Linda L. Zern's Blog, page 20
June 30, 2016
REAL LIFE LARPING 2009
“Watch out for the larpers.” That’s what Alex’s dad told her on the way out of the door to the comic book convention.
This is the why I go to college, to stay on the cutting edge of the larping scene—also algebra.
I said, “I’m sorry. Did you say larper as in someone who larps, or to larp? Would it be correct to say, ‘Sorry I’m late. I’ve been larping?’
Or maybe . . .”
She shushed me with a look. Alex, a member of my writer’s group at school, then proceeded to show us a YouTube video of real, living, larpers.
Larpers are grown humans who dress in various high school costumes from Mid Summer’s Night Dream, retreat to the woods or comic book conventions, and hurl faux lightning bolts and curses at each other. These folklings are live, action, role-players—larpers.
“In my day, we had a name for people like that—egghead losers—not that there’s anything wrong with being an egghead loser. I, myself, am one,” I said, pushing my thick black eyeglass frames back into place.
“Yes but do you larp?”
I confess; I do not larp.
Instead, I receive phone calls from Iraq from Staff Sergeant Aric Zern to let me know that the U. S. Army will be sending him to the burn unit in San Antonio for skin grafts, and that he’s fine, but he’ll have an interesting scar that looks like flames shooting up his back.
“But what about your much ballyhooed body armor?”
“It caught on fire,” he said.
“Your body armor caught on fire!?!?”
“Well, it was a magnesium flare.”
“You mean like vitamins—magnesium and thiamin?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“How does that happen?” I am a mother. I need answers.
“Magnesium flares burn at 3,500 degrees.”
There was silence on my part.
“So it was like a drop of the sun fell on you,” I said, trying to understand.
“Affirmative.”
“But you’re fine.”
“No worries.”
Reassured, I asked, “Hey, what do you know about larping?”
And that’s how we live action role-play at our house. As my mother always said, “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.” I like to think that we’re strong—Army strong.
Linda (Larp on This) Zern
This is the why I go to college, to stay on the cutting edge of the larping scene—also algebra.
I said, “I’m sorry. Did you say larper as in someone who larps, or to larp? Would it be correct to say, ‘Sorry I’m late. I’ve been larping?’
Or maybe . . .”
She shushed me with a look. Alex, a member of my writer’s group at school, then proceeded to show us a YouTube video of real, living, larpers.
Larpers are grown humans who dress in various high school costumes from Mid Summer’s Night Dream, retreat to the woods or comic book conventions, and hurl faux lightning bolts and curses at each other. These folklings are live, action, role-players—larpers.
“In my day, we had a name for people like that—egghead losers—not that there’s anything wrong with being an egghead loser. I, myself, am one,” I said, pushing my thick black eyeglass frames back into place.
“Yes but do you larp?”
I confess; I do not larp.
Instead, I receive phone calls from Iraq from Staff Sergeant Aric Zern to let me know that the U. S. Army will be sending him to the burn unit in San Antonio for skin grafts, and that he’s fine, but he’ll have an interesting scar that looks like flames shooting up his back.
“But what about your much ballyhooed body armor?”
“It caught on fire,” he said.
“Your body armor caught on fire!?!?”
“Well, it was a magnesium flare.”
“You mean like vitamins—magnesium and thiamin?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“How does that happen?” I am a mother. I need answers.
“Magnesium flares burn at 3,500 degrees.”
There was silence on my part.
“So it was like a drop of the sun fell on you,” I said, trying to understand.
“Affirmative.”
“But you’re fine.”
“No worries.”
Reassured, I asked, “Hey, what do you know about larping?”
And that’s how we live action role-play at our house. As my mother always said, “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.” I like to think that we’re strong—Army strong.
Linda (Larp on This) Zern
June 16, 2016
Bonsai Kitten Boy
My youngest son, Adam, brought me a picture he’d printed from the Internet. It showed the squashed flat faces of kittens crammed inside glass jars and bottles. His eyes sparked with tears as he said, “This is so terrible. We have to do something about this.”
I took the picture and examined it. “What do you think this is, Sweetie?” Adam is my cat loving, tender-heart.
“Can’t you see? They’re bonsai kittens. People grow kittens in jars so they grow deformed. It’s horrible. Bonsai kittens are just like those Japanese bushes.”
I looked at my teenaged child and thought about how to approach the subject of gullibility. He was well and truly upset. He was also well and truly duped.
I took it head-on. “Honey, think about this. How do you keep a little kitten alive inside a jar? Do you see feeding tubes? How about waste products? Or oxygen?”
But he saw what he saw, and seeing was believing. “Look!” He shook the pictures at me. “Look, Mom, it’s real.”
I tried again. “No. This is a hoax. Someone, somewhere, is laughing at your pain. Stop feeling and start thinking. You can’t grow a living kitten inside a jar into a jar shape. Think. How about a baby? Could you grow a baby inside a jar?”
I saw him struggle as doubts, questions, and reality filled his face—and then came chagrin—and now we were in truly dangerous territory.
Chagrin is the slightly less ugly stepsister of embarrassment, both of which are close incestuous cousins of pride.
I tried to head off his wounded pride. “It’s really good photo-shopping. It is. It looks like bonsai kittens growing in weird shapes inside bottles. It does. But it’s not real.”
“Well . . . it would be a terrible thing if it were true!”
“Yes. Yes it would. But it’s not true.”
He shrugged and picked up his giant lump of a cat named Charlie and left the room.
For a long tortured minute, Adam was sure, and bonsai kittens were real—to him.
WHAT I REALIZED: Reality is real. Perception is not reality, even when we are completely sure. Emotions are gut feelings, especially righteous indignation based on photo-shopped images of deformed kittens. Emotions can be full of the stuff that’s in our guts. Logic is a handy tool to have on speed-dial. Keep it real isn’t just a catchy slogan.
Bonsai kittens are not real.
