High Windows

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

--Philip Larkin

oh happy day!

There have been so many, so so many times over the last three years when I have been ready to give up. I get into these writing frenzies and then all of a sudden I will find myself slipping on this long slide into self-loathing. I will read what I have written and will foam at the mouth. I will curse myself for ever having been born. I will marvel at the paradox of having been given this desire to create and this simultaneous revulsion any time I look at what I have created. Once when I was drunk I cried out, "Why have I been given the desire to understand everything and the inability to comprehend anything?" Such is my misfortune in this world.

And then will come the death knell. It has gotten very predictable. First I will tell myself to stop even trying. I will wish that I had been born someone else, someone without this accursed need to peddle words, and I will tell myself that I should do something useful with my life. I should become a nurse or a massage therapist or a barista or a stripper. Anything but a writer--misery down that path lies. And then I will stop writing for a while. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months.

But the happy news is that I have just gotten over one such period and I am feeling super productive. And the even happier news is that both of my novels in progress--one a meager five pages and the other forty pages so far--are still intact thanks to the magic of word processing. If I were Mikhail Bulgakov I would have burned my work in disgust only to regret it later. Thank god I am not. Some good comes of living in the age of computers rather than the age of parchment and fireplaces. I just reread both of the drafts for my novels, and they ain't half bad. So back to work! As long as I feel happy I can go and go and go. Until next time I become depressed and decide to seek my fortunes as a stewardess.

poem in progress: no title yet

How can I write a love song
for a place where no love grows,
where love has been buried under beds of gravel,
the foundations of a made-up house.

Where the bones of small
domesticated animals lie in
shallow mass graves,

Where the sunsets signal slow death—
the coughing up of red lung,
the purple of bruised eyes swollen shut,
the yellowing of skin that crumbles under the
slightest touch,

An unholy place of no romance where I was
never born,
where bodies choke the river,
condoms swim in the sewers,
children discover needles hidden in the grass;

Where fathers drown their babies in bathtubs
and mothers stare at cold glass cases full of sirloin
in attempts to remember something they have forgotten,
something primal and ancient,
something they never knew.

Love sleeps here beneath the old rubber tires,
beneath the breath of the wind that scatters paper cups.
Love dies here at the bottom of the well that pumps
poisoned water.

Love lost its way on the streets
that all lead nowhere,
that all look the same. Love lost its way there.

The oak trees uncurl their limbs and then
collapse inside themselves, sour and rotting.
The weeds strangle the daffodils and
someone tears at them,
enraged.

Human souls are locked behind the windows, staring out
at a world that isn’t.
No one lives here
They merely die here.

the complicated dream from which I just awoke

It began with Lauren H. and I sitting with a few other girls before going to class. I was stealthily picking my nose. One of the girls, named Kim, was watching me. Finally she said, "Can you stop that?" I looked at her surprised. She said, "You've been doing that for a while. Stop it." Lauren and I got up and walked away. I said to Lauren, "That was rude. Like she never picks her nose. Well I've got news for you Kim--guess who picks their nose? Everybody. Even the president of the United States." We were about to enter the classroom. I said, "I never liked her."

Once inside we were not in a classroom but in a huge auditorium filled with tables with low-lit lamps on top on them like in a supper club. We were there to see a magic show. The show was loud and funny and I got drunk as I watched it. The girl sitting at our table and I were chosen as volunteers in the magic show. We went up in front and had to sit back to back in a large basket. The basket began to spin around very fast, like a carnival ride. It was flying through the air and going upside down. In the background behind us was a huge screen on which they were playing a video of arguments between Joe Biden and John McCain. It was a contest to see whose story was sadder--Biden lost his family in a car accident, McCain was a prisoner of war. At the end of the video the magician yelled out, "Hard times, everything's okay, or nothing?" We had to supply the right answer. I was very dizzy from being inside the upside down spinning basket. The other girl mumbled something that the audience couldn't hear. I yelled out, "HARD TIMES!" I won. The basket stopped. I clambered out and fell over on the ground. All around me I could hear applause and the announcer saying that my prize was...I couldn't quite make it out. I think I fainted.

