from happyrobot - updated 6/9/2026 12:43:00 AM https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp en-us https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=9386 It was a mad mad fired-up burning grit and brain, body and heart to finish; hot-with-passion-then-cold-with-fear insane year of stress--the academic year 2007-08 was.  My few remaining loved ones stayed the course.  I passed all of my courses, but my joy shivers with trepidation as I eyeball the future. 

The fear seems bound up inside the 80 pages of my senior thesis and the "you are brilliant" but "you don't know what the hell you are doing" praise combo censure I received at the oral presentation.  I went away feeling beheaded and big-headed.  It's all the standard metaphors of the two-sided coin, the double-edged sword, a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Some love you, some hate you.  But it's all You they are looking at, no two ways about it. 

Prof One said I was appropriately ambitious and achieved my goal (thank god he gave the grades); Prof Two said "Do you realize you are INSERTING YOURSELF into this paper?  You are BREAKING the long-standing rule of third-person academic writing?"  Well...I didn't know I was actually, didn't know there were silly rules, didn't know there were lit-gods controlling my pen.  (He didn't read my drafts, did he?)

But I learned.  I learned some history from the dissenter, the extreme critic of my hard-won pages:  Always, always get all the pronounciations (his) down before opening lips.  Always, always stop, wonder and question if any Academic with influence over diplomas granted will in any way be offended by brazen methods of comparing the art image with the literary text.  I dissected Tracy Chevalier's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" to delineate at her methods (she used a lot of color!) in how she saw Vermeer's painting and wrote a story; how she fictionalized one of the most famous paintings in the art world and has a personal worth on par with Vermeer's. Then I morphed the idea of circa 16th century painting=fiction into 20th century photograph=fiction.  I made up a story about Dorothea Lange's photograph, Migrant Mother (I used a lot of blacks and whites.) I put all of this into 80 pages and called on John Berger, W.G.T. Mitchell, Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes to support my argument:  writers give birth to the stories images tell.   Two weeks before graduation (in fact, the oral presentations WERE the key opening the door to graduation), it seems one can suddenly mingle too many colors and centuries; making too large a cross-section between painting and photography; artist and photographer; story and story.  Yet it is done.  I did it.

I look at my college degree as a six-year history lesson.  A lesson in how academicians take "truth" or "rules" or "protocols" from what is historically done. "History" here meaning the body of knowledge we have of what has been witnessed and reported.  I shouldn't let history repeat itself exactly; that is my duty as an educated citizen of the world.  No, warp it to my cause, that's fine, (as all the politicians do) but respect the Heads.  Know the Heads enough to argue efficiently.  Know the Rules.  They like that.  Even when I don't know what I'm doing, I should always find out why I don't know anything.  And play the damn game.  (Always a game, isn't there?)  Then later, walk across the stage at graduation in faux mink pumps and pink tights, head high, handshake the school president, face the mass of spectators, (ah, there is Prof Two, with steely-eyed smile) and scream "SUMMA!!!!"



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I've waited ten years to fall in love with him. Standing by, watching and listening from a distance of two feet or two years, it never mattered how long the time that passed, the same burgeoning attraction would fill me when I heard his voice, saw his face. Oh, he treated me like he did all of the women he worked with: pleasant, courteous, casual hugs, and passing compliments that always felt special. But he never saw me. His profile for attractive women ran the gamut of all I am not. Blonde, bright and sparky, blue-eyed and cheerleader-popular; the opposite of my dark intensity. What a fool he was and I knew it, but how could I tell him so? I've always believed one passionate person should find another, or all of their passion becomes an intangible source of agony. So when he brought his third wife into the Acute Care Unit where I worked, and I heard his southern drawl behind me, “I'd like you to meet my wife,” my levels of disdain for him and hatred for her frigidity and inadequacy in the passion department were equal. Especially as I watched her blinking blue eyes, the snapping white teeth and the attitude of possession, I prophesied doom.

He had turned me down six months before, those ten years ago; when through a mutual friend I asked if he would meet me for dinner. He said he was too busy even for a hamburger. But the truth was I am much younger than him and I had a small daughter he didn't want to raise. But still after that he would come by my desk, touch me, ask me how I was doing in his naturally caring way. I learned to put my guard up; watch for him and get out of his path. To be touched by him and feel the manifestation of my powerful attraction to him, like I did when he put just one finger on me, was a million times worse than watching the pain in his eyes when I avoided him.

Now he is a casualty of war. Number Three cost him; cost him money, cost him time, pride, made a prisoner of his joy, stole his manhood then sold it back to him. I watched; I knew when it was over. Because I invested thought into his happiness, when his marriage ended I mourned too, just for him and the pain that bled out of him like vapor. I never said “I told you so,” but I was terribly, and temporarily, happy in my self-righteousness.

In one short evening these six years after he last tried to love a woman, when after a summer of noticing each other he asked me to dinner, I learned that history is a living thing with breath, eyes, teeth and grasping hands. History is loaded with ammunition, it fights to be known; it's full and turgid, and recounting it makes it impossible to ignore the feelings those memories manufacture both for the speaker and the listener. Personal living history can never adequately be written in grandma's Bible and stored in the cedar chest for the next generation to rediscover. We have choices. All of our past truths and untruths can be kept alive with traditions, rituals and stories, or we can silently scratch them into our skin like venomous tattoos. We can wrap our hearts into history like those rubber band balls they sell at Staples—one after another we wind an experience over the last and some are thick and exposed to the elements for years, with tinier bands lacerating their heaviness—still our hearts are able to spring and jump just as they always did, maybe for different reasons each decade, but the tight squeeze of the bound ball leaves little room for anything to leak out, dissolve, disintegrate to the nothingness which brings peace.

His history came with him on our dinner date; it showed in the lines running from his temple to his jaw, his beautiful blue eyes like shuttered stars, long fingers on restless hands gracing our table with sorrow, dark hair streaked silver and the Bacall gap of his lower teeth. He was tired and afraid, but he looked into me. He was anxious and he needed to be caressed, but there was not to be any touching. He has just begun to let me exist for him, and my presence, my warm availability, can now peek into his life. He wants to know more. He wants to try again with love in spite of an overwhelming fear of failure. Although all my instincts about him were confirmed Friday night—it feels just and pure and right to be with him—my challenge will be competing with the enemies, four long gone women, and occluding their latent presence with my own vibrancy.