Bonsai kittens are not real even if you are convinced they are real.
Bonsai kittens are NOT real even if a MAJORITY of Americans think that they are real.
So, in a week of swirling agendas, chasing the means that will justify the ends, I say, “Keep it real, my friends. Keep it real. And don’t let your wounded pride make ugly babies called embarrassment and chagrin.”
Linda (Kitten Heel) Zern
FYI: The word “Bon-sai” (often misspelled as bonzai or banzai) is a Japanese term which, literally translated, means “planted in a container”. This art form is derived from an ancient Chinese horticultural practice, part of which was then redeveloped under the influence of Japanese Zen Buddhism.
I took the picture and examined it. “What do you think this is, Sweetie?” Adam is my cat loving, tender-heart.
“Can’t you see? They’re bonsai kittens. People grow kittens in jars so they grow deformed. It’s horrible. Bonsai kittens are just like those Japanese bushes.”
I looked at my teenaged child and thought about how to approach the subject of gullibility. He was well and truly upset. He was also well and truly duped.
I took it head-on. “Honey, think about this. How do you keep a little kitten alive inside a jar? Do you see feeding tubes? How about waste products? Or oxygen?”
But he saw what he saw, and seeing was believing. “Look!” He shook the pictures at me. “Look, Mom, it’s real.”
I tried again. “No. This is a hoax. Someone, somewhere, is laughing at your pain. Stop feeling and start thinking. You can’t grow a living kitten inside a jar into a jar shape. Think. How about a baby? Could you grow a baby inside a jar?”
I saw him struggle as doubts, questions, and reality filled his face—and then came chagrin—and now we were in truly dangerous territory.
Chagrin is the slightly less ugly stepsister of embarrassment, both of which are close incestuous cousins of pride.
I tried to head off his wounded pride. “It’s really good photo-shopping. It is. It looks like bonsai kittens growing in weird shapes inside bottles. It does. But it’s not real.”
“Well . . . it would be a terrible thing if it were true!”
“Yes. Yes it would. But it’s not true.”
He shrugged and picked up his giant lump of a cat named Charlie and left the room.
For a long tortured minute, Adam was sure, and bonsai kittens were real—to him.
WHAT I REALIZED: Reality is real. Perception is not reality, even when we are completely sure. Emotions are gut feelings, especially righteous indignation based on photo-shopped images of deformed kittens. Emotions can be full of the stuff that’s in our guts. Logic is a handy tool to have on speed-dial. Keep it real isn’t just a catchy slogan.
Bonsai kittens are not real.
Bonsai kittens are not real even if you are convinced they are real.
Bonsai kittens are NOT real even if a MAJORITY of Americans think that they are real.
So, in a week of swirling agendas, chasing the means that will justify the ends, I say, “Keep it real, my friends. Keep it real. And don’t let your wounded pride make ugly babies called embarrassment and chagrin.”
Linda (Kitten Heel) Zern
FYI: The word “Bon-sai” (often misspelled as bonzai or banzai) is a Japanese term which, literally translated, means “planted in a container”. This art form is derived from an ancient Chinese horticultural practice, part of which was then redeveloped under the influence of Japanese Zen Buddhism.
June 1, 2016
FAN-ARMS
My son-in-law, Phillip, has an irrational fear of becoming a hoarder. The scientific name for the irrational fear of becoming a collector of hoards is junkmuckerphobia. The biggest problem with his weird worry is that he likes to bring his junk to our house for disposal, often in a secret and clandestine manner.
I have an irrational fear of his irrational fear.
His latest junk dump? The old wooden blades from his office ceiling fan. He brought the stupid things over to “burn in our fire pit.” That’s what he always says when we catch him. I’m going to burn those _____________ (fill in the blank) in the fire pit. Of course, he also sneaks old or annoying toys into the grandchildren’s “toy room” at our house.
“Hey!” I have been known to exclaim. “Where did this giant bucking bull toy come from? It looks like it could cause boo-boos or paralysis.”
No answer.
So the fan blades appeared, and the next thing I know I have about twenty-seven children bringing the dusty, grimey things to me, wanting to know if they can duct tape them to their arms, so they could have “fan-arms.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll get the duct tape.”
I realized we had crossed some very weird parenting line when I heard Heather say, “No! No kid can have two fan-arms. One fan-arm per child.”
Ahhh . . . the rules you’ll have to make that no one ever tells you about when you bring that first darling baby home from the hospital.
One fan-arm per child, that’s the rule.
I taped old ceiling fan blades to various children’s arms and off they flapped.
At one point, there was a fan-arm competition that consisted of two children squaring off so they could push their fan-arms against each other. A lot of spinning was involved. I don’t pretend to understand the fan-arm game.
The fan-arms were a big hit: cost minimal, danger threat-low, imagination factor-high, and fresh air exposure-maximum.
And when the fan-arm game got old and boring we burned the fan-arms in the fire pit, which made Phillip the junkmuckerphobic breath easier.
Coincidently, Sherwood the Poppy canceled our cable the day the children invented fan-arms—a win-win all the way around.
Linda (Duct Tape Forever) Zern
I have an irrational fear of his irrational fear.
His latest junk dump? The old wooden blades from his office ceiling fan. He brought the stupid things over to “burn in our fire pit.” That’s what he always says when we catch him. I’m going to burn those _____________ (fill in the blank) in the fire pit. Of course, he also sneaks old or annoying toys into the grandchildren’s “toy room” at our house.
“Hey!” I have been known to exclaim. “Where did this giant bucking bull toy come from? It looks like it could cause boo-boos or paralysis.”
No answer.
So the fan blades appeared, and the next thing I know I have about twenty-seven children bringing the dusty, grimey things to me, wanting to know if they can duct tape them to their arms, so they could have “fan-arms.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll get the duct tape.”
