Meg Sefton's Blog, page 71

shoe and line

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A tiny shoe sat beside the white line of the four lane highway. It sat breathless as the cars whooshed past. Will someone stop to pick it up? Is the lady standing at the bus stop waiting for her opportunity to cradle it in her hands, to kiss its soft tongue?

– My life has not begun said the shoe to no one in particular. I am not ready to die. He thought of his troubles as he lay beside the painted white line.

– I have it worse, said the line. I have never been in contact with a living being.

What a ridiculous white line, thought the shoe at the same time recognizing his dependence. No one would run over him since he was close.

– Why would you need what I have? said the shoe. You never die. You are renewed with white paint. You help the cars, the beasts.

– You have held a place of privilege, said the line. Now you will see what it’s like to be the rest of us.

– What are you talking about, the rest of us?

– The anonymous. The merely dutiful. Or worse, the forgotten. You’ve thought yourself special, I can tell.

– I have not.

– You’ve thought yourself indispensable. Now you’re like trash. You think that woman over there wants you because some other woman has? The first woman in your life only wanted you because you helped her son. That other woman over there is old. You probably remind her of something painful, like a child who has grown and gone astray or a child she has lost.

– How do you know so much? You’re a line.

– I’ve seen enough.

– You’ve seen the bottoms of tires.

– I’ve seen people die.

– Then that makes you the font.

– Of what?

– Wisdom, you idiot. It’s a cliché. When you’re out among people, you hear these things.

– See the specialness creeping in again.

– I have no such pretentions. I’m about to be squashed, besides.

– And then you’ll only experience what the rest of us feel, the random nature of life. How some are chosen to be one thing and some another. How some live on, some die.

– You make me feel so much better.

At that moment, the lady from the bus stop rescued the shoe. There had been a break in traffic. She sat on the bench and cradled it in her palm.

The line looked on. He was jealous of the shoe, but he would not admit it. To admit his jealousy would not change his duty to be a line. Some thrive on admiration for simply being what they are.

– Special boy, he muttered to himself, but his whisper was drowned by shushing of tires.

First appeared in The New Absurdist

How to Love an Octopus

 Glowing Octopus by ccarlstead, flickr

Book passage to the South Pacific  where Jacques Cousteau made his mark. When you charter your boat to find your octopus you will discover, in fact, that they use the same tanks, much of the same equipment, designed by the inventor of the Aqua-Lung. His name and methods are sacrosanct. He has shown you this way to love. Watch and listen. Ask questions. Pay attention. Be aware. This is the mark of the lover.

While you wait for passage discover what it’s like to be an octopus by learning to breathe underwater. Enroll in a scuba class.  Begin to learn now that to prepare to meet an octopus you will have to learn a way that is the opposite way of being terrestrial. Your feet are crazy long, you have no peripheral vision, and your breathing makes you sound like a monster. To enter a portal requires transformation and patience. You will also learn of possible injury from the process of the dive and even death, and yet, you do it for love.

Sit on the edge of the chartered Opunohu boat in the blue crystalline waters off the coast of Moorea. Hold your mask as you flip backwards off the edge into rolling waves. At last, you have entered your own sweet blue planet, the tropical reefs of French Polynesia, in search of your love, the Giant Pacific Octopus. At last you will have an encounter with an alternate reality, another form of consciousness.  At last you will reach across the vertebrate divide to know and be known.

Like all who are pursued and truly desired, your octopus will be illusive. Know that and be patient. She is the master of disguise and changing skin. She is invisible though right before you. She is silent, immobile, watching you as you move over the reef looking for her. You may find evidence of her dinner of scallops and if you are so lucky, an arm full of suckers protruding from her den. If you are polite, and move away, she may come out to greet you the next time you visit. Your acceptance of her need for privacy strengthens her to be brave. If you are slow in your motions and patient on your subsequent visits, she may even take your arm and show you around. She may even introduce you to her friends.