Not all of the relationships with other women were bad because the woman was a tarantula. But the one who loved him back died after just two years of marriage. How can I ever replace her? He opens her tomb frequently. The others will go from “us” with some target practice. Mostly, I believe accepting his past as he tells it is the best method. Let him talk. Then start a new history.

A new page was printed when he gave me dating instructions as we drove in his car, in the pink, balmy, hot-grass scented August evening, me trying to stay in my space, him tight against his side of the vehicle:

1. No calling each other and talking on the phone every day—we could talk every day but that would cause everything to go too fast.

Okay, I said.

2. Nothing regular at all, nothing regular like twice-weekly dates is going to happen; we are going to take it slow.

Okay, I said.

3. If it goes too fast I will pull back, way back.

Okay, I said.

4. I don't know when I will call, but I will call you. I will call you some time.

Okay, I said.

5. I want to see you again. Do you want to see me again?

Yes, I do, I said.

Then, I guess I wanted to stand out as different, as superior to the others who were like leeches on his soul, so I announced that I've been an independent woman since I was twelve; I don't call men, they call me; I won't be calling him, he can call me when it's a natural urge for him; I tend to be distant not clingy in relationships; I might ignore him if I see him at work. This time, he said okay.

I know all the dating rules stand for fear. Maybe I will remake his past like revisionists do with U.S. presidents in order to make them acceptable for the oval office and politically correct. Or, most likely I will give him time to tell his story as many times as he likes and in all the versions and sequels he chooses. He will love me as I love him if I take everything he has and put it in me so we merge. When I know everything about him, and he knows everything about me, we can write a remake; the story of us.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=8376 I can't believe I dare to take a poetry class--I'm like an imposter shooting Cupid's arrow to Venus. My trip to a BA is excalating--I'm a senior now!--and English choices are narrowing. I know this instructor; I know she won't laugh at my efforts; I'll add to my other word skills, just attempting poetry, won't I?

Fifth grade haiku was nearly more than my chubby fingers and stalled brain could channel out, which is so weird, me being a "word person." But asking myself to structure my words just so is anathema to my creativity; I freeze. A couple summers ago I wrote a villanelle about incessant rain. The poem was incessantly wordy, and redundant. Like the rain in this part of the country.

My class will be an exploration of poets, an introduction to style, theme, technique, history, voice. It's an online class, so no one will see my crimson cheeks and knawed knuckles. It's a given that I will expose my ignorance. Naked online.

However, I have an idea that I like Merwyn, Oliver and Neruda. Something beyond roses are red, violets are blue, boys are nasty and so am I.

If you write poetry, how do you arrive at your subject? Get inspired?

Recommend your favorite poets, please. And say why you adore them?]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=8082 It's like a rite of passage, a place between wanting to be one, and getting to be one. While I'm driving there I think I'll wet my pants. My thighs are clamped together under the steering wheel and my chest is making that fuzzy pattering pumping explosive whomba feeling--the feeling of a first date, a frenzied burning urge to pee, and it's pleasurable, like salivating before biting dark chocolate or kissing the first time.

Just walking through the double glass doors into the vestibule brings on another urge to wet. I could pee right now...opening my senses to the onslaught--the smell of new books. I'm dizzy. About five hundred thousand new books stacked and racked, open to my feverish eyes, my touching. I imagine the book section of my brain madly freeing cells up, plumping them up to take in new titles; words swirl, fast as the eye can see, settle in my head. I can't hope to see them all in just one hour.

There are men in sight, over in the music section, headsets on, a muscled bent shoulder in Classic Rock, a dark curly head in Jazz, but I'm not paying attention to them just yet. "For you girl, there's just not enough love in the world," Don Henley is singing in my head. I change it to "for you girl, there's just not enough books in the world."

I actually do have to pee. That sustained, taut, tingly sensation of needing to go, holding back the stream with all my might. Power walking to the back of the store. I almost crash into a Rasta type guy near the yoga stand. He smells like straw and fields and hair.

Later, I'm calmer, got my hands on several books, snuck a sniff inside the new "Thirteen Ways to Look at the Novel," by Jane Smiley. I use my sense of smell everywhere always, and no place better than a huge bookstore, surreptitiously smelling the books' covers and innards, even the oak of the shelves and the coffee stain on the tables. The people all smell far better here than in the grocery store, than in the gym, even better than soap under a lover's collar.

Smelling deeply and fighting the urge to pee are symptoms of my book fetish.

Sometimes I want to be an author so much I think I'll die from it like it's a disease, or die before it happens. Then again, the place between wanting to be one, and getting to be one, an author--the repeating “rite of passage, the rituals which differentiate one phase of life from another"--is a torment of the senses which cannot be replaced by a mere by-line.

]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7800 I saw the carpenter ants massed along the door frame as soon as I opened the utility door. Their bodies were lined up in a thick row, brown and glossy like linked M & M's. I could hear their tiny insect teeth, like miniature chainsaws, sawing away at the wood of my home. Their front legs lifted and scooped the pulpy wood into their mouths, like a mother spoon-feeding Gerber squash to her baby. I watched as they began to march down the door, their antennas sticking up like the shiny heads of pins stuck into Junior Mints. I imagined their oozing white bellies beneath the scab of their shells, like pus in a pimple. Their relentless invasion of my house was swift, like big-eyed aliens they advanced on spindly legs across the white expanse of my old painted door, a pitted moon-like surface. I ran for the Hot Shot. The first spray enveloped them in a cloud of poisonous noise, and they break-danced their way to death. They writhed in agony then curled up like miniature strips of bacon, overcooked in the microwave.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7433 I've been in my office for more than an hour pouring over the print-out client ledger my attorney sent me instead of the invoices and statements I requested. My head aches and I'd like to call him at home now, it's nearly midnight, and scream, “read my lips I want itemized statements I need itemized statements and I need those now, like NOW.”

Garfield kitty has jumped on my desk four times during this and each time I have plucked him from the mass of books and papers, pulling his paws off my calculator, and practically thrown him on the floor. Admonishing him, no, stay down, leave the room—as if he could understand.

Finally, the ledger printout is just too dense and I decide to be very firm when I call the attorney's office tomorrow. As soon as I change to my other desk to go online, Garfield is back on the deserted desk, curling up pathetically under the lamp. Squinting at me sideways, “you Meanie.”

Meanwhile, Sammy the guinea pig is proactively demanding water. His bottle is empty because my daughter was so tired she went straight to bed when we got home. Mom has to save piggy from dehydration. But I'm busy! Sammy is clanking his teeth on the metal spout and yanking the whole contraption madly—so that it clangs against the bars of his cage. The noise registers fully and I'd better just get the damn water so I can have a modicum of peace.