Then I was back at "home." I lived with my older husband (who I think was played by Paul Giamatti) in a slightly-rundown, very gothic old Victorian mansion. The grounds were untended and overgrown, and I loved the creepy garden. Our neighbor was with us in the garden, and the three of us were talking about what I had won in the magic show. Evidently my prize was that I could go to any baseball game in America and automatically go to first base. I said, "So if I go to a Yankees game and somebody hits a triple, I'll score a run!" My husband went inside and the neighbor grabbed my arm. He pointed to his house. "Do you see that gate between my garden and yours?" he asked. "I had that built for you. I love you. Let's get rid of your husband." 

So we locked my husband in the house and I went to live with the neighbor and his wife. Apparently she had no problem with me living there as her husband's mistress. But after a while we tired of him. So we got rid of him. And then she and I lived together happily ever after.  

this is how it goes

• My two index fingers hurt from typing. I really wish I had learned to type properly. When I was in grade school and I had to repeatedly type those sentences about gorillas being large gentle giants... well those lessons amounted to nothing. I am going to have two tough fingers someday. But for now they feel faint.
• One-minute dance party, then back to work.
• I used to not believe in outlines or notes for story writing, but now I think that they are essential. I carry around little Moleskine pocket notebooks and jot down snippets of conversation overheard on the bus, maybe something I saw (like a row of old dilapidated wheelchairs lined up behind a chainlink fence...I will use that somewhere,) sentences that I have mulled over and finally gotten right, ideas for short stories. If you don't have notes or outlines the task of writing can seem overwhelming. I guess when you build a house you don't just start throwing up boards and putting in windows whenever you feel like it. You draw up a blueprint, then you make the frame of the house using plywood, then you start adding onto it. The doorknobs and sink fixtures go in last. Clearly I am no architect or construction worker but, yeah... notes and outlines, I'm a believer.
• I just learned that Sean Penn won for "Milk" which I am very happy about. I don't care about the Oscars but that's the only movie I've bothered to see at the theater in the last six months and it was wonderful.
• I want to write forever, writing is the most transformative force in my life.
• But it is hard. My fingers hurt.

sudden fiction: HIPS

It was his hips that bothered her the most. His pelvis was razor-sharp like a girl’s and his jutting hipbones sliced into her whenever she was beneath him. He had eyes the color of still water at the bottom of a very deep cave, a pool where translucent fish swim in the darkness. He mostly kept his eyes shut when making love to her but every so often at the moment of climax they shot open suddenly and bored deeply into hers, and she always had the sensation then of drowning. His hands were like twin white birds with broken wings that explored her shoulders and the small of her back as if afraid of being caught, wounded and flightless, ready to retreat into hiding at any second. She went to bed with him exactly five times before telling him that she couldn’t see him anymore. He had gazed into her with that piercing dead stare and she had looked away. All these things came back to her many years later when one afternoon she got into the car, turned on the radio, and heard his name. He had burst into a church on the other side of town the previous morning and taken a handgun from inside of his coat, firing upon the members of the congregation nearest to where he stood. The survivors described his face as composed and blank. Then he had pressed the barrel of the gun to his temple, closed his eyes peacefully as if he were about to pray, and collapsed to the ground in a halo of smoke. The police had no apparent motive, and were questioning his father with whom he had lived. The father’s voice came on over the airwaves crying out to the reporters, “Leave me alone, for God’s sakes, please leave me alone!” She could hear the old man sobbing bitterly as the media chased him back into his house. As she listened, sitting there in the parking lot after work, she became aware of the fact that she was wringing her hands. They were clasped desperately in front of her as though preparing for an invocation, but when she looked up at the high arch of blue through the windshield, no words came.

choice quotes

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” -Kurt Vonnegut

“If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave out or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff is that you, not your editors, omit.” -Hemingway

“Wherever you go, there you are.” -Thomas Kempis

“Nostalgia is the longing for the world we all know, or seem to have known, the world we all love, and the people in it we love. Nostalgia is also a passion, a longing not only for that which is lost to us, or which has been destroyed or burned, or which we’ve outgrown; it is also a force of aspiration.” -John Cheever

“Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds are interested in the commonplace.” -Elbert Hubbard

"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." -Voltaire

things overheard

*Today at school two white girls were walking behind me and complaining about their Black Studies class. "She doesn't get it," one of them said of the professor. "She just overreacts to everything. I mean, I grew up in an all-black neighborhood so I can call black people niggers and it's no big deal, you know? But she would just freak out if I said that, you know?"

