January 26, 2013
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She’s a Mean Old H4 Bus 1: Marlin

It should have been a normal rush hour ride from Brookland Station, past Georgia Avenue, through Columbia Heights, then down through that damnable bottleneck—a place some of the drivers still secretly called Spanish Town, though it wasn’t much of that anymore. But Marlin noticed, as he worked the lever for the door and let people in all through Mount Pleasant, that something was powerfully wrong.

At Mount Pleasant and Irving Streets, the mean teenager (Marlin had been there himself and swore the kid was a gangbanger) got on the bus. Then, at Mount Pleasant and Hobart, the Asian guy (Marlin was sure he had two girlfriends) got on. He was the one always leaving gum on the seat. At Mount Pleasant and Park Road, the angry black girl with the quiet face (probably something to do with her always staring at the young Asian guy) got on, and she was the one who blocked the back door. At Eighteenth Street and Park Road, the old lady who could barely speak to him through her other language, but kept on speaking to him anyways when he was trying to drive (she was far too skinny for an old lady, even)… all of these people were his worst costumers,
and during a rush hour ride through Mount Pleasant, when there should have been enough riders to fill up the bus twice over, forcing him to leave more on the street, only four other souls except for himself were riding on the bus that Monday morning.

And, his bus was being fussy, it clattered more than usual, there was a hitch when he put the brake or turned, and he had to force through it… H4 wasn’t happy today. She was a refurbished bus, but already she was breaking back down. Marlin had seen a few buses through this stage. She couldn’t get to the point where she died in the middle of a trip. He would have to call it in, and they were going to put her down. It was as if she knew he was going to betray her, and she was trying to wrest out of his grasp as he guided them through their final paces together and eventually drive her home to the bus depot deep down on Georgia Avenue for the last time.

Marlin didn’t want to say to himself, even now that he accelerated down through Nineteenth and Park, that rare and wonderful intersection with no light to stop him, that, yes it was his bus making these strange people get on. Not fate, not an odd turn of a bunch of folks riding later than usual, and he would see all the others later on his return trip. The H4 was a bus that had a long, beautiful route through two extremes of the city, and he was also aware that it had been able to run late since before he started driving it almost a lifetime ago.

They all got down to Adams Mill Road and Klingle Road. A young mother, Carmelita with little Sofia—they chatted sometimes when she sat up front, but today “Hasta nos vemos…” he whispered as Marlin was suddenly filled with a chill and passed them by.  Somehow he knew, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let them on this angry, angry bus. All those mean people and then those two innocent? No, no, he wasn’t a superstitious man. Just being careful…

They all flew down Klingle Road, a mural on the right raced by in a colorful flip cartoon of characters celebrating the world with shared corn and hugging harmony, to scenes of tanks aiming on Tieneman Square protestors, a whale calf being shot at by a harpoon larger than its own mother, the whole universe destructing itself, and then a lone brown leg pointed toe at a soccerball, black and that ended. Marlin let his breath out, over the bridge, and when he was ready to take another, they found themselves in the worst traffic back up he had ever seen between Mount Pleasant and Cleveland Park. He fretted, pinched the bridge of his sweaty nose, then realized there was just construction going on, nothing sinister, and eased his knuckles over the steering wheel. But, his passengers were getting frustrated.

The bus rumbled its engine so loud, they started to quiet after it, curious. Marlin knew the lights outside were flashing in tandem when they shouldn’t have even been on, but he crossed his arms and ignored it. Another H4 bus, going back the other way to Brookland Station, was just then pulling out of the traffic, on that side of the road. He waved before moving on. Marlin returned the gesture.

“Oh, no, you’ve got that crazy bus.” No, this wasn’t a kindly hello. The man was getting serious. “Marlin? Is that you?”

“Yeah, hey Gray. How are you doing, man, it’s been a while.”

“No. You have to make them behave. That bus you have is crazy. I drove her yesterday. She’s going to break down or worse if you don’t get them to listen. They’ve got to follow the rules.”