Suddenly, all of the anger I feel from work today, and frustration with attorneys who use their housewife as their bookkeeper boils up and I jump from my chair just as I realize another irritant factor. I have left the heat blasting in the bigger part of the house for nearly an hour, where no one is or intends to be this evening. I rush out of my dimly lit office into the dark living room, straight for the heater. From out of the heat and dark erupts a terrible sound like I've heard in the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia—you know, where the devil takes his turn playing the fiddle—and my left foot has kicked something solid and my right has stomped on something squishy.

Yowser. I had to spend the next fifteen minutes soothing my cat Sparkle, because after the murder attempt--that's how she sees it anyway--while she innocently rested in a blast of hot air, she had an overwhelming urge to move out. Promptly. For safety reasons. She limped to the door each time I set her down and I believe she's cowering there still.

I feel like crying, having abused all of my pets, but instead the story Animal Farm flashed through my mind and I laughed (silently—crazily). I really enjoyed that story, on all kinds of levels, the satire was primo. But no, this is an Animal House, here on 18th, not a farm. And I would be wise to remember this before I am turned in for animal abuse.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7364 My thoughts were, in the beginning, that James Frey was making shit up. I didn't read his entire work of snart, because I sickened on the first few pages. I hated his sensationalist style of writing and his overdone--scorched stinking overbaked--scene setting, if it can be called that. The lies were in the lonnnnng details.

I read a lengthy excerpt of A Million Little Pieces and dismissed it as very poorly written and craftily, slunkily, designed to grab the reader's attention with "looka me, Ima bad boy and my life was in serious constant danger." As if being an alcoholic was a crime committed against his person instead of by his person, to his person.

People I know (some of them aspiring writers) first said, "Hey, I don't care if he fudged a scene or two, it was still a good read." I felt like jumping up and scoffing, simply because memoir should be a sacred genre, not a ruse for alcoholic commercialization. In my humble opinion.

I can't say why exactly, but I took a instinctive dislike to Frey. Does he care he deceived over a million readers? He's sold his million. Probably not. What should be done to him? I think Oprah has done the work for those of us who have a problem with writers who claim something as truth, and are paid handsomely for that truth, when it was so laced with fiction even the writer doesn't know where one left off and the other began.

There's that saying that truth is stranger than fiction. The subliminal message in this reads something like, written truth is much more interesting than fiction if it's sensational, widely read and can be televised or made into a movie. Stuff like the man with the secret ritual of swallowing Barbie doll heads, who then goes to ER complaining of a stomachache with unknown causes, only to have his psychotic behavior diagnosed via X-ray.

In Frey's case, the fiction was better than the truth. He should have just wrote a novel, said it was based on his recovery from alcohol addiction, or not, and called it good. He could have legitimized everything he wanted to say, yet he chose to masquerade truth.

Would he have sold as many books if he had said straight up he was writing fruth? I do not believe so. We, the American People, love graphic true stories, the nastier the better. Therein lies the memoir genre dilemma, because now all of the current surge of memoirists will be called into question. What about Jesus Land? The Glass Castle? And it's really going to tick me off if the hounds roust out Augusten Burroughs or Elie Wiesel as lying memoirists too. That would just be too much.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7355 I am a modest person, just ask my personal assistants. In the year of our Lord 2005, I lost track of the number of compliments received regarding my natural attribute of big curly hair, yet I never got a big head. Now, we know big hair went out with Cher. It's been a long fashion season of Rachels; simulations, copies and virtual versions of her shag, with an aftermath of spikes, retro shags, up-do's and bed-head hair, and a lot of clamping hair in a big pile on the back of the head--with strands artistically pulled out. Nothing about spiral perms, or Farrahs, or 1/4 inch curling wands.

A girl in a store who loved my hair said she spends an hour a day straightening her natural waves. Why on earth? I asked. Uh, well, she says, I dunno, it's the thing, but like I just love watching the back of your like hair!

I think that Cher's personal assistants had a lot to do with the glory of her hair, and nothing at all in comparison to my God-given gift. Simply stated, I have fantastic hair! I must keep it safely so for always. (Cutesy symbol a la Kristen.) And yeah, it's the only thing about me I'd sensationalize on TV, radio or this blog.

On this 279th day of compliments, I felt fired up to actually think over those I gather closely to my breast when out of the house; these can be up to five in one day, most from perfect strangers who stop me on streets, escalators, in restrooms and post office lines, sometimes while their mate droops lank locks nearby.

I'm parked at the gas station and the nice boy is pumping the gas, then says Wow, I love your hair, is it natural? I just nod and smile, yeah it is. Ditto from the girl at the espresso stand, who almost falls out of her booth to peer into my car.

A co-worker habitually walks up behind me and asks to put his hands in my hair, he says he can't stand it anymore, he just has to.

The man at the last uptown salon I frequented called it “mondo,” a so-80s word, but my hair is so 80s.

I go to pick up my daughter from a school function, and my presence is announced, "Your mom is here, she's the one with all of the hair, right?" My daughter comes boiling down the stairs, red in the face and huffs, "Mom your hair is famous" --like that's a terrible burden she can't buck off.

Today also is the 279th day of rain in the last year. The locals have begun to complain heavily about so much rain (like it's anything new--gosh) and sandbags were installed in strategic areas. Two years ago the rain was followed by a mammoth ice storm. Every particle of every bush and tree and blade of grass was encased in ice. I was awestruck at the wonderland of ice we woke up to, but when I touched just a small twig of a tree, a whole branch fell off! It reminded me of the time I went snow skiing and after several runs, came down the mountain with iced dredlocks. (Don't anyone touch my hair, haha.)

The rain-damp curls my hair, for free. Long ringlets of chestnut brown spring out in every direction, where there were only rambunctious waves before. My hair was never like this in the high desert country where I grew up. So there is this: the move to this wet valley wasn't all bad, I've had my days in the sun.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7293 Hello, hello! We have been invaded with the Age of Memoir, as a writing genre. Used to be memoirs were Anais Nin's journals, Winston Churchill's sermons and Nancy on how she loved Ronnie. Only famous people and celebrities put out their memoirs for publication. (There is a difference between the two, as serial killers are not exactly "celebrated" but are famously sensationalized, which is truly disgusting). And then, ghostwriters were behind the scenes, earning income for their college debt and paying rent on their atelier in Manhattan.