*The other day on the bus, a woman got on and was talking to, or rather talking at another woman. "I'm glad I don't live downtown anymore," she was saying. "I used to live downtown but there are too many crazy people. I'm glad I moved." The other lady didn't respond. The speaker said, "Yup, there are a lot of weirdos downtown. My friend got her purse snatched."
The other lady replied, "Oh my goodness." The storyteller continued, "Yeah, she was about to go shopping so she had about a hundred dollars in there. She was waiting for the trolley when she felt someone tug on her shoulder. All of a sudden this guy had her purse and he was running away so she chased after him. She got hit by a car."
The other lady said, "Oh no."
The speaker nodded and added, "She died." The bus was silent. After a moment of contemplation the speaker said, "I don't think they ever caught the guy who stole her purse, either."

sudden fiction: AFTERNOON IN THE VALLEY

I dreamt of my grandmother again last night. Swollen ankles bulging out of threadbare pink slippers, feet pressed into faded brown carpet. Armchair bent to a scoliosis curve at the back, springs shot underneath, cigarette smoldering at stained fingertips. The curtains are drawn; up against the window the Central Valley heat presses its palms, torching the glass; the room is dark and cool and illuminated with Johnny Carson glow. The ceiling scalds in its familiar spot above the armchair, the same spot from which cigarette smoke has risen like a departing spirit for the last twenty-seven years. Her watery blue eyes blink and adjust, Johnny Carson tells a joke and everybody guffaws. A cough rattles in her chest, she bends over and hacks into her upturned palms and worries that the pain she feels near her left shoulder might spell some bad news. Outside the lemons have dropped off the tree and lie in a fallen halo on the ground like a shed petticoat, burning black in the sun. Crows congregated on the rooftop watch the lemons rot and split like open sores. The brown grass lies flattened in the yard, the lawn balding in many places. A blight spreads from the sidewalk to the driveway, moving south, threatening to uproot what’s left of the grass. The mailbox door hangs open in the afternoon drone, far-off airplanes and the lazy buzz of a lawnmower, the single sharp retort of a bell on a child’s bike as he flies down the empty street. The porch swing sags on the ground where the right half dropped off the chain, the wood smashed, splintered and grey. She shifts in her armchair, which squeals under her weight. Fleshy down of the throat, arteries thick with paste, flesh upon flesh upon flesh upon bone. Bones brittle, but cushioned beneath many pounds of aging fat. A wreath of sweat crowns her short, coarse mass of grey curls. Blue eyes blink, blinding blue eyes blink. She blinks hard to see Johnny Carson, who is interviewing Gregory Peck. Old Gregory Peck, old Gregory who was once young. She is startled to see him like that, beard of white, scheming black arched eyebrows that lend a certain cunning to his kind, aged face. She feels sick looking at old Gregory Peck, old Gregory who hobbled painfully onto the stage where old Johnny Carson was waiting. Everybody old, everybody white, everybody bent. Bent chair back, shot springs. Stiff fingers with an arthritis ache. She looks up at the kitchen, fixing on getting herself another Diet Coke. Her swollen heart thunders in her chest just thinking about the movement, the difficulty of locomotion, the pain of getting up. Every time she tries to stand she worries that her heart might seize up, so great is the effort. She breaks into a sweat thinking about the act of raising herself out of the chair, the terrible squeezing that she feels in her chest when she has to heave herself up, the acute ache that shoots through her engorged limbs when she labors to move from a sitting position. The sweat stands out on the back of her neck, the soft folds of her throat, dapples her forehead. The cigarette burns to ash in the ashtray. She lifts herself laboriously, slowly, electric shocks rippling through her from her agonized heart, working furiously, she pushes herself up, she stands, her knees crack under the strain, she grips her wooden cane with her oversized fingers. Slowly she shuffles into the kitchen, toward the cheerfully humming refrigerator. The faucet heads, electrical kitchen appliances, metal handles of cabinets, silverware in its drawer all sit silently and reflect, spotless, cold. The light comes yellow through the buttercup shade drawn over the kitchen window. The countertops white, clean, lifeless. She grips the refrigerator door, breathing hard. From the living room comes the laughter of the Johnny Carson crowd followed by thunderous applause, ringing out like a practiced choir hymnal ringing loud in the eves of the high cathedral.