I realized we had crossed some very weird parenting line when I heard Heather say, “No! No kid can have two fan-arms. One fan-arm per child.”
Ahhh . . . the rules you’ll have to make that no one ever tells you about when you bring that first darling baby home from the hospital.
One fan-arm per child, that’s the rule.
I taped old ceiling fan blades to various children’s arms and off they flapped.
At one point, there was a fan-arm competition that consisted of two children squaring off so they could push their fan-arms against each other. A lot of spinning was involved. I don’t pretend to understand the fan-arm game.
The fan-arms were a big hit: cost minimal, danger threat-low, imagination factor-high, and fresh air exposure-maximum.
And when the fan-arm game got old and boring we burned the fan-arms in the fire pit, which made Phillip the junkmuckerphobic breath easier.
Coincidently, Sherwood the Poppy canceled our cable the day the children invented fan-arms—a win-win all the way around.
Linda (Duct Tape Forever) Zern
May 17, 2016
One Tree, Two Tree
Pine trees are the mini-van of the tree world. There’s a million of ‘em, and they all look alike.
Pine trees in the Florida woods are the woods, except when the swamp takes over. The woods are where my husband (Sherwood—yes it’s his first name) and I practice stuff: horseback riding, orienteering, GPS coordinate finding, search and rescue searching, community volunteering, and other words that end in ‘ing.’
We ride through swamps and cypress and live oaks and scrub brush and pine trees, lots and many pine trees.
On a recent training day, my husband and I were given the task of finding five points on a compass course while riding horses and staying married. I know I was excited.
Our first challenge was to calculate our horses’ “pace” for one hundred feet. That’s when you count the steps the horse takes in one hundred feet.
What I learned.
It’s easy to lose count in one hundred feet. Sherwood gets a funny look on his face when he’s counting. Tracker, the horse I was riding, is a bully. When your horse tries to kick another horse in the face it’s hard to keep track of the steps they take. It was a beautiful day to be outside.
We were encouraged to find “points of reference” to keep us on track. A point of reference is a stump, lump, or clump of something that DOES NOT MOVE that can serve as a focal point while you’re trying to count and ride a bucking horse.
Fairly early in the course, I asked my partner/husband/teammate, “What focal point are you using?”
And he said (I kid you not), “That pine tree.”
I looked at the scrubby forest of one trillion jumbled pine trees and asked, “Seriously?” There might have been a tone. I confess; team morale took a bit of a hit at that point.
What I learned.
Engineers sometimes struggle with their describing words. It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. There are a lot of pine trees in Florida. There’s a learning curve to everything. Dr. Suess was right; some fish are red and some fish are blue, but not pine trees.
Linda (Lost and Found) Zern
Pine trees in the Florida woods are the woods, except when the swamp takes over. The woods are where my husband (Sherwood—yes it’s his first name) and I practice stuff: horseback riding, orienteering, GPS coordinate finding, search and rescue searching, community volunteering, and other words that end in ‘ing.’
We ride through swamps and cypress and live oaks and scrub brush and pine trees, lots and many pine trees.
On a recent training day, my husband and I were given the task of finding five points on a compass course while riding horses and staying married. I know I was excited.
Our first challenge was to calculate our horses’ “pace” for one hundred feet. That’s when you count the steps the horse takes in one hundred feet.
What I learned.
It’s easy to lose count in one hundred feet. Sherwood gets a funny look on his face when he’s counting. Tracker, the horse I was riding, is a bully. When your horse tries to kick another horse in the face it’s hard to keep track of the steps they take. It was a beautiful day to be outside.
We were encouraged to find “points of reference” to keep us on track. A point of reference is a stump, lump, or clump of something that DOES NOT MOVE that can serve as a focal point while you’re trying to count and ride a bucking horse.
Fairly early in the course, I asked my partner/husband/teammate, “What focal point are you using?”
And he said (I kid you not), “That pine tree.”
I looked at the scrubby forest of one trillion jumbled pine trees and asked, “Seriously?” There might have been a tone. I confess; team morale took a bit of a hit at that point.
What I learned.
Engineers sometimes struggle with their describing words. It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. There are a lot of pine trees in Florida. There’s a learning curve to everything. Dr. Suess was right; some fish are red and some fish are blue, but not pine trees.
Linda (Lost and Found) Zern
May 5, 2016
SUCKER
My husband once saw Sissy Spacek in the airport and didn’t bother to tell me for three weeks. SISSY SPACEK! The actress who played Stephen King’s “Carey” in the year that I graduated from high school, SISSY ‘Flipping’ SPACEK, that’s who.
He didn’t tell me that he’d seen the famous Miss Spacek in the airport because it never occurred to me that I should ask him straight up, “Hey! Did you happen to see Sissy Spacek at the airport at any time in the last three weeks?”
My bad.
I’ve often accused my husband of talking to me like I’m charging him by the word, even when he’s not here to defend himself because he’s on the other side of the globe, traveling through airports for work.
His taciturn, engineer’s silence makes me jittery with paranoia. I can’t imagine all the people he might be seeing in airports that he’s not telling me about. Could be . . . absolutely . . . anyone.
I also can’t imagine all the day-to-day secrets he’s keeping from me because he’s met his daily word quota.
Like when I was pretty sure he’d taken my old and favorite vacuum and thrown it away but hadn’t told me.
We have two vacuums, one made by that charming European man and one made in China by people pretending to speak English. The Dyson (vacuum #1) is a five star wonder of better mousetrap building. The Craptastic vacuum (#2) shoots junk out the back of it onto my bare feet. The Dyson is old. The Craptastic vacuum might as well be old.
Monday, I wandered the house looking for vacuum #1—the good one. Couldn’t find it. I felt annoyance start to claw softly at the back of my skull.
After a second circuit of the house—still no vacuum. I began to fume and my conspiracy theory second personality began to mutter. “Who has my vacuum?”