Certainly, any literate person should profess a profound ambivalence towards the next memoir-by-proxy, a la Diana, Marilyn, or JFK. How many libraries are more than fifty percent Diana and JFK? What do we see as we walk into Barnes & Noble? The newest book on Hitler, the man (vomit). The latest collection of photos containing one or more Beetles. Doesn't the publishing industry understand how ill, ingrown and repetitive it's becoming?

Consider the current proliferation of memoirs. Although Augusten Burroughs is a potentially excellent exception versus other mind-numbing twaddle in the memoir fad, I am not terribly interested in the potty-training scars of the girl next door. I don't at all care that a certain lesbian was scarred when her step-father imposed his gaze upon her exposed breast—that's just NOT enough. Someone out there, a woman is all I remember, writes in her memoir about her "exceptional" childhood on a farm, where how the animals were treated, and the way her mother yelled obscenities, is the highest scandal the story can hope to obtain. The best memoir I've read in the last five years is Blackbird, by Jennifer Lauck. Lauck has real, gut-wrenching talent, and if you put her book down, it's only because you'll be fired from your job if you don't.

If the memoir doesn't contain rape, murder, incest, extreme religious fanaticism including a wide range of -cides, concentration camp survival, violence, abnormal sex or self-mutilation; frankly, writers, the general public may never notice you published. Writing memoirs about growing up white in the country, or the only girl in first grade, or your four marriages to the same woman, or your make-out sessions with Prince, do not qualify as the sensationalism readers crave.

A word about drinking is necessary. I wouldn't read another "I was the worst drunk ever" memoir unless it contained some of the above items I mentioned, and then only if graphics are included. Burroughs and Frey have giddily topped the bell curve in so-drunk memoirs, and everything else will just be one more drunken memoir. This is not to say that if you drink excessively (according to your college's standards), and write or paint masterpieces, in which talents alcohol was your muse, twin, and soulmate--and are or were a Witness to the Fire--that your memoir won't be a welcome diversion, one of those rare finds where genius is hand-in-hand with base need for alcohol.

I consider myself a common and recurring memoirist, as any blogger, journal junkie or corner scribbler should. Nearly every day I tell my story on the page. Yet, I'd never suppose that anyone wants to hear about my long obsession with an unsuitably married man. Or, my fixation on the nastiness of the corporate healthcare world. Or, those times as a child when my daddy was super mean to me. (My mother was a screamer! and now I'm a really LOUD person.) Writing life as we experience it is interesting in the moment, and frequently, if we post online, our story boosts community spirit (yah). Sharing words and ideas, commentary on movies, books and music, throwing in the odd original freak-show experience or I-thought-I'd-die train ride, then shooting our hopes and dreams into cyberspace to put the cherry on top, are the real juices of memoir. Just don't be crass enough to think Random House wants to pay you for it.

Next time, I may talk about celebrities who write children's books. Celebrities who themselves never had a childhood because they were awfully busy as celebrities.

]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7254 It's been a year. My daughter's father no longer haunts me from the grave, dead one year and burnt into ashes, embers threatening to scald me, yet I told him no, I had nothing to do with your demise you filthy drunk. And I love you, I said.

It's not "still crazy after all these tears" for the dawn of 2006, as I thought when 2005 sucked itself out of the mud in the town I live in. Still. Eleven years and I still feel trapped here in the bottom of a round wet valley. (The azaleas, camellias, hydrangeas are awesome.) There's a glimmer over the mountains to the east, just a slice of paradise beckoning, and four years to go and I can return to my home--so the glimmer makes me hurry. Just have to graduate the tomboy-turned-teen and so sad...my baby is growing up fast. Get her done with school and into college, married? and I'm a red streak on that mountain pass--the dust and sage and pine, the mountains and lakes and air--my name is stroked in cumulus and hangs in my favorite canyon.

We filed the Paternity Action in November after months of paperwork. In two counties, god bless my attorney, my county and the county of the deceased. We may even become famous for setting a precedent in Oregon, "stupid judges" aside. Remember all of those DNA tests? The paternal-Grandparent testing? Paternity was proven through my daughter's grandfather, we opened probate, are going after a court-ordered stipulation of paternity, one thing leading to another, and we have a full-blown Paternity suit. Against a deceased respondent, someone who didn't want anyone to know he was a father, and told me to get an abortion, get lost, get real, get out. The Abortion is 13 years old and beautiful, smart, sweet, worth living for, dying for.

I've spent three nights of the last week dreaming of men I knew, know. My first boyfriend. The one who kissed straight on, with full lips and soft strength. Then, a Mensa candidate I know at work, a fit and fast toothpick with sparse hair; his sweet crush on me is fascinating, and in the dream I was pondering capitulation. Awake and sensible, I knew there is no way I'd get involved. I could never kiss him. Girls all know, if you can't bear the thoughts of kissing a man, he is not The Man.

Dream three, the best. A doctor I've known for years, fallen in and out of attraction with, romanced me into kissing him. Most recent news is although he is a very sick man, he has learned to cope with his disease. He has stopped looking for a woman. Yet, Prednisone becomes him, gives him color, and weight to his face. He looks better than ever to me--still mountain biking--still looks up (briefly) when I walk by. I've become very calm about him. It didn't work out, didn't work into anything other than a vision in fact, and so a dream in which he wetly at long length drinks all of my oxygen was a surprise, and beautiful.

Here's to 2006: A successful Paternity Action, closer dreams of home, and...kissing.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7220 The summer before SkeeZer moved to Flowerville, he became a very lonely and outcast cat. After witnessing many friends fighting over food, he made a vow not to use his teeth for harm. He became a vegetarian, and lost his home. After his first meal of broccoli and carrots, much to his surprise, he developed green and orange polka dots on his silky black fur. When he ate radishes and bananas, he bloomed yellow and red spots. Whatever good fruit or yummy vegetable he ate, his fur sprouted dots of lovely rainbow colors.

Looking for a new home, he spent his time spying on children and eating from trash cans. Finally, he came to a rosy pink house on Lavender Avenue, which he hoped would be his new home. If only he could convince the family to take him in. When the little girl, Susanna, saw him she shrieked, “Mommy, there's a black cat with a color disease outside!”

It was the eve before Christmas Eve. That morning SkeeZer awoke shivering in the old Spongebob Squarepants sleeping bag he slept in under Susanna's house, far from her cats, Garfield and Sparkle. They had hated him on sight, called him “colored,” and spit in his face. He knew it was now or never—-he had to make Susanna and her mom like him or he'd go all winter without a home.

