Winter Gothic

The pond was frozen over and the wind had blown renegade snowflakes under the feeble plastic covering the car's cracked windshield. There used to be two cars parked in front of the house on the corner-- two matching Subarus, Mschef and Mschef2. Now Mschef2 was all that was left, deserted, snowdrifts piled along its running boards all winter long, for at least the third running winter in years. Overall, it was the sort of sad winter scene a depressed landscape artist would paint while contemplating if he really needed his left ear; if the world really needs to be heard in surround sound. Even the Canadian geese who hadn't quite made the winter cut-off flying south who were now squatting by the pond looked like they were considering just ending it before having to go through another Vermont winter, and we all know how little comparable intelligence a goose possesses. There's not a gently teasing idiot remark about it for nothing.

I used to drive by about 6 times a week during high school on the way to and from the barn, when it was occupied, in better times, and I remember thinking it looked like the sort of place I would want to know the kind of people who would get matching "Mschef" vanity plates and live in an old clapboard house on a wide corner of a country road and go swimming in their pond in the backyard. They were probably artists, I thought, the two Mschefs-- projects got started, and never seemed to get finished, like the sliding doors on the north side of the house that, while installed, still looked raw around the seams and beams, like someone had found another project to worry at before they could finish fixing the trim. Ms. Mschef was probably a chef or caterer, the sort of a woman who always has a "To Do" list and is methodical yet nonchalant about getting it all done; Mr. Mschef seemed liked he'd be a house painter by day, and an abstract painter by night. Maybe it was the fact that he seemed handy around a house, yet scattered.

The house and car had been left vacant in the middle of those scattered renovations, the impedance unknown-- a divorce; an affair; a death; an unplanned-for birth, perhaps. There are, after all, some things that just can't be explained to a spouse. Why your newborn son looks more like the cashier behind the local general store and why you've been running more "last-minute late night errands" to get supplies for the next day's "intimate rehearsal lunch for 12" is one of them. Now, left all exposed wood and pink insulation tufting out to be mauled at by small mammals and birds to feather their own nests, it resembles so much nothing better than a big stuffed Valentine's Day heart, ripped apart, trailing entrails and the stuff two people thought would be enough to keep them warm. The only sign of life left on the property were those two Canadian geese out by the pond, and even they looked like they wouldn't be sticking around for much longer, if they could help it. After tragedy, sometimes, the stench just remains.

XOXO

Plate Tectonic Theory

I look up, because I've now known you for long enough that I can feel when you're expecting something from me and know when I should look up.

During the moment I catch your original glance, I watch it change into a wide-eyed deer-in-the-headlights thing, and, feeling bad about this nearly voyeuristic glimpse into your psyche, I let my eyes keep going, skittering past yours after the initial catch and blink of surprise, now drifting by each other like two continental plates enacting plate tectonic theory in motion-- somewhere, because of this, a volcano will erupt, or an earthquake will go off.

An unfamiliar prickle begins at the base of my spine; a feeling I've almost forgotten, like the names of relatives you never see anymore. I realize, belatedly, a day later, after the fact, and after the fact that the alcohol I'd been swimming through has now dissolved into my bloodstream like so many other things, to be forgiven and forgotten and generally not thought much of ever again-- it's because you haven't looked at me that way in a Long Time. Nearly, I might even say, nearly a year.

I'd almost forgotten it, but there it was-- I looked to you like something shiny and new.

XOXO

Come Full-Circle

The first night, you made the White Russians with too much vodka. I drank it anyway, and didn't tell you until later, when I was already too drunk to drive home. Thank god you asked me to stay.

The last night, you made me a White Russian, with knock-off Kahlua, and again, too much vodka. I drank it in a rush non-conducive to walking home all the way across town, and was glad when you called me back.

The first night, we slept naked. It was winter-time and cold-- you pressed up against me. I didn't mind too much, other than the Band-Aid-adhesive feeling of peeling my skin off of your thighs when I went to roll over, where your hairs clung to me with sweat.

The last night, we slept naked. One of the last nights of summer, far too hot to touch, I looked at your alien body as it glowed translucently in the dark beside me, all legs and dark patches of hair, and thought about how weird you looked; how weird it was to be looking at you naked, vulnerable, and with your mouth open, snoring.

It was his birthday. We were both drunk beyond judgement. And Lord knows the soft-spot a mile wide for each other is located between both of our legs. It seemed like The Right Thing To Do. A tip of the hat to a shared history and the fact that human beings are remarkably fallible and Have Needs. An old song and dance, revisited. A waltz nearly a year archaic.