A lover bears gifts. Do not visit bereft of certain tokens of affection. Toys are gifts for an octopus, for the intelligent creature loves a challenge. Do not bore your octopus! Several examples of good toys are as follows: screwtop jars, bottles, plastic screw apart Easter eggs or balls, various video cameras she will enjoy dismantling and dragging into her den. Do not arrive without a crab in a jar or a piece of shrimp in a Mister Potato Head or a lobster in a trap. Watch her with admiration as she springs her food from the trap and devours it, tasting it as it passes from sucker to sucker and into her mouth in the center of her warped star figure.

When you have formed a bond of trust with the object of your love, submit yourself to her curiosity.  Do not shudder as those naturalists and artists of the past. Surely this is not in the lover’s nature, to be repulsed. Instead consider the light suctioning kisses a sweet tasting of your skin, her silken tendril arms moving over your arms and shoulders the gentle exploration of new love, the rapid changes in skin color pleasurable blushes, the pulse of ink and exit a flirtation, the regard of the dark slit eyes the all knowing all loving gaze of the divine.

You could keep a lover if you wish. Some do. In a large fish tank emulating the ocean. She will want to be by the television. And if she can, she will get out and eat the leftovers on the counter and sink. She will crawl onto your shoulder and head and watch tv.  She will cheer on your team. She will watch your favorite shows. If you feed her, if you entertain her, if you love her, she will never leave.

 

This loosely references the work of Sy Montgomery, and in particular, The Soul of an Octopus. The documentary Aliens of the Deep was also a helpful source.

 

 

Sabina

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Unknown by Edward Zulawski, flickr

At five in the afternoon in December the dark skin of night closes in over day. Across the street from Sabina’s townhouse the last glimmer of gold, the fire sky, simmers through the pines, the scrub oak, the palms, and she wishes to hold onto that moment of the final sun forever, a diamond in her hand, its flash, its promise. But of course there is no stopping the night. It shuts down a liveliness in her as if it were the coming of age itself, as if it were death itself come unbidden.

He would have called her melodramatic, “he” being her ex, of course. She would have said she was merely acknowledging her reality, this sense of being subject.

And so she plowed through on this Monday, with her experience, in this melodramatic frame, wondering this: What to provide her son for his dinner when he begins his week with her. When the earth shuts down, this is no small task. The weeks her child is with his father she eats only leftovers, scours the crisper and cabinets for anything that would serve as a food source. She is juggling bills and doctors and medicine and a crumbling house and car. She eats things past their due date, sometimes way past. One time she got sick.

When it is time for her son to spend Christmas week with her she knows if she appears desperate or unorganized, she risks losing contact. She must address her responsibilities as dark skies threaten to sap her and so she takes a risk: She texts her son asking him for to pick up carryout on his way home from soccer practice.

“Does your ex think you unfit to parent?” This from her therapist months ago when Sabina was ordered to come off of a controlled substance for anxiety. She was strung out and barely able to carry a thought from one sentence to the next. She sometimes forgot words altogether. And yet this one word rammed through her: unfit. The word reverberated in her skull with no pill to protect her. This seemed unfair, outrageous, even, that she is both required to be free of a substance and then criticized for her withdrawal. After all, she and her eighteen year old had been through worse – the threat of her death and chemo treatments – and come out together, it seemed.

She left her therapist, sent her a text and asked her about that word – “unfit” – but then didn’t really try to understand her therapist’s return text, just told her she wasn’t going to see her anymore. Sufficiently vague. And when the sky fell early the following winter, there was no pill to guard against the effects of that hour of darkness.

Though she could speak this December, “unfit” would never leave her. And it unnerved her that her ex might see the text to her son to help her secure food. Would he see this as “unfit?” It is amazing how many things come out in a divorce, over a conference table, a smooth blond wood surface in a room across the street from the fountain Sabina described in her first published piece which her then husband proudly framed for her and hung on their wall. And yet, years later, at the mediation: All the small slights, the things told in confidence, trotted out, the hurts.