I searched through closets and behind doors—nothing. “That husband . . . the one who never talks to me . . . threw it away. I feel it,” I said to no one at all.
Around the house, I stomped. “I need my Dyson. Why would he throw my favorite vacuum away and NOT TELL ME.” No one answered. “I bet. I just bet, that my favorite vacuum died and he threw it away and never bothered to tell me the stinking bad news. I know it.” I put my head back and howled. Picking up speed I howled again and started to trot around the house like a zoo animal pacing its cage.
“Sherwood, why don’t you talk to me?” I raked my clawed fingers through my hair, looking wildly for the vacuum.
And remembered.
The Dyson was in the barn. I’d left it there. The horse had taken a dump on the carpet my daughter uses to teach her little preschoolers ballet class. Ugh! Now I’d have to walk to the barn and drag the beast back to the house.
The phone rang. It was my husband, calling from California. I said, “Did you see William Shattner or Diana Gabaldon or Heather Locklear or that chick from Deep Space Nine?”
He ignored my question. Weird. What's he hiding?
And isn’t it weird how vacuums are one of those strange items in the house that tend to blend into the scenery and become invisible in plain sight? But that’s a discussion for another day.
Linda (Suck Up) Zern
He didn’t tell me that he’d seen the famous Miss Spacek in the airport because it never occurred to me that I should ask him straight up, “Hey! Did you happen to see Sissy Spacek at the airport at any time in the last three weeks?”
My bad.
I’ve often accused my husband of talking to me like I’m charging him by the word, even when he’s not here to defend himself because he’s on the other side of the globe, traveling through airports for work.
His taciturn, engineer’s silence makes me jittery with paranoia. I can’t imagine all the people he might be seeing in airports that he’s not telling me about. Could be . . . absolutely . . . anyone.
I also can’t imagine all the day-to-day secrets he’s keeping from me because he’s met his daily word quota.
Like when I was pretty sure he’d taken my old and favorite vacuum and thrown it away but hadn’t told me.
We have two vacuums, one made by that charming European man and one made in China by people pretending to speak English. The Dyson (vacuum #1) is a five star wonder of better mousetrap building. The Craptastic vacuum (#2) shoots junk out the back of it onto my bare feet. The Dyson is old. The Craptastic vacuum might as well be old.
Monday, I wandered the house looking for vacuum #1—the good one. Couldn’t find it. I felt annoyance start to claw softly at the back of my skull.
After a second circuit of the house—still no vacuum. I began to fume and my conspiracy theory second personality began to mutter. “Who has my vacuum?”
I searched through closets and behind doors—nothing. “That husband . . . the one who never talks to me . . . threw it away. I feel it,” I said to no one at all.
Around the house, I stomped. “I need my Dyson. Why would he throw my favorite vacuum away and NOT TELL ME.” No one answered. “I bet. I just bet, that my favorite vacuum died and he threw it away and never bothered to tell me the stinking bad news. I know it.” I put my head back and howled. Picking up speed I howled again and started to trot around the house like a zoo animal pacing its cage.
“Sherwood, why don’t you talk to me?” I raked my clawed fingers through my hair, looking wildly for the vacuum.
And remembered.
The Dyson was in the barn. I’d left it there. The horse had taken a dump on the carpet my daughter uses to teach her little preschoolers ballet class. Ugh! Now I’d have to walk to the barn and drag the beast back to the house.
The phone rang. It was my husband, calling from California. I said, “Did you see William Shattner or Diana Gabaldon or Heather Locklear or that chick from Deep Space Nine?”
He ignored my question. Weird. What's he hiding?
And isn’t it weird how vacuums are one of those strange items in the house that tend to blend into the scenery and become invisible in plain sight? But that’s a discussion for another day.
Linda (Suck Up) Zern
April 21, 2016
ANXIOUSLY ENGAGED
The universe does not respect me. I know this because nothing good I do goes unpunished. Ever. I want to be a doer of good deeds. I want to be known as a good person. But I’m over it. I’m just going to be a mean girl. The universe likes mean girls. I’m sure of it.
While running errands, which I hate to do, I took a phone call from my husband. He had a request—more errands. Please pick up my prescription at the store, which sells such things. Trying to be a doer of good deeds, I agreed.
I pulled into the drive-through. Can the world get more convenient? The mind boggles.
At the window I answered the questions, knew the right address, recited the correct birth date and shoved the cash into the convenient sliding drawer.
A gust of wind sucked the **twenty out of the convenient sliding drawer.
The girl behind the window looked stricken.
I opened my truck door, which hit the convenient sliding drawer, giving me approximately six inches to slide out between the building and my truck. Another gust of wind blew the twenty under the truck. I felt stricken. Thought about cussing.
I dropped to my knees to climb under the truck.
Coming up with the money, I cried out triumphantly, and smacked my head on the convenient sliding drawer.
I quit thinking about cussing.
It was all so convenient; I almost died.
And then I got the flu.
Mean girls, now that’s the way to live. Make a sex tape and get wildly rich, famous, and discussed.
Linda (Get It Yourself) Zern
** It used to be a ten before that Affordable Act deal.
While running errands, which I hate to do, I took a phone call from my husband. He had a request—more errands. Please pick up my prescription at the store, which sells such things. Trying to be a doer of good deeds, I agreed.
I pulled into the drive-through. Can the world get more convenient? The mind boggles.
At the window I answered the questions, knew the right address, recited the correct birth date and shoved the cash into the convenient sliding drawer.
A gust of wind sucked the **twenty out of the convenient sliding drawer.
The girl behind the window looked stricken.
I opened my truck door, which hit the convenient sliding drawer, giving me approximately six inches to slide out between the building and my truck. Another gust of wind blew the twenty under the truck. I felt stricken. Thought about cussing.
I dropped to my knees to climb under the truck.
Coming up with the money, I cried out triumphantly, and smacked my head on the convenient sliding drawer.