First, since he was very hungry, he crept to the trash can on the back porch and peeked inside. The can fell over with a loud thump and clang-clang. Susanna popped her head out of the door. “Mom! Come look! That black cat is eating carrot peels from our garbage!” SkeeZer huddled there, miserable, shaking and sad. Please, his shiny green eyes pleaded, don't hurt me. “What's your name, kitty?” Susanna asked. “Rmmm, Rmmm, Sssskee...zzzrr, Rmmm.” “Oh look Mom, he talks.” Her mom came to the door. “We are not taking in another cat,” she said. SkeeZer gazed up at her, willing her to notice how handsome he was, promising her a world of love. Then, like magic, he felt his coat changing colors. “Well I'll be,” said Susanna's Mom, “that cat has green and red polka dots—-why, he's a Christmas cat!” Then Susanna scooped him up, kissed him on the forehead, and took him inside to enjoy fresh fried potatoes and sliced tomatoes. It was a very Merry Christmas for SkeeZer.

It wasn't long and SkeeZer was a part of the family. Garfield and Sparkle soon tired of spitting at him, because he never bothered their food dish. He was always very careful to give them their space and respect their different-ness. One day, Garfield and Sparkle came up to him, really close, nose to nose. SkeeZer was scared, but their eyes were friendly and they were purring. “We think you are all right, old man,” said Garfield. “Yeah,” purred Sparkle, “you aren't bad for a cat with color problems.” After that, SkeeZer was very happy and loved his family very much. He ate different fruits and vegetables every day of the week, and changed colors regularly, much to the delight of his new family.


]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7105 I'm ashamed today. I feel too much for one person and it's heavy and I resent it and I want to be different, not me, not ashamed.

I'm wandering town, driving to the dam in the cold gray air, sucking heat from a latté, grinding bread with my teeth. After parking at the dam, where the water and the dark firs increase my isolation, I went to the thrift store. A baby played with the wrong toys and her mother screeched at her. She's fine, I said, when her mother yanked the child from my path, she doesn't know any better. What an innocent, a sweet, may angels protect her, and I paid for an old dictionary and a hymnal and left.

Do I know any better than the baby? What do I know?

I said goodbye to my closest friend last night. He brought his journal and let me read it. When I came to the last page, where he is writing day by day and one by one of his friends and saying goodbye, he came to me: Vera with longing and tears in her eyes.

****

The man at the Friends of the Library store had sparse gray whiskers, blue eyes radiating stars and a robber's stocking hat—navy blue. It had some small twigs or grass stuck to it. I heard him come in the front door. I was at the reading table in the backroom searching for answers in too many books. Which book has the answer?

He began to bring in boxes of books to donate. Everything, he said to me, was in these boxes, all kinds of books, hunting, Indians, legal problems, if you got one. One for every person, something for everyone is here, and he chortled after every sentence. He's a bookseller. I take care of the community first, he said, go around to all the bookstores in the county and what they won't buy I take to Powell's books in Portland. He laughed. I smiled. They actually buy books from you? (The famous Powells?) Oh yes, delight consumes him, they spend $160-170 each time I go.

He starts to breathe hard with the trips. He's happy, this will get me warm! he says. The cold air is rushing in the back door. His breath—garlic and trees and meat—fills the reading room. He sees me watching again and says, it takes time, but there is a someone who wants exactly this book—he holds a hot pink novel aloft and shakes it—it just has to be in the same place and time as the one who wants it.

Then he pauses, looks up and away, squints back to me, the book to his chest. I sense his excitement. It's just like when you are in the woods, he says, and it's raining hard and your matches are all wet. He pats all of his pockets, coat, pants, vest; the phantom match is elusive. But if you have one dry match—IT ONLY TAKES ONE MATCH—then you can build a fire, he said. You can get warm. Just from one, only one, match.

I begin filming a scene in my mind. My end of the reading table is getting smaller. Ten cases of books now on it's glossy surface, more coming. I pile my five books together, large on bottom, small on top. The film rolls and I see all of the subjects in writing before me, everything a writer could write about:

how-to's
history
memoir
poetry
mainstream novel
genre novel
literary novel
western
mystery
true crime
biography
Harlequin
business letters
spiritual
self-help
personal letters
blogs
devotional
romance
instructions
textbooks
journals
fantasy
sci-fi
children's
cooking
depression

All the subjects I see in my film are in the form of books. An overwhelming pile of books. I pat my pockets, jeans, sweatshirt, coat. All of my matches are wet save one. I light it, hold it to the edge of an old book about friendship in yesterday. The smoke billows and the books are afire. Slowly they burn to ashes.

Then I sift through the warm ashes and they crumble in my fingers, softly nestle in my palms. I look for it, the one with the answer. Ah, there it is. It's silvery and light and intricate, frail. But then a breeze comes in the back door and takes it away, up in the air across the tops of trees and mountains, maybe to the sea, maybe to the stars. And it's gone. I don't know any better than I did before.


]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7100 1. Honesty is not always the best policy.

2. The good die young, the rich get richer, and children are life's biggest blessing.

3. Taxes are a form of discipline.

4. Driving the speed limit saves time, money and lives.

5. Being known as a "good drinker," i.e. "she holds 'er likker real good," and "that girl can drink anyone under the table," is an indication of immaturity.

6. Referring to parents as mommy and daddy should be reserved for use by actual children.

7. Broadcast your beliefs. Go ahead, be who you are.

8. Recycle, reuse, repurpose, and resource. It's smart.

9. Know thyself.

10. Having ready-made, all-occasion smiles in your personal repertoire will save your butt in awkward and uncomfortable situations. Smiles prevent many a disaster.