But there is also this: Had she not bought real maple syrup for her husband and son when she was married? And after the divorce, when she bought an imitation brand to save money so she could buy pancake mix too, and health insurance, her son spoke of his friend’s house, where he ate “real syrup.” This became for her a secret symbol of families who had not been broken, and almost all families in her son’s conservative Christian school were still intact, a school where Sabina now felt like a pariah though she had once felt close to many of the women, where she had even been involved.

Somehow Sabina knew the Jesus of the Christian school would have actually been eating imitation syrup with the tax collectors and sinners, the broken, the unwashed people scrounging to eat in the face of powerful ruling religious classes.

And at the outset of her son’s soccer season this year, coinciding with early darkness and regrets, her son greets her after a game on the sidelines and calls another woman his mom. Why do all the dramas of our lives get enacted on fields? Is there so much intensity there, invisible, that we slip into it whether the field be in the shape of a rectangle or diamond? And though there are things that are redeemed, there are also things lost on fields never to be found again.

Still, Sabina’s contest has always been with the sky, not a person nor a disappointment related to a person, not a field nor a disappointment related to a field. And so, she faces the murdering night on this Monday of Christmas week, waiting for her son to bring sustenance, determined to serve pancakes with syrup even if she must boil brown sugar and water over a meager stove for want of money, the little bit of money having been transferred to the carryout and the stores for the gifts under the tree.

First published in Writing in a Woman’s Voice

the entomologist’s daughter

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Little Girl by Lynette Zozette, flickr

She laid a dime next to the tiny white snail eggs, laid it right there in the dirt at the bottom of the terrarium. She and her brother had named their snails Harold and Maude, with prompting from their mother who now watches with wonder her daughter’s delicate fringe of lashes, the fall of auburn hair, the small fingers once smaller but still delicate.

“Shall we take a picture?” says the mother, which had been the plan all along, but in the quiet morning with the sun streaming through the window and the tank with the beta fish, the golden pathos stems gracing the water, the stick insect clinging to a shelf beside the cat, it is nice to say the words, to recognize the steps of recording and observation and perspective for others and as a reminder to the self: This is what once was.

The daughter nods and takes the camera from her mother. She looks through the viewer and aims, clicking to capture an image of the tiny eggs in the soil. A butterfly dances by, a tortoiseshell they were housing in the cool of the old fashioned larder. “Quick,” says the daughter, “let’s open a window!” And the mother cranks the window over the fish bowl and they gently coax it to fly through. It flies out over the spring grass peaking through wet dead leaves. It flies through trees, their branches pushing out green buds.

for my friend Jen

Be Willing to Write Badly

“I hear my own voice saying each word I type. I do not allow the naysayer to have any voice at all.” —

BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog

by Jan Priddy

Karen Karbo spends twenty minutes each morning ranting on yellow pads of paper before she begins her real writing for the day. William Stafford famously began his days by writing an aphorism and then the draft of a poem. In his book of writing advice, The Triggering Town, Richard Hugo warns against writing with a pen, erasing a mark, and that we should use lined paper with green lines. He also writes that he hopes he doesn’t teach others to write, “but how to teach yourself to write.”

My first creative writing teacher, Sandra Dorr, described being stranded in Europe and completely blocked from writing by her interior nay-saying voice. We all hear that voice. It tells us that our writing is hopeless, clunky, too specific or too general, without purpose or meaning even to ourselves. Personify the critical voice the way Jamaica Kincaid does briefly…

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skin

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the enemy within unleashed by Arne Halverson, flickr

This must be the least favorite part of your body,” said the manicurist, rubbing a rose scented cream into the woman’s hand. The manicurist’s eyes traveled up to the woman’s neck and rested on her face. “In fact, your neck and whole right side is damaged.” The manicurist gave her some cream to take home.

The manicurist was not exaggerating. On the back of her wrist was a long purple scar where she had surgery to remove a ganglion cyst. It looked like some kind of upside down suicide attempt. There was a puckered white patch on a knuckle where she burned her hand ironing her husband’s shirt on his first day of work. Her pinkie had suffered third degree burns from the hot glue gun when she was helping her son make Gandalf for a Tolkien diorama. There was a slash on her neck where her thyroid had been removed. There was a sprinkling of hypopigmentation on the right side of her face, a result of pregnancy that no amount of makeup could hide.