Marlin laughed it off, waved hard for Gray to get going and cars were honking for him to go. But, this loneliness overwhelmed Marlin and his bad feeling that made him want to turn the bus in at the end of the day… He didn’t know why he tried it. What had to be Gray’s joke on him, but he unbuckled, got up and began walking down the aisle. The bus responded with an impatient lunge in engine noise as he took each step toward them.

“Here, read a schedule—Miss, you’ll need a bus schedule, the rules are there on the back. You’re the one I always have to tell to get out of that back door, aren’t you? So you, especially you, better read it.” The young black woman screwed up her face at him.

“Please, everyone… just try to follow the rules,” Then, Marlin’s authoritarian anger built. The anger that made people swipe their cards again and get up out of the priority seating for senior citizens and disabled persons. The anger that made people do what he wanted even though his hands and his feet weren’t ever free to enforce a thing. It erupted, “What are ya’ll gonna do on this bus, now, if the doors get locked and we’re stuck here? Or if this engine shuts down. You see how she already is? So, stop yellin’, stop playing that music out loud. And you—you move down the bus when there’s a standing gap and more people need to get on. Really, it’s as inconsiderate as shit, and I’m tired of repeating myself to you—and sir? Young man!”

A teenager twisted safety orange earbuds in tighter, the pum-pa-pum-pa-pum of an aggressive reggaeton beat raised and thumped loud enough for the old lady sitting nearby to refasten her jacket and edge away. His hoodied head ducked lower, the row of seats ahead of him obscured exactly what he was doing, but Marlin shouted now that the boy had better stop tagging that “Nazi or gang shit on his bus.” The boy’s felt marker slipped, clacked between his sneakers, then rolled downhill, down the blue aisle to clack-clack against faded plastic bench at the back of the bus.

“Follow the goddam rules, before some goddambody gets hurt… okay? Goddamit, Gray you’re making an ass of me again, aren’t you? Gonna get me in trouble…”

Marlin went and sat back down. He could see in the mirror set above his head and the ‘On the bus, it is unlawful to…” sign, that almost every single one of his worst passengers had a smart phone out now, taking pictures of him sitting there angry and idle, thumbs tapping rapidly… even the old woman had flipped open her version and was speaking rapidly in some language to somebody out there about what just happened on the H4 bus of all places.

Someone commented audibly to the person sitting across the aisle from them, that this was worse than the one METRO employee who was texting and crashed a train. This guy yelling profanities was sure to get fired…

Marlin sighed, then tightened his seatbelt. DC people may not shout back in public, but they would ignore the voice of the city worker or the service man, more often when it was a brown face (a native’s face, he knew—maybe they didn’t know). And then he was the one speaking a different language they could ignore. They behaved as if they were entitled to their own customs and they were on vacation here in DC and nothing they did anywhere in the city really mattered. Those vikings—even if they weren’t leaving again for months, or years, or never, the DC riders would resume clacking their phones, breaking the rules, setting their fires, eager to get on their way downtown to do more pillaging.

At the height of his anxiety, flexing fingers and wondering another time if he could radio in before those emails, texts, tweets, pictures gone up on Facebook got to his supervisor, to the world… Marlin’s bus shut off its own engine. He swore that it did. He tried to restart it several noisy times, and now people were beginning to speak up for themselves, asking if they could please be let out to walk the rest of the way uphill to Cleveland Park station. “No, I cannot just let you out into traffic to get hit by five damned cars…”

Then, with his hand mid-air before a final reach, the dashboard flared to life, everything blinking, but then the bell chords started pulling themselves, the automated bus voice began speaking tongues in horrible soothing rapport.

Stop requested. Connecticut Avenue and Klingle Road. Please, step away from the rear doorwell. Para todo los pasajeros, visita a metro-open-doors-punto-com y recibe todas las noticias de… Stop requested… Do not run after the bus; the bus cannot stop for late passengers. Stop requested…

Marlin unlatched his seatbelt fast, leaned out into the aisle. He was shouting something, but he could not hear himself. For help? For them to finally help him?

His passengers were finally getting that ride of their lives. People were falling down. They were yelling at one another. White, billowing exhaust rushed into the cabin when someone in the back kicked open the emergency window.