11. Picasso stole Cubism from Braques.

12. Exercise haunts you, whether you do it or not.

13. Books are life-long friends.

14. Music is the staff of life.

15. A superb omelette is hard to find; know how to make one.

16. Art is subjective. Duh.

17. Down comforters are like sleeping in a toasty cocoon, take up less space than bedmates do, and never snore.

18. Home is where you feel safe.

19. Taking after your dad or your mom, in some way, is inevitable.

20. Old people are not actually as sweet, kind and harmless as we once thought.

21. Animals feel pain and pleasure but they do not reason.

22. Americans do have it pretty damn good.

23. You only need money when you don't have it.

24. Your mouth is a sadistic weapon which you can refrain from using.

25. You are not a sex toy.

26. Do what makes you happy, the rest will wait.

27. Make peace with your family history.

28. Love is not the end-all, be-all in a marriage.

29. Compatibility, compromise, and compassion are the cornerstones of meaningful relationships.

30. Retirement is as retirement does.

31. Girls cannot do everything boys can; boys cannot do everything girls can.

32. Some people who think they are pretty cool now will be burning hot on Judgment Day.

33. A hug from someone who loves you is worth more than words can ever say.

34. Jobs are jobs.

35. Money IS everything, if you constantly seek material goods.

36. Who you are inside is always a bit of a secret.

37. In America, eating to excess is an acceptable pastime, but it directly contradicts the Thin Agenda.

38. Every day is another day which will have its night; learn to be at peace with the night.

39. Hope is an attitude.

40. Life is precious. You only get one.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7085 It was after midnight and I put down Sudden Fiction in the middle of a story about a guy drowning while his girlfriend made out in the boathouse with an older man; bit into and consumed two pieces of hot crispy garlic and butter bread, upped the heat to it's highest setting, sat in front of the fan in nightie, red hoodie and distressed leather Danskos (all preheated before I garbed) and opened Poets and Writers, Sept/Oct 2005 issue.

James Baldwin is on the front, photographed in b/w, dressed in a white tunic with embroidery on it. "Through the Eyes of the Photographer," an article about photographing writers and poets is the feature in this issue. I'd just read an essay in Ideas and Patterns in Writing (c. 1971), Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin. He describes his impossibly cold and distant father--his tone is sad, but not sarcastic, as he flatly relates how he and his siblings avoided their father, a cruel and vindictive person.

Come back with me now, to tonight. I'm in front of the heat and James is on the front of P & W. I open the magazine with a sense of impending discovery and flop, straight away it falls to a full-page b/w of W.H. Auden, 1972. He's a reptilian creature in this photo, around 70 or 80. His chin is tipped upwards, eyes slanted down, eyelids so baggy that his eyes are dark slits in shadow. His hair is mussed a little, but maintains a saucy air. He's smoking. He's sucking the hell and life and tar out of that cig, but easy, like it's a dainty goblet of communion wine. Like it's his last breath and he doesn't give a damn, he'll suck it up good. The cigarette is just a stub between his stubby fingers, with a one-third inch of ash. Any second, he's going to reef hard, separate his lips from the burning member, then wave his hand up in the air cigarette intact, and "ta-dah!"

That's when a shutter opened on a secret part of my mind. With a queer little shiver I realized that deep inside me, in that place that many of us have which is for want of a better word a very secret life, certainly a hidden thought life that rarely rises to the surface, and inside it niblets of truth simmer behind the scenes until they explode and you have to say hey, I heard that.

I imagined me alone in my house, like I am now, the red hoodie is faded and I'm wearing warm knee socks. Probably I am 50 years old at least, since my daughter is grown and gone in this scene. I'm smoking. My chin is tipped and my eyes are slits and my lips are glued to a Camel, I've secretly been planning to smoke again ever since I quit 10 years ago now, and 20 in the mind movie.

This revelation made me realize how unsafe I really am, if I can hide this thought away so well for so long. Telling all of the world that I quit smoking for good. And then planning to start up again as soon as my kid is grown. As soon as no one important is looking. As soon as some event, terrific or awful, precipitates the renewed act of smoking. As if something will happen where I won't be able to “help it.” And my mouth watering while my brain swears no I won't do it. I won't. But I can tell I'm really secretly planning to.

Real fast, I thumb ahead in P & W to Our Annual Look at Independent Presses.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=7057 Late September, sad feelings creep up in me and by November, I'm drowning in melancholy. Annual Depression. I feel like I'm wrapped in mosquito netting and only see out through tiny gray squares boxed in black. I try to hang tight, knowing it won't last. But there I go, analyzing my entire life and finding all of the holes I fell through and all of the roads I didn't take and mourning scars that didn't heal, the people I left, the people who left me, the road I'm on and how inadequate I am for the journey, and how always a year into major decisions I want to un-decision. How I'm not a good decision-maker. How I want to go back and start over. Completely start over.

I thought about my poor decision-making ability after last week; faced it. My car had a flat tire. It waited for me in the early morning frost, but I didn't see it. I backed out and there was a funny dull rumbling sound, like when driving over crusty ice. Out on the street, a bumping duetted the crust-cracking. I knew. Didn't want to know, but so what, knowing something never makes it go away.

I called Les Schwab Tires for womanly flat-tire rescue. Waited. A half hour went by. Then it occurred to me (as it does every November) that I've never relied on anyone for anything. My do-it-myself attitude borders on sickness. Yet. People have not--often enough to create my asking-for-help phobia--come through for me like I want/hope/expect they will. Part of November is knowing my aloneness, and how it stacks up beside my lack of togetherness. How this happened because, because.

I went out and changed the tire myself. I'm ** years old and finally changed a tire. Didn't even get my pants muddy. Didn't curse, didn't bruise my hands. I got greasy and happy. Yeah, I checked the car manual to see how the crank and jack fit together. How to place the jack. Then I went by instinct, not feel, and the accomplishment was worthy. I'm Real, I said.

Later, I drove to Les Schwab and bought four new tires. I always buy new tires when I get the first flat, obeying this as a sign. But I didn't interact well with the man behind the counter. He spoke fast, mumbled and I couldn't bring myself to ask him to repeat, or speak up. He said, "ultra," and "special buy" and tried to sell me on siping service--tire slashing that you pay for, to get extra traction he said. His impersonal blue eyes skimmed mine, evasive, and I felt rushed, uneasy, unsure. So I didn't ask questions, but made a snap decision based on not wanting to bother him, and my feelings of inadequacy in a man's world, and my wanting to appear smart and in control.

After the quick sale, I left, drove to a store. Came out and really looked at my Celica. The tires looked strange, tiny, out of place inside the hubs. The significance of "ultra" hit me. A sports car looks hideously unclothed in regular-sized tires.

I went back the next day and upgraded to ultras. It cost me an extra $54 for my hurried decision, straight out of my Christmas allowance.

I make decisions based on my feelings. All the time. Not based on stopping, getting quiet and methodical, prioritizing; waiting. Thinking.

Feelings are emotions, and are separate from reality.

Feelings cause unplanned pregnancies.

Feelings cause you to tell your boss to shove his job up his ass...when you need that job.

Feelings feed you a pound of chocolates when two pieces are enough.

Feelings say I do, walk you down the aisle to a land of hope, lift the veil, then they tear you apart when you find yourself alone in a double bed.