I quit thinking about cussing.
It was all so convenient; I almost died.
And then I got the flu.
Mean girls, now that’s the way to live. Make a sex tape and get wildly rich, famous, and discussed.
Linda (Get It Yourself) Zern
** It used to be a ten before that Affordable Act deal.
April 19, 2016
Dancing On Graves
When I was little I got in trouble for walking on a dead man. I was four. And I was walking through a cemetery.
The dead man’s widow pointed to the rectangle outlined in white stones on the ground and said, “That’s my husband and you’re walking on him.” I looked down and saw a rectangle outlined in white stones.
I was four and confused.
My mother was older than four and weirded-out by my love of cemeteries. The graveyard was across the street from the apartment we lived in, and I would beg her to go there for walks. I still remember crossing the street to walk in the cemetery.
She couldn’t figure me out.
It wasn’t the dead people that I loved to visit. It was the flowers. The cemetery was the one place in the city that had flowers, and I couldn’t get enough of them, even at four.
It’s still true.
My grandchildren recently asked me, “YaYa, are seeds alive?” Ahhh, such a good question.
I said, “They will be with the right amount of dirt, water, and sun, and someone that cares enough to fuss with them. And then look out . . . you’ll have flowers . . . someday. It takes time.”
I watched grandchildren scrabble through the dirt, and turn over stones, looking for whatever might be under there, and I thought about seeds needing dirt, water, sun, and someone who cared enough to fuss with them . . . and time enough for the blooming.
It’s almost magic, growing stuff. Isn’t it? It may be a slow magic that can take a lifetime but then there are flowers, even at the cemetery, and they can make you want to dance on graves.
Linda (Flower Child) Zern
The dead man’s widow pointed to the rectangle outlined in white stones on the ground and said, “That’s my husband and you’re walking on him.” I looked down and saw a rectangle outlined in white stones.
I was four and confused.
My mother was older than four and weirded-out by my love of cemeteries. The graveyard was across the street from the apartment we lived in, and I would beg her to go there for walks. I still remember crossing the street to walk in the cemetery.
She couldn’t figure me out.
It wasn’t the dead people that I loved to visit. It was the flowers. The cemetery was the one place in the city that had flowers, and I couldn’t get enough of them, even at four.
It’s still true.
My grandchildren recently asked me, “YaYa, are seeds alive?” Ahhh, such a good question.
I said, “They will be with the right amount of dirt, water, and sun, and someone that cares enough to fuss with them. And then look out . . . you’ll have flowers . . . someday. It takes time.”
I watched grandchildren scrabble through the dirt, and turn over stones, looking for whatever might be under there, and I thought about seeds needing dirt, water, sun, and someone who cared enough to fuss with them . . . and time enough for the blooming.
It’s almost magic, growing stuff. Isn’t it? It may be a slow magic that can take a lifetime but then there are flowers, even at the cemetery, and they can make you want to dance on graves.
Linda (Flower Child) Zern
April 6, 2016
FLYING THE FRIENDLY . . . YIKES!
When there’s a television in the back of the airplane seat in front of you—you know you’re on a BIG airplane. On a recent flight from Atlanta to Orlando, I noticed that Delta airlines had managed to cram an entire television into the back of the seat in front of me, and that’s how I knew that I was on a BIG airplane.
I am personally in favor of larger aircraft. Logically, you would think that the larger an object is, the less likely it is to float, but I find that the smaller an object is, the more likely it seems to want to flip upside down in the air. Big airplanes are good.
It took me ten minutes to figure out how to use the television crammed into the seat in front of me. The menu included: movies (two dollars); TV shows (I’d seen them & free); a trivia game (yawn—also free); and HBO (two dollars.) I had watched the HBO miniseries John Adams (excellent, on DVD) and so felt that I knew my product.
I had also read a series of fun, easy reading, mildly romantic, and lightly entertaining books by Charlaine Harris, which HBO had turned into an original series called "TruBlood." I felt confident in my selection. I would check out the first episode of "TruBlood" for two dollars, and forget that I was flying on a aircraft that might, at any point, flip upside down in the air.
The TV crammed into the seat in front of me took credit cards. God bless America. Not five minutes into the first episode, I was fairly certain that I was looking at porn—never having observed porn I am, however, aware of the general concept.
There was nudity. People were gyrating. There were sounds. The people gyrating were nude. The sounds were emanating from the nude people. I closed my eyes and tried to reconcile the series of books that I had read with the gyrating, nude people making noises in front of me.
I glanced at my husband. He was watching sharks on the Discovery channel. I glanced at my seat mate. He was playing the trivia game, and the answer was milk and vinegar. Horrified, I glanced behind me and was relieved that there wasn’t an inquisitive five-year old sitting in the line of sight of my clever television. The seat behind me was empty. The porn continued.
Not sure how to turn the television off, I started pushing random buttons. The porn continued.
I said to my husband, “Help, there’ porn.” I gestured to the porn. With his headsets on, he was oblivious to my plight or the gyrating.
“Sherwood, there’s porn on my TV!” The flight attendant glanced at me and frowned on her way to distribute headsets (two bucks.) I realized that because of my headsets I was not aware that I was NOT whispering.
Panicked, I continued to punch buttons until the porn disappeared, and a map of my flight from Atlanta to Orlando appeared. I began to track the distance, time, flight speed, and mathematical probability that the aircraft would flip upside down in mid-air.
Somewhere, the porn continued.
I blame HBO.
Linda (Flying the Friendly Skies) Zern
I am personally in favor of larger aircraft. Logically, you would think that the larger an object is, the less likely it is to float, but I find that the smaller an object is, the more likely it seems to want to flip upside down in the air. Big airplanes are good.
It took me ten minutes to figure out how to use the television crammed into the seat in front of me. The menu included: movies (two dollars); TV shows (I’d seen them & free); a trivia game (yawn—also free); and HBO (two dollars.) I had watched the HBO miniseries John Adams (excellent, on DVD) and so felt that I knew my product.