She used the cream. It worked. She looked nothing like herself. She freaked out. She slashed the back of her wrist and the base of her neck. She burned her knuckle with an iron. She covered her pinkie with hot glue. She dotted her check with household bleach. She took herself to the emergency room and said she had been tortured, and no, she did not know her assailant.

First appeared in 52/250

r.e.m.

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Notes of ink, Cheryl Brind, flickr

In the grey green woods at dusk, the smell of smoke and crackling of fire, we all make our way silently through the trees their dark musky bark, the brown smell of the hummus undergrowth. There is a choir singing green notes and purple, round and droll, heavy, singing hymns I know from childhood, yellow girlhood, people dressed in white their clean smell dull as a communion wafer. At last we arrive at a large man seated at a long table, a man pressed from a jello mold. He accepts the bowls of soup we bring him each of us offering a deep brown fragrant bowl we have filled from a moaning cauldron. This man we have come to worship and serve.

Pick up the hymnal I am told, the red ones with a musical staff the long line of a funeral procession, the notes like mourners marching. I don’t want to sing the songs I once loved in yellow pink girlhood for now the songs have gone grey and dank as wet stone.

There is a car on the edge of the woods whose engine makes a sound like red, like let’s go, but there’s nowhere for me to sit. My happy parents, their laughter orange and dancing, their clothes sweet and tart as lemonade, and cool as an orangesicle, look at me while I beg them in black frantic white panic tones jagged as razor wire to take me with them. The car speeds away, dirt rising in its wake like miniscule dust fairies ascending and falling to the ground again, silent as rain, quieter even, a dry feeling like white.

the banishment window

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Window by John Akuppa Wigham, flickr

Say your prayers at the banishment window. Whisper your secrets to me at the banishment window. I will wait for your mornings, at dawn, at evenings, dusk, at the banishment window. I will hear your pleadings to join us, your proof of your reform, but the extent of your involvement will take place at the banishment window. On my side of the banishment window, there is a place for me to sit, but on your side, only rough wall, where you stand, where you will always stand when you see me until we bury you in the potter’s field.

You might wear our clothes, but the extent of our talk will be at the banishment window. You might secure our degrees but don’t think you can fancy talk your way past the banishment window. Have children if you like but they will stay with you out there at the banishment window. Your spouse too: banishment window. In fact, let us know if you’re bringing a whole family and friends, and we’ll have more listeners at the banishment window. But just because there might be more people out there than in here, don’t think you can outnumber your way past the banishment window. When we speak Christ into your life we will meet you at the banishment window. When we curl our lip at your choices or the color of your skin, for sure it will take place at the banishment window.

Sometimes creatures, sometimes fire, sometimes winds, sometimes floods, sometimes people off of their heads out there might take you down whole on the other side of the banishment window. Could you just keep it down, please. Just keep it down ok? We’re trying to pray in here. How do you think our prayers will be made effectual if you keep interrupting us? Chillax and we’ll meet you at the banishment window in the morning.

To the UN Committee on Alternative Fuel Sources

[image error]It has been well known for quite some time that on the outskirts of Munir, a city that could well be considered a test city for its heretofore untapped source of fuel, the bodies of the useless women currently are housed. We use the term “bodies” to denote that for all intents and purposes, such women as these are barely alive by today’s standard of living and for all intents and purposes will soon be dead, either through despair or other natural causes induced by such. And we say “useless women” to mean that such unfortunates have no use in our mainstream consumer society and must therefore be removed in order to fulfill their highest potentialities: The usage of their bodies as an alternative fuel source, their heroic sacrificial contribution to our community.