The next morning, I woke up, oddly elated to realize that other than a headache that pounded from the bridge of my nose between my eyes (a bull's eye to point where thinking had NOT gone on), I didn't feel any different.

Strange when you've already cared so much that you can't possibly care any more, every last drop of feeling wrung out of you like a sponge in an emotional vice-grip. Not enough emotional range left in you to switch your settings. Oxytocin orgasms over. Spent.

XOXO

Fall Slides In

Our floors creak in the weather changes,

Like the bones of an old, protesting woman

Who has seen too much

And lived enough

To have filled up every page of her diaries,

And sigh at the first sign of fall.

XOXO

Disappointment Comes With the Territory

If I were to ask you which hand I smoke with,

Left or Right,
I have a feeling that we would both be disappointed.
You,

For getting it wrong,
And me,

For realizing you don’t know me

As much as I wish you did.

XOXO

Hiatus

You said "hiatus" like there was something to tie me to the same place, the same space, the same point in time. Like you can tell a dog "stay." Like there was something worth staying for or coming back to.

I wanted to look around and see the same strange universe you live in so I would know what exactly you were thinking. I wanted to tell you, "I may love you, but I don't love you enough to atrophy." I wanted to believe that you were bipolar, as it seemed to be the only explanation for the abrupt Harvey Dent two-face turn.

Instead, as time passes, so do the reasons, the possibility of explanations, and even the desire to linger. In some places, a "hiatus" is nice-- Maui, the Virgin Islands, Fiji. For others, a break only means that things have now been broken. No traction, no ICU and no splints and bones.

XOXO

Perfect Strangers

I don't know what made me look up just then, so suddenly, like emotional whiplash. Maybe it's just because I'm used to having you around-- you still show up on my radar, a bright blip.

But instead of where you would have come over before, instead, you looked away.

Just like we were perfect strangers.

You're just another handsome guy in a Red Sox cap. I'm just another girl pretentiously reading in the corner. If we were perfect strangers, I may try to catch your eye. I may smile. I may run a hand through my hair so you could better see my face. But after our combined history, I know better.

Just like how, as an imperfect non-stranger, I know your Cassiopeia constellation of moles, and how you smell, the way you take your coffee, and the unmistakable sound of your first signs of smoker's cough. And you know too much about me.

I can't pretend we're perfect strangers, so I pretend to ignore you as you walk slowly by, instead.

XOXO

Of Aliens, Achilles' Heels, And Joints.

My thumbs still crack as much as they used to, tightening and cramping with about as much regularity as you exhibit. In the cold night air, first five wet, clicking snaps go off, starting with one abrupt sound, like a tree branch breaking underfoot in the middle of woods devoid of birds or any other small, noisy creature--then, more hesitantly, with the rasp of skin on skin as the appendages are pulled back manually, the other four fingers go. Crack, snap, click, pop. Then the other five on the other hand, in descending order, an arpeggio of joint, fluid, and bone.

There are people who will tell you that cracking your knuckles like this will swell them up like soft flesh balloons in your old age, penitence for years of self-abusement. People also tell you that you'll go blind from masturbating too much, and that you cannot lick your elbow. Well, I can, so I'll continue on being That Person who does it as a nervous reflex, a self-calming ritual as soothing as sucking your thumb, yet still publicly acceptable at nearly 21. Plus, what if they crack themselves? What if they elect, on their own biological and anatomical accord, to freeze up and crack? I have never had to force my thumbs to release like the trigger of a gun. I have never had to wrestle with them in a pantomime of a singular thumb-war and get them to give and function again. Instead, they always do it on their own-- a tightening, followed by a reflexive bending, at which point the spine of the thumbs give way like the spine of last year's biggest best-seller-- a fictional account of one passively-aggressive, neurotic man's triumph over the impending doom of intergalactic space invaders come to rid the world of it's inhabitants and bring back all the Fluff to their planet of Doom and Fluff-less peanut butter, which has since been opted for a movie, like War of the Worlds but with less Tom Cruise-- as the heel of your foot pushes down on it where it lies, spread-eagle on your bedroom floor, now broken, eternally open to those two pages detailing the struggle between the main character's desire to turn his back on his world and wallow in his own self pity, or to climb through the alien spaceship's air duct and kick some E.T ass, and you look down at the face of your former lover on the back cover's flap, trapped somewhere yet still smiling thinly under your Achilles and you think, "Well, if that isn't fitting?" and then you smile, and mash down on it just a little bit harder, because, you know, you're alone in the privacy of your own house and bedroom, and no one else is around to see your quiet-yet-clicking moment of vindictive triumph about something you should have rightly been over nearly six months ago, after they traded in a huge second book deal and a Lamborghini for your relationship.

