Mother, in the living room, dancing to Neil Diamond’s “September Morn,” Father still in police uniform, his hand upholding Mama’s delicate hand in his as if cradling something delicate and pure, his other hand enclosing her waist.

He sings the words directly to her and she smiles at him as if this is the first time he has ever sung words about two lovers dancing until the night became a brand new day. The soaring orchestra, Neil Diamond’s gravely voice, the poignant, wistful tune. Most of the time, Father in all his uniform trappings – the loaded police duty belt, his heavy shoes – produced a cacophony of squeaks, but I never noticed this during “September Morn.” It was like the two of them were born of air.

This is how they ended every day when Father came home after work. Before dinner. Before he said hi to me, my sister, or my brother, before he took the dog out, before he tasted what was on the stove.

Mother dressed for his arrival too, a full skirted dress, heels, makeup, smoothed down hair.

My parents have been married for forty six years. When I was young and used to watch them dance I thought I would want a husband like Father.

I still want a husband like my father. But it has not happened for me. Or maybe I could never figure out to be more like my mother to get a man like my father.

These days it gets to be demoralizing to eat every single meal alone, something I would never have envisioned for myself when I was young. Of course, I eat watching movies or the news. But sometimes I try to eat at my table without turning on the television or checking social media. However, by the time the next meal rolls around, I have given in.

This morning I decided to go to a restaurant close to me I had never tried before called The Breakfast Club. It’s a diner that only serves breakfast all day long.

After situating myself in a booth, I saw a man sitting by himself at a table in the middle of the restaurant, the only other person who was there alone. The room was noisy with couples, people from work, families.

I watched his face. He seemed to be the kind of man to be embarrassed for not many reasons at all, just something I felt I picked up in his demeanor. And his face was red. But that could have been because he worked in the sun. He was wearing work boots like many of the men there.

I caught his eye. He had a not unfriendly face, white hair, fairly athletic build. He broke eye contact but I knew he caught me looking at him.

I myself am middle aged, not bad looking, though no longer young.

He never came by my table. Nor did I pluck up the courage to go say hi to him.

I left the restaurant, but interestingly, he walked out not far behind me.

I yearned for the courage to turn around and simply say something but I felt I couldn’t.

When I was inside my car, I knew I must listen to “September Morn.”

I opened sunroof and let the music flow out into the sunny, cool day.

I saw him glance at me on the way to his car. But I still couldn’t bring myself to introduce myself.

On the way home, past trees and neighborhoods as my car took me further away from that spot where I noticed another’s loneliness that was equal to mine, a place I could not reach out to be vulnerable, I felt my sense of failure, of feeling trapped.

As I listened to Neil Diamond’s “September Morn,” over and over and over, I felt I would always live in memory of my father, in a bubble, a dream, I would keep recalling those moments of watching them dance as if I were caught in a loop, observing their young glory, their victories, their dignity.

I took note of how messy and chaotic my house had become, the telltale signs of an insomniac, a depressive.

I should clean up, I thought.

And I thought to make note of the time and the day I had eaten at the restaurant so I may return next week, just in case.