I had also read a series of fun, easy reading, mildly romantic, and lightly entertaining books by Charlaine Harris, which HBO had turned into an original series called "TruBlood." I felt confident in my selection. I would check out the first episode of "TruBlood" for two dollars, and forget that I was flying on a aircraft that might, at any point, flip upside down in the air.
The TV crammed into the seat in front of me took credit cards. God bless America. Not five minutes into the first episode, I was fairly certain that I was looking at porn—never having observed porn I am, however, aware of the general concept.
There was nudity. People were gyrating. There were sounds. The people gyrating were nude. The sounds were emanating from the nude people. I closed my eyes and tried to reconcile the series of books that I had read with the gyrating, nude people making noises in front of me.
I glanced at my husband. He was watching sharks on the Discovery channel. I glanced at my seat mate. He was playing the trivia game, and the answer was milk and vinegar. Horrified, I glanced behind me and was relieved that there wasn’t an inquisitive five-year old sitting in the line of sight of my clever television. The seat behind me was empty. The porn continued.
Not sure how to turn the television off, I started pushing random buttons. The porn continued.
I said to my husband, “Help, there’ porn.” I gestured to the porn. With his headsets on, he was oblivious to my plight or the gyrating.
“Sherwood, there’s porn on my TV!” The flight attendant glanced at me and frowned on her way to distribute headsets (two bucks.) I realized that because of my headsets I was not aware that I was NOT whispering.
Panicked, I continued to punch buttons until the porn disappeared, and a map of my flight from Atlanta to Orlando appeared. I began to track the distance, time, flight speed, and mathematical probability that the aircraft would flip upside down in mid-air.
Somewhere, the porn continued.
I blame HBO.
Linda (Flying the Friendly Skies) Zern
April 3, 2016
TO WRITE THE HARD STORIES
Twisting in her seat, Beverly faced us. She looked at the class, but she wasn’t seeing anyone. She had that foggy look people get when they’ve flown away into old memories only they can see. I could tell she had gone away, remembering the day of her mother’s funeral. When she spoke, she sounded clinical and matter-of-fact.
“I don’t know what I expected. I thought maybe it would be like cigarette ash, but it wasn’t, and the urn was really heavy. I had to carry it against my chest, so I wouldn’t drop it.”
She paused and tipped her head. Maybe it was so she could see herself better as she remembered, as she remembered carrying her mother’s funeral urn or better to hear the water lapping against the wooden posts of the dock at the lake.
“It wasn’t like cigarette ash at all. I mean her ashes were coarse and kind of gritty, and there was stuff in it.”
I heard a few of the other students gasp as the question rolled through the class like a shock wave. What? What was in your mother’s ashes? But they were too polite, too civilized to ask out-loud. For all their pierced and tattooed bravado, they were just kids at the beginning of living. And this was, after all, a story about the mechanics of death at the end of living.
Beverly blinked and her eyes focused. She came back to us in that moment as if she sensed our curiosity and chagrin. She answered our unspoken question.
“Bits of bone and teeth, my mother’s partial, there were actual slivers of bone.”
The Brittany or Jessica or Ella girl that sat next to me pulled her long bare legs up into her body like a stork folding up for a nap. She hunched her shoulders. Several of the boys dropped their eyes to their notebooks or played at checking their watches—uncomfortable and squirmy. Young.
“You picture your mom’s memorial service as something out of movie, with music and touching slow motion moments.” She thought a minute and gave us a lopsided smile. “You sure don’t expect to get your mother’s ashes blown back in your face when you try to grant her last wish, you know? But the wind was blowing against us and when I went to pour her ashes into the water, the wind kicked up, like it does sometimes, like a mini-tornado. And bam, a cloud of my mother’s cremated ashes blew right back into our faces. I had them in my teeth, in my eyes. It stung like crazy.”
In Mr. McGuinnes’ creative writing class, Beverly was like me—one of those student clichés, an older woman with teenagers and enough trouble, real or imagined, to salt-n-pepper her thinning hair. Like me, she had enough unfamiliar lines on her face to make her wonder about the stranger she was becoming, about the girl who was disappearing.
To be fair, Beverly’s troubles were more immediate than mine. Her clichéd story had more chapters. Her desperation was a little more dire. Divorced and abandoned, she found herself back at school, trying to fill a schedule and a life fundamentally changed.
While I was trying to find a way out of the land of cliché and foregone conclusion, to have people see me as more than a cardboard cutout. To be fair, maybe I was trying to see myself as more than a cardboard cutout.
They say a college degree can do that for you. So, Beverly and I had landed in creative writing class to brainstorm our lives, trying to turn our wrinkles and middle-aged gray into poetry.
“I don’t know what I expected,” Beverly said. “But it was terrible. And I wanted it to be so right . . . even though my mother is . . .” she stumbled over the change in verb tense that death requires, present becoming past. “I mean was, my mother was, or had
been . . .”
A drunk. A slovenly selfish drunk. It was a cold reality; a fact she had shared with the class before.
As the oldest daughter, it had fallen to Beverly to clean up, mop up, and sop up, after a mother who had lived her life never washing a dish until they were all dirty—every last dish—the everyday dishes, the stoneware, the yard sale finds, the heirloom china, the paper plates, the empty butter tubs and cottage cheese containers. All of them crusted with food and heaped in the sink until they toppled onto the kitchen counters or smashed onto the floor. Beverly would go and wash dishes for hours so that her mother could use them up all over again—her own version of Prometheus’s hell.
When her mother died, it fell to Beverly to wash all those dishes one last time and to try to bury her mother with some kind of respectful ceremony.
When Beverly told the story of her mother’s ashes in class, she made us see it. She brought an unruly wind into our classroom, blowing human ashes into our eyes. She made us feel the burn of blinded eyes. She described how slowly human ash disappears, how it floats for the longest time. We could feel that unruly wind and taste the dust of death in our mouths.