After all, life can be stranger than fiction.

---

The thing that I love about writing fiction is that it never ends up ANYWHERE near where I thought it would when I started writing it.

And who knew War of the Worlds stayed with me so intensely, bad acting and all these years later?

XOXO

And P.S-- Yes, I can really lick my elbow.

Essays, Wrote The Wise Man

If I have nothing original to give you of my own, I will find you something interesting and of note to read.

This is the website of one of my professors, and his essay on the durian fruit is hilarious. If nothing else today, you need to read this, and laugh.

Like Tim Brookes, I thoroughly appreciate a good essay. Essays, essays, essays...I have a long and involved relationship with essays, (possibly my only long and involved relationship ever). When I was a freshmen in high school, my English teacher passed out a prompt and those iconoclastic blue booklets to our class so, like every other high school student in grades 9-12 in the state of Vermont, we could participate in the annual Vermont Honors Competition for Excellence in Writing. (Long title; 5 paragraph essay.)

To my utter surprise, my essay (I don't remember the prompt,) was selected as the best out of the 150 some-odd from my freshmen class. On to Round Two writing against the freshmen winners of the other schools in my county, and a new prompt, this one on what I would chose to do if I knew it was my last day alive. (My response: nothing different, except I'd sleep in and finally be daring enough to speak up to a few people I felt I couldn't be for the fear of having to live with the words I'd said. As still now, I have always had a problem with actually saying the words I feel and think.) Again, utter shock when I was announced the county winner.

This brought me onto State Finals at UVM. I brought my friends Wheaton and Carson along for moral support, and was (again, as always) 15 minutes late to the actual timed writing period. This was the prompt for the competing essay: "Our country prides itself on progress made in such fields as technology, medicine, education, etc. In a thoughtful, well-developed essay, discuss how progress, although highly valued in our society, could be viewed as being paradoxical." I wrote something about how although technology has made our lives "easier," one could argue that it has taken away the personal element to things such as communication, which undermines the definition of "progress." I think I even used the word "juxtaposition" somewhere in that essay. It would make sense. It's been my favorite word since my intimidating, inspiring, iconic 9th grade play-writing teacher used it one day in class.

The prompt for all grades was a bit less cerebral: "Henry Adams wrote, 'A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.' Reflect upon Adams’ words. Then, in a thoughtful, well-developed essay, discuss the impact a teacher (the individual does not have to be in the teaching profession) made on you." I thought about my teachers; my trainer; my parents; my more enlightened friends. And then I wrote about myself and my writer's voice, and though I may not know where it came from, or how, that voice, more than all the class assignments, bad teenage poetry, fan-fictions, and notes passed in class, is what encourages me to write, and to continue writing. I have tried scouring the internet and files to find the copy of the essay for you, but, alas, somewhere in the past (jeeezus) seven years, it has disappeared. Probably, a good thing. It was not my favorite essay ever written. But yet, when they announced my name as the statewide freshmen year winner and ushered me up to collect my $2,000 check, that was the essay they asked me to read. So, like anyone just given a large amount of money and then asked to do something, I complied, and was amazed when I watched stranger's mothers tear up. I was even more amazed when I was called to the school office a week later to conduct a phone interview with a reporter from the local paper.

"Have you always written?" the reporter asked me.

"Um...yeah, I guess so." (I was in such shock I am afraid I was not the eloquent. Then again, I've always been far more eloquent via written rather than spoken word.)

"What do you think you want to do with your writing? Any plans on making it a profession?"

"I want to be a journalist." The words were out of my mouth before I'd even thought about them. I was just as surprised as the reporter was. This was the first time I'd even considered making writing (something I loved,) into a career (something to feed myself and pay the bills). Before, I had every intention on attending veterinary school, nevermind the fact I am so severely needle-phobic I get strapped down to the chair at my doctor's. All it took was four five-paragraph essays that a few other people believed in enough to think they were "winners" to change the entire course of my life.

I have always loved shared knowledge-- if you find something you think I might enjoy or find novel, please, and by all means, leave it for me as a comment. I always love finding, discovering, or reading new things.

XOXO

"Abandon Truth; Settle For Good Fantasy."

It is not often I demand things from people.

But, I am demanding you to go here, explore, and form an opinion. As one author writes, "I came. I saw. I conceded."

These are the Sixers. I think they're revolutionary and liberating.

Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure

Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak

Shocked at what people can accomplish with limited space, time, and word count? Do you love or hate the concise format? Are you a minimalist who revels in the diminutive? If so, you'd love me.

XOXO