We have found marginalized groups have the highest wattage output per kilogram and though findings remain uncertain, we surmise this must have something to do with the epic operations of the soul that is crushed and aggrieved. Having observed the transfer of energies of suffering beings into ghost forms upon death, we are determined to tap into this energy surplus and use it to the good use of the operation of our fair city.

Our future alternative fuel source are the bodies of women who die naturally in our community center designed to house them, women who have lived well past their prime, those women who, in life, have been neglected by husbands, who, by sheer neglect or harsher means, express their displeasure as well as women considered burdens by their offspring where once they were considered vital sources of nurture. These women have cadavers that will burn most efficiently and we will see to their disposal as we honor them for such, giving flags and medals and ceremonies for families, large mass punch and cake gatherings with balloons.

Unless such women have managed to overcome the barriers against them and build a world for themselves based on talents apart from chasing male providers’ affections and the nurturance of children, midlife women often find themselves at a place we provide: A death house we call Sunny Meadows to signify heaven though we do not by any means indulge in the practice of euthanasia. In addition, we attempt to meet the essential needs of our residents of Sunny Meadows while practicing restraint in the spiritual fulfillment mandates for housing a human being, realizing the energy potentials would be compromised should happiness be complete.

We are not beyond taking women or any beings for that matter who, lost to despair, who are searching for a place to exist, beings who have lost functionality in our free market including but not limited to politicians and activists labeled “nasty,” beauty queens labeled “pigs,” actresses labeled “overrated,” pre-menopausal women who bleed, violated women labeled “liars.” We anticipate the bodies of all such marginalized women and others whose psyches are crushed by the current oligarchy will make excellent sources of fuel in our alternative energy program and we anticipate in fact an uptick in fuel reserves to get us through times of famine, that is, more benevolent future regimes, should that eventuality become realized.

When evil flourishes, either privately on the personal level in homes – between family members, a husband and wife, children and parents – or when it flourishes in our public sociopolitical  machine, we are operating in the black and so we say, unofficially, of course, may evil reign, yet it always does. It is simply a matter of degree and so this method of securing this previously untapped fuel source is flawless.

Published in S/tick

For Kimberly Townsend Palmer

Quiet Zones

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A person should know she was she was driving over the train tracks, should be able to feel it under the wheels, Monique told Carl as she packed her white hat back into its box. Carl was sitting in her bedroom watching her as she changed her clothes.

“Three deaths, baby,” she said to him about recent train related incidents. The city had installed rubber casings on the tracks so drivers hardly registered the feel of the rails. The point was to make it easier on everyone’s suspension. Trains had been silenced too. No more trains blowing at the crossroads. And now people had died or been hurt because they didn’t know they were on the tracks. There had been no warning, no communication from the train.

She remembered with a shiver having barely escaped an oncoming train when she was with Aimee one afternoon. They were taking their sons and their classmates on a field trip. They had not known they were crossing a track, had not heard a train, until they were just past. Looking back on that day, she realized someone must have driven through the gates and broken them. Probably some drunk rich white kids because it was only in wealthy neighborhoods that “quiet zones” were established.

She had not told Carl about that day with Aimee. And now the silence with which Aimee eventually accepted her death from cancer seemed like that smooth ride over the tracks. She cried hot tears and Carl nuzzled her hair. She talked through things with Carl again, things she had said before, that Aimee hadn’t wanted any of them beside her when she was at the end of her illness, not even her husband and children. She wanted no one to see that last husk of what she had become. She had wanted to go quietly, without a fuss. Monique had not been allowed to be with her either. Aimee’s body had been cremated and put into a box.

Aimee was the only white woman Monique had ever been close to. She had been a pistol right after the diagnosis, had believed God would heal her because she wanted it that way, had come to her son’s baseball games hobbling on feet blistered by chemo. But when it was clear she would not live she instructed Monique to wear her Easter hat to the funeral. Aimee had always told her there were doves on Monique’s Easter hat, but they were simply high peaks of white chiffon. Monique had honored Aimee’s wishes and had worn the hat but she vowed to herself, while she sat in the white people’s church, not to make any more white friends.

First appeared in Trainwrite