The story she related was mesmerizing and messy, and before she was done, she cried—gently, almost under her breath. Her crying made a few of the students uncomfortable. I heard the nervous titter of embarrassment and tension.
I recognized Beverly’s tears, however. I understood her story and it’s strange mix of love and hate. She was describing a dance I had grown up dancing. It was a fearful dance macabre that I knew all the steps to, where a child must perform all the parts—daughter, parent, enemy, but always child. For me it was a father, who expected tributes after spending his life smashing ketchup bottles against kitchen walls. I knew what it was to be chained to a rock and lose bits of myself—endlessly.
“There’s a poem in there, Beverly. You heard it. Right? The poem you should write; it’s all there,” I said. “And more than that, your heart was in what you told us.”
She nodded, seeming to agree and made a few notes on a piece of paper.
“Write your heart; I can’t wait to see it.”
Then she wrote a poem to fulfill an assignment.
It was a lovely generic ode, to some pastel mother who had never existed. There was nothing of what Beverly had shared in class, nothing of what had made us squirm in our seats, drop our flushed faces, or swallow hot tears. It was as if the women who had spoken of bones and teeth had disappeared, along with the mother who had burned holes in the arms of her lazy boy when she fell into a drunken stupor, cigarette still smoldering between stained fingers.
The story we had heard was gone as well, a victim of self-censorship and maybe wishful dreaming. The class clapped when she finished reading her poem. There were polite critiques. A few of the students rolled their eyes surreptitiously. No one cried, and no one felt uncomfortable.
Disappointed, I thought I understood Beverly’s wishful dreaming. Good daughters don’t shine lights on the burn marks, good daughters wash the dishes and pretend they are always stacked neatly—just so. Good daughters make all A’s on every report card. They do not complain that ashes in their eyes, sting.
Disappointed and a little bit sad, I wanted to believe I understood, and eventually, I wrote a poem about the poem that Beverly could not write. Hoping, when my turn came to tell the hard stories of my own life, I would be able to find the poetry beneath the ashes.
Bones and Teeth
When the poet scattered her mother across the unsettled lake,
she expected cigarette ash—a light clean burning. We expected a poem
cobbled out of rough wood—the salt and burn of splintered tears.
Instead, she gave us a poem about golden glass under a sun-kissed sky,
a hallmark poem, with words that floated just on the surface of the wet.
In class, when she talked it, she spoke of bones and teeth,
and finding mother’s partial in the dust of cremation,
how hard it was to throw mother away—into the wind.
She made us see, the way ash clung to clothes and hands,
how the wind brought mother back into nostrils and eyes—
how slowly mother disappeared beneath churning water
on a day of wind and nagging shadows.
When the poet wrote it, there was the softness of nothing,
pretty words on pastel paper, but when the poet spoke it,
she got down to the bones and teeth and tears, down to the bottom
of the lake where the muck congeals and the fish eggs wait.
The poet could not hear that in the telling was the poem,
and in the writing was the child—made to throw her mother
away beneath heaven’s seemingly indifferent sky.
“I don’t know what I expected. I thought maybe it would be like cigarette ash, but it wasn’t, and the urn was really heavy. I had to carry it against my chest, so I wouldn’t drop it.”
She paused and tipped her head. Maybe it was so she could see herself better as she remembered, as she remembered carrying her mother’s funeral urn or better to hear the water lapping against the wooden posts of the dock at the lake.
“It wasn’t like cigarette ash at all. I mean her ashes were coarse and kind of gritty, and there was stuff in it.”
I heard a few of the other students gasp as the question rolled through the class like a shock wave. What? What was in your mother’s ashes? But they were too polite, too civilized to ask out-loud. For all their pierced and tattooed bravado, they were just kids at the beginning of living. And this was, after all, a story about the mechanics of death at the end of living.
Beverly blinked and her eyes focused. She came back to us in that moment as if she sensed our curiosity and chagrin. She answered our unspoken question.
“Bits of bone and teeth, my mother’s partial, there were actual slivers of bone.”
The Brittany or Jessica or Ella girl that sat next to me pulled her long bare legs up into her body like a stork folding up for a nap. She hunched her shoulders. Several of the boys dropped their eyes to their notebooks or played at checking their watches—uncomfortable and squirmy. Young.
“You picture your mom’s memorial service as something out of movie, with music and touching slow motion moments.” She thought a minute and gave us a lopsided smile. “You sure don’t expect to get your mother’s ashes blown back in your face when you try to grant her last wish, you know? But the wind was blowing against us and when I went to pour her ashes into the water, the wind kicked up, like it does sometimes, like a mini-tornado. And bam, a cloud of my mother’s cremated ashes blew right back into our faces. I had them in my teeth, in my eyes. It stung like crazy.”
In Mr. McGuinnes’ creative writing class, Beverly was like me—one of those student clichés, an older woman with teenagers and enough trouble, real or imagined, to salt-n-pepper her thinning hair. Like me, she had enough unfamiliar lines on her face to make her wonder about the stranger she was becoming, about the girl who was disappearing.
To be fair, Beverly’s troubles were more immediate than mine. Her clichéd story had more chapters. Her desperation was a little more dire. Divorced and abandoned, she found herself back at school, trying to fill a schedule and a life fundamentally changed.
While I was trying to find a way out of the land of cliché and foregone conclusion, to have people see me as more than a cardboard cutout. To be fair, maybe I was trying to see myself as more than a cardboard cutout.
They say a college degree can do that for you. So, Beverly and I had landed in creative writing class to brainstorm our lives, trying to turn our wrinkles and middle-aged gray into poetry.
“I don’t know what I expected,” Beverly said. “But it was terrible. And I wanted it to be so right . . . even though my mother is . . .” she stumbled over the change in verb tense that death requires, present becoming past. “I mean was, my mother was, or had
been . . .”