sudden fiction: FIRE SEASON

The fire tore across the line of trees and we watched closely as they cringed and blackened in defeat. Carla said that we should turn the TV off, because we didn’t need to be depressed on the night before I left. Joe protested, said that we had to keep the news on in case the fire got too close and we had to evacuate. Mom asked if I had all my things ready. I said they were in a pile by the front door at home and she smiled proudly and squeezed my hand. Loredo watched us then got up and went over to the chips and salsa. He stood there with his hunched back turned to us and I could tell he was getting ready to say something. Mom asked Carla if she wanted more punch and Carla said sure. From inside you could see the sky over Joe and Carla’s house was a milky red, like blood spit into a sink. The smell of smoke seeped through the walls so that Joe kept coughing and saying we weren’t even safe inside, the air quality was so bad. The guy on the news said the fire was still fifty miles away from where we were but it was picking up speed. Our neighborhood was safe for now but we had to be prepared. Then Loredo turned around at the salsa bowl and said, You don’t have to do it, man. Everyone looked at him. Mom said, Loredo, be quiet. Your brother, he’s not afraid. Are you? Of course I’m not, I said. Loredo said, It’s not about being afraid, it’s about doing the right thing. And this shit ain’t right, man. You shouldn’t have to die for this. Carla put her hand over her heart, looked like someone had shot me in front of her. Mom said, He’s not going to die. How can you say such a thing. Carla’s eyes drifted to the Christ nailed to the wall above the front door. My eyes followed hers. The Christ had been up there so long he was missing one of his legs. Then Dad spoke up, from the armchair nearest the TV, the one with the duct tape holding it together. Without looking away from the screen he said, I don’t see you doing nothing for your country, Loredo. Why don’t you just shut up. Joe shifted in his seat uncomfortably and Loredo turned swiftly away. Mom was squeezing my hand like I might fly away if she didn’t hold me down. On TV the man said, Be careful out there folks, be careful.

it's been a while

Last time I wrote here George Bush was president! Every time I read the news and see the words "President Barack Obama" my heart skips a beat. Yes, perhaps I am one of the Hope kool-aid drinkers (I bought Vogue for the first time ever just because Michelle was on the cover) but I can't help but feel that things are already beginning to be, and will soon be, better than ever before in my adulthood. He's already done so many things that I can rejoice about, from lifting the international gag order to initiating the shut-down of Guantanamo to signing the Lily Ledbetter act. Now I just wish he would just legalize marijuana, set up federal funding for free birth control, issue an executive order to build bullet trains across the country, and launch an aggressive orangutan conservation effort, then I would be one happy lady. But I guess you can't have it all.

Here is a poem (that is a work in progress):

Sometimes I think
that Franklin D. Roosevelt had all the answers
but he’s not speaking to me this evening.
There is a breath at the windows
but it’s not Frank because he’s
looking in, waiting to tell.
I read history books hoping that he
has left me a secret message hidden between
the WPA and the Yalta Conference;
a message that says,
“Taylor Melligan, this was a different life
back here. You have it no worse and no better
and you don’t know.
You have atomic bombs and you don’t know.
You have children with swollen bellies and you don’t know.
You have a flashflood of cancer and you don’t know.
Your writers are charlatans.
No one speaks the truth, and when they do
they don’t know.
No one is reading the newspaper
except to confirm their suspicions.
No one is at the movies.
Capra is dead. Preminger is dead. Bergman is dead.
There is a landfill of Styrofoam floating in the sea,
an island, and you don’t know.”

But there is no message. No FDR speaking.
No hints, no clues,
no stories.
Only lines of type and
our writers are charlatans.