Why not feel, stop, think, and then feel what is actually real?

I want to divorce my feelings. They are getting in my way.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=6964 I'm throwing blankets on the flames. He started it, built it from sticks I cut for him. Again. Half of me says you know you want to fry, the other is screaming how can you.

I saw him and he looked at me--eyes into eyes through a tunnel of tight space--and I knew like yesterday that every day always he'll be there behind my eyelids, in my tears, crying in my veins.

We sat at a table alone. His shoulders went the width of the table and his big hands crumbled into bones before me, I couldn't stop him, didn't touch him—every single one of his broken needs sank into me, filled my bursting lungs. He said, just be with me. I said I'll be with you. The skin on his face lined and his chest heaved and words ground out through his white-white teeth. I longed to carve the grief off his cheeks. Peel the pain from his lips. Catch the flying splinters of his heart and nail them, mold them, hold them back together with my bleeding fingers.

The knowing between us gets worse. I could just, I should not, I still want, it's futile.

He cried.

I am with him.

He said thank you for being my friend.

Through my mind a thousand retorts beat rat-tat-tat against my forehead and then pulsed there, hard and hot, melting my makeup. I hold still. Breathe, and wait.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=6919 I wore pants to work today. Black smooth pocketless pants with flared legs. Slightly hiphugger, slightly stretchy, very comfy.

On top, I wore a smashing peacock blue shirt, with collar and cuffs at a smart angle and little buttons that are rhinestone flowers. I think this outfit might be considered "in" for women my age. My age. I'll get to that another time. But I didn't do the right shoes. No stiletto's for me with witch tips peaking out of knife pleats. Hey, it's a hospital and I wear Danskos only. Can't go getting crazy with heels.

Once ten years ago I wore pants to work. I've worked at the hospital 10.5 years. The electricity was off at my house and my way of dealing was to up and wear pants to work that day. (Woo-ee.) I wore some black stretch pants with little flowers on them, and a matching yellowish top. I cringe at the memory.

I purposely picked Sunday for my First Day Wearing Pants. I figured there would be less ooglers and I was right. It was pretty slow today and there was a paucity of men. It took people awhile to notice what it was they thought was different about me. There were a couple male nurses in ER who still are not sure what was up. When it hits them I'm in trouble. I never did want attention centered on me (when sober).

Tonya in the pharmacy had baby rabbits when she saw me walk in with pants--furry little fuzzballs were squealing in space and flying up high, because I'd finally worn pants. She didn't ask me to marry her, though it felt like something like that was going to happen today.

Starla in ICU said, "You look really, really good today--you happy or something?" "Yeah," I said. And she stared after me as I left the room.

Terri in Family Birth--it took her three times of seeing me in the hall--finally yelled (It was difficult but I didn't duck or run) across the cafeteria, "Hey---, are you wearing PANTS?"

"Yep." Then she said they looked awesome. "Wear them again." And her dinner partner said my hair looked great. I especially made my hair large today, to balance my appearance, and distract the onlooker from looking lower. Then their other dinner partner said, "Everything about you is great, simply beautiful." They don't know what they have started.

I feel liberated. There is going to be a big dress-throwing away party here on 18th soon. Every single one is bye-bye except for the two black ones. (I specialize in black clothing.) I have to wait though. Cuz' just one pair of pants is not enough. I have to build an entire new wardrobe. This will take time, great presence of mind and tag sales.

My daughter, the 13-year-old who officially became a teen on September 21 at 9:50 a.m., has dropped her Gap jeans in favor of corduroy and denim skirts! All the girls are wearing skirts.

All my coworkers are wearing pants...me too!


(PS: After a year on the robot, I felt it was finally acceptable to admit I wasn't wearing pants to work--knowing quite well that the subject of pants and depants-ing is a big attractant for this site, and that only wearing pants in my non-work life was a form of rebellion--differentness if you will--best not mentioned.)

]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=6787 I miss working swing shift and going on a smoke break at 9pm with the other smokers. Outside it's cold and we are huddled in our coats, pulled up to a white plastic table in white plastic chairs. There's never any luxury involved except the hotness going in and the stress going out. We had different things to talk about that I cannot describe but a few of you get it--Victoria's post brought that out. Camaraderie? Smoking together is dying together and it's one bad thing that feels awfully good.

All a smoker needs is a place for their bum and a can. Once I sat on a fire escape looking over Portland on the 10th floor, just outside the stairwell. I smoked alone there for an hour while upset about money, a Folger's can right next to me. Camel filters. I could be alone and content with a cigarette.

One smoker will give another smoker a cig sooner than most of us will give a bum a quarter.

Popping into 7-Eleven and saying "Camel Light 100s Please."

It's the whole lighting up ritual. The fresh pack, peel off the gold plastic string, sniff deeply of the aroma, get out favorite lighter, crack it, hold it to the tip and inhale. What replaces that?

No cigarette ever rejected me.

Remember More cigarettes? Maybe they are still around. They were too skinny and brown for me. Somehow a brown cigarette was meant to be smoked in the city night on a street corner with a man in a pin-striped suit. I never had that opportunity. Yet, light up a smoke in an airport or in a theater lounge and insta-quaintance. Smokers say really juicy things, and have pertinent info, and when you feel your husky voice answering their husky voice, it's nostalgic. A smoker knows how another smoker feeelz, it's like you are in a conspiracy that nonsmokers could never understand, never relate to. (And they can't.)

I miss the ex-boyfriends who smoked more than the ones who didn't.

A smoke with wine; a smoke with beer. Smoking in pubs with friends drinking microbrew. Shooting pool and reaching back to an ashtray for a toke before taking my turn.

Smoking while driving. With the window down. It feels cleaner and purer that way. Driving and driving on roads, thinking and fantasizing and smoking until that night when I got home and lay down in bed...

I couldn't breathe.

October 13 is my ten-year non-smoking anniversary. And know what? Despite my nicotine memories and yearnings, the myriad triggers to smoke throughout the years, the times I had to use something else to keep from smoking, well, the results of quitting are worth resisting the temptations.

I had good reasons to quit. I wanted to live a long time. I wanted to raise my daughter "right." I saw a 44-year-old woman dying before my eyes that smoked her whole life. Not even the oxygen could stop the convulsions her body made to get the air that it was never going to get. The convulsions lasted a long time; days and days, her family watched while she cursed them.

And I wanted that damn smell out of my hair.