A drunk. A slovenly selfish drunk. It was a cold reality; a fact she had shared with the class before.
As the oldest daughter, it had fallen to Beverly to clean up, mop up, and sop up, after a mother who had lived her life never washing a dish until they were all dirty—every last dish—the everyday dishes, the stoneware, the yard sale finds, the heirloom china, the paper plates, the empty butter tubs and cottage cheese containers. All of them crusted with food and heaped in the sink until they toppled onto the kitchen counters or smashed onto the floor. Beverly would go and wash dishes for hours so that her mother could use them up all over again—her own version of Prometheus’s hell.
When her mother died, it fell to Beverly to wash all those dishes one last time and to try to bury her mother with some kind of respectful ceremony.
When Beverly told the story of her mother’s ashes in class, she made us see it. She brought an unruly wind into our classroom, blowing human ashes into our eyes. She made us feel the burn of blinded eyes. She described how slowly human ash disappears, how it floats for the longest time. We could feel that unruly wind and taste the dust of death in our mouths.
The story she related was mesmerizing and messy, and before she was done, she cried—gently, almost under her breath. Her crying made a few of the students uncomfortable. I heard the nervous titter of embarrassment and tension.
I recognized Beverly’s tears, however. I understood her story and it’s strange mix of love and hate. She was describing a dance I had grown up dancing. It was a fearful dance macabre that I knew all the steps to, where a child must perform all the parts—daughter, parent, enemy, but always child. For me it was a father, who expected tributes after spending his life smashing ketchup bottles against kitchen walls. I knew what it was to be chained to a rock and lose bits of myself—endlessly.
“There’s a poem in there, Beverly. You heard it. Right? The poem you should write; it’s all there,” I said. “And more than that, your heart was in what you told us.”
She nodded, seeming to agree and made a few notes on a piece of paper.
“Write your heart; I can’t wait to see it.”
Then she wrote a poem to fulfill an assignment.
It was a lovely generic ode, to some pastel mother who had never existed. There was nothing of what Beverly had shared in class, nothing of what had made us squirm in our seats, drop our flushed faces, or swallow hot tears. It was as if the women who had spoken of bones and teeth had disappeared, along with the mother who had burned holes in the arms of her lazy boy when she fell into a drunken stupor, cigarette still smoldering between stained fingers.
The story we had heard was gone as well, a victim of self-censorship and maybe wishful dreaming. The class clapped when she finished reading her poem. There were polite critiques. A few of the students rolled their eyes surreptitiously. No one cried, and no one felt uncomfortable.
Disappointed, I thought I understood Beverly’s wishful dreaming. Good daughters don’t shine lights on the burn marks, good daughters wash the dishes and pretend they are always stacked neatly—just so. Good daughters make all A’s on every report card. They do not complain that ashes in their eyes, sting.
Disappointed and a little bit sad, I wanted to believe I understood, and eventually, I wrote a poem about the poem that Beverly could not write. Hoping, when my turn came to tell the hard stories of my own life, I would be able to find the poetry beneath the ashes.
Bones and Teeth
When the poet scattered her mother across the unsettled lake,
she expected cigarette ash—a light clean burning. We expected a poem
cobbled out of rough wood—the salt and burn of splintered tears.
Instead, she gave us a poem about golden glass under a sun-kissed sky,
a hallmark poem, with words that floated just on the surface of the wet.
In class, when she talked it, she spoke of bones and teeth,
and finding mother’s partial in the dust of cremation,
how hard it was to throw mother away—into the wind.
She made us see, the way ash clung to clothes and hands,
how the wind brought mother back into nostrils and eyes—
how slowly mother disappeared beneath churning water
on a day of wind and nagging shadows.
When the poet wrote it, there was the softness of nothing,
pretty words on pastel paper, but when the poet spoke it,
she got down to the bones and teeth and tears, down to the bottom
of the lake where the muck congeals and the fish eggs wait.
The poet could not hear that in the telling was the poem,
and in the writing was the child—made to throw her mother
away beneath heaven’s seemingly indifferent sky.
March 31, 2016
It's Called Stalling
In rehearsals, dancers will go over a section of a ballet endlessly, repeating the same steps over and over and over again until the ballet master is satisfied with the finished product. To save their legs, dancers will often “mark” a percentage of the run-throughs.
Marking is when a dancer just goes through the motions by walking the steps, counting the beats out with their hands, or not performing the jumps or turns completely. Different dancers mark a piece in different ways, but everyone does it at some point.
The problem with marking is that it can become a habit, and a dancer might think that marking a piece is as good as dancing a piece. It’s not. Nothing can take the place of dancing a number as hard and as fast as its supposed to be danced. Nothing.
While marking has its place, marking can never be dancing.
The same is true of writing. You can talk about writing. You can read about writing. You can dream of writing, but nothing can take the place of writing—tens of thousands of words written as hard and as fast as you can write them, full out and breathing hard. Writing that never stops, not in the daytime, not in the nighttime, not even in the dream times.
In dancing, it’s called marking. In writing, it’s called stalling.
Marking is when a dancer just goes through the motions by walking the steps, counting the beats out with their hands, or not performing the jumps or turns completely. Different dancers mark a piece in different ways, but everyone does it at some point.
The problem with marking is that it can become a habit, and a dancer might think that marking a piece is as good as dancing a piece. It’s not. Nothing can take the place of dancing a number as hard and as fast as its supposed to be danced. Nothing.
While marking has its place, marking can never be dancing.
The same is true of writing. You can talk about writing. You can read about writing. You can dream of writing, but nothing can take the place of writing—tens of thousands of words written as hard and as fast as you can write them, full out and breathing hard. Writing that never stops, not in the daytime, not in the nighttime, not even in the dream times.
In dancing, it’s called marking. In writing, it’s called stalling.