To this day I can only befriend smokers from a distance. I bond with them, but I cannot smoke with them, or even be next to their smoking. (I'd probably kick them in the shins and steal their smokes.) I totally understand the why's of it all. I don't preach at smokers to quit, but I tell them my story. I think it gives them hope, they usually smile and say "I'm next." None of them ever say they are sorry for me that I quit.

I know in my heart that some day something really terrible will happen. I will then want to smoke. I've decided that if the terrible thing is that I am dying already, then certainly a dozen cases of Camel Straights will soften the blow. Otherwise, when I'm down wind of fresh smoke and the demon bites me I remember two things: that woman I mentioned, and my daughter when she was not even two. I found her with my purse emptied out, cigarette in one hand and matches in the other, a questioning look on her sweet face. She doesn't remember that now. And I am not going to remind her.








]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=6724 Those charity patients at the hospital where I work have more tattoos than ever and double cell phones, one for each ear. Still they come up to the pharmacy from ER crying a little--or moisture dried below their eyes, streaks of mascara or dust, maybe charcoal from the campfire--from a sprained ankle or a spider bite, needing Vicodin. And getting it. Again. Always. I expect the pain from these sweetly-timed injuries is quite a bit more than a tattoo causes. Are tattoos needle-less now? Oh, and how much do they cost? Just wondering. Must be less than emergency medications, that's why they need charity to pay for the Vicodin.

Berlin Road is awesome for car travel this summer. It begins at the railroad trestle near town and winds into the country for twelve miles until it climbs to Mark's Ridge, where the better offs live. They have a fine view of the back of the Cascades and over the whole valley. (I live down in the valley.) Yet, our county recently closed a library due to lack of funds, and the art and music classes were cut in the school district. Still, out there on Doctor's Drive as Berlin Road is known, the pavement is again this year as in all the years past worked into a smooth strip; constantly trimmed, sanded, manicured--buffed with the wax. No patch jobs over potholes. Just luscious new tarmac suspiciously cushioned.

I was sitting at the bus stop looking at the horizon around 3pm. On the left was Mark's Ridge (I considered what it would be like to live up there) and straight ahead the humped backs of hills. More trees than ever have been cut, and the replants haven't kept the green up. Little kids were coming out of daycare while I waited for my daughter's bus. There were school smells. Bus fumes, sweat, the dryness before it rains soon. Over to the right a square boulder was swathed in extreme red plastic poppies or giant carnations or mutant daisies, viewer's choice. My thoughts skittered off of the reason, but the road has two other memorials. If you die on a road here, you get plastic flowers and sometimes a cross.

Summer was lost today.

This morning there was yelling and internal bleeding in the car as we went to the bus stop. My child has a $60 backpack this year. It is supposed to last two years. Last year there were three backpacks, all about $15 each and only lasting a few weeks each. The workers in the sewing factories are using a thinner thread--to cut costs. We got in the car and I saw that the strap of the expensive backpack was straining with a load of about 50 pounds of history, science and math. Maybe a ream of college-rule was in there too. My objections and cautions about backpack care were met with impudence so then there was shouting. (Does every text have to come home every day? What is happening in our schools, other than the loss of music and art?)

And I read into my future. Read, read, read. Write read. Read it right and write. The Stranger by Albert Camus was less popular with me than As I Lay Dying. I decided to continue with Faulkner and quit with Camus. The question du jour was, will I force feed on Spanish this term, since the college is offering classes at all times hours and places, or wait for a new round of Italian, my true love? Italian showed up for the first time ever in the class schedule--talk about shock on my face--and it's something to wonder if it will show again for winter, since I cannot take it for fall. Dare to dream?

Yesterday my one time great love was spotted in the parking lot having brain sex with a subordinate. This was reported back to me and sadly, the reporter had to leave the scene of spying before observing the conclusion. She was hoping they'd get physical. Body language and facial expressions though were indicative of some serious hotness between man and woman. You are free to go, I say (pray).

Then my final thought for fall's coming is that it's all supposed to look like new every year. The world fresh and coming out orange yellow and brown as if that hasn't happened before. Everyone making plans like everything is smiles and crisp air. Leaves dropping off and “oh, look at that!” But it's not new, how can it be when it comes every year and freezes summer into a hot memory.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/roaddust.asp?id=6499 She sat on a bench in a shaft of sunlight. The light bounced off of her copper hair and streaked down the side of her face. The round-tipped end of her nose shone. Her jaw was set, with both lips slightly pulled back from clenched teeth. Head bent over a black and white composition book, her hand could not pen the words fast enough.

I watched her from behind a huge oak. The ground was littered with early chestnuts, and a token gray squirrel scolded me for getting in his way. It was cool and damp in the sparse grass under the massive branches. My day felt perfectly at ease in my bones, a precise and planned day. I'd walked across the ball field and came out on the far side of the park. That's when I saw her on the stone bench with the carved wooden plaque, "My Angel: You picked me up where I fell. You are in laughing in heaven while I live in hell." Fifteen feet away from where I hid, the girl, who might have been sixteen or twenty-six, was swallowed up in an aura of frantic intensity. No one else was in sight.

She looked up once and suddenly turned in my direction. Her brows were furrowed and the color of her eyes a liquid mystery. She bent her head again, clutched the notebook closer to her belly. Then, I saw a young man striding across the grass as if she were his destination. He came from the direction of the wrought iron horse statue and his rusty hair built a fire in the air.

My behind was sore from the tree root I was sitting on yet I didn't dare move. Something was about to happen. I wondered who she was. I wondered what color of hair their children would have. Already, my mind had connected the man to her and become enraptured with their plight; surely, they were lovers. She of copper and he of rust, those three little children of theirs; saffron, aluminum and cinnamon, were only three breaths into the future.

The man was closer, walking faster and firmer--maybe stomping--his arms pumping at his sides. The girl kept writing, probably four pages now since I first began to watch. It was a race, a contest between his beginning and her ending.

I was interrupted by a homeless man in chinos and saddle shoes. He had one tooth in front and needed money. Don't they all. I explained, more than I should have, that I was walking for exercise in the park and had no money on me, not one red cent. He argued, pleaded, and convinced me (I'm gullible) that whoever I was and whatever I was about to do dictated whether he lived or died, my choice.

When I got back to the oak tree to assume position and continue my spying, they were both gone. I hurried towards the bench, to sit where she had sat and attempt to be her so that I would know. The sun had moved a little, shafting down onto the right end of the bench. I saw something under the edge there, peeking out—delicate as a moth seeking light in the dark--fluttering white in the now warm air. Her notebook.








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