Please, do not stand in the rear doorwell.

That one quiet, angry girl, she fainted.

When she awakened, she and Marlin were alone, and that angry H4 bus had completely transformed the pillaged Washington world outside into something so other…

Chapters
1, Busdriver Marlin :: 2, The Quiet, Angry-Faced Girl :: 3, Love, After the Deer Apocalypse :: 4, Moises “Emperor Crush” Romero :: 5, Screaming in Spanish :: 6, His Hoodie :: 7, Amazonia :: 8, Behind the Waterfall :: 9, The Cricket Queen :: 10, Don Juan’s

January 25, 2013
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Snowball Fight in Mount Pleasant

The snow today reminded me of this short story about how a really lopsided snowball fight brought two taciturn DC neighbors together. Totally a shameless re-post!
Blizzard of 2009                                
by Puja B. Canta
Dear Mr. Tannenbaum,
Please consider the following before you file criminal charges, or whatever:
A few years ago, I also threw a snowball at Dr. Somiley.  Maybe you don’t remember his family?  They were at the open house.  Dr. Somiley was a dentist.  Also, no one liked him either.  Not that I don’t… dammit, I can’t cross that out.  I hate handwriting things, which means I have no intention of re-writing this either.  But considering how late it is after being up all night, and that I want to get it through your mail slot before you leave the house, I hope you will understand.  Well, in any case, like a lot of the more terrifying dentists, Somiley had one of those names that matched his profession.  It should have been my first warning, I guess.
I don’t know why I aimed the snowball at the old man’s head. 
I have a wife and kids.  I’m always telling them not to do it, because we can’t afford it if someone gets it in their eye and we have to go the hospital.  It’s also the reason why we have a rule not to put rocks inside of snowballs, because that possibly doubles the bill compared to a regular snowball to the face.  But it was right after that blizzard of 09.  I hadn’t done any Christmas shopping and we were stuck under two feet of snow.  The last weekend before the holiday and I had to spend it shoveling out, that is, if anything was even open.  The boys were inside, going crazy, but I was the one who had to get waist deep in it and make sure the walk was shoveled, salted, safe and all that.  My wife would have helped but she was sick with the flu.  Then, that old Somiley parks, gets out of his Cadillac, hobbling up the stairs to his rowhouse somehow looking decently good.  To this day, I have no idea where he had been the previous night.  Top hat, cane and all.  I swear to goodness, he looked like a black Mr. Scrooge to me, cursing at the snow, scattering it with his cane, hating Christmas out loud when–however it was going–I’d worked my ass off this year and it was my one break before the big break.  All two extra days of it.  Did I also mention that I was once stuck on crutches for about half the year as a kid after I tore my ACL playing football?  Defensive tackle for the Carroll Lions.  It was the Tiny Tim inside of me, the kid who got cut and couldn’t come back, then got fat in college.  It was the man with two kids, a wife who is so happy sometimes, I’m afraid to ever be negative… it was the English major in me who hard-packed that snowball, leaned back and aimed for Somiley, in the head.
Only, in this case I slowed a little before I let it fly.  In fact, I honestly threw under-handed so the poor guy could see it coming.  Okay, so my voice broke and I might have gone, “Oh, look out there, Old Somiley.”
It must have been hard to see it coming out of the winter sky, snowball against the drifting cloud remnants of yesterday’s snow storm.  I braced myself when he caught it.  Caught it in leather gloves.  Just like with you yesterday, right then, I thought Old Somiley was gonna kill me.  That cane was still hanging off of his arm.  He could chuck it real good if he wanted to.  He’d already caught a snowball I wasn’t even ready for.
I said something like, “Meant to throw it at you, actually.  But then I thought it would be sort of mean.  So, you know, I went underhand.”
But then, Mr. Tannenbaum, old Somiley did the one thing you failed to do for some reason yesterday.  That old man set down his hat and his cane, and he threw the snowball back.  Before I knew it, I was making a new one, and then he was stuck down on the sidewalk, pitching them up at me.  He couldn’t get into his yard or up on his porch.  I was stuck just beyond mine, up in the yard.  Somiley had the advantage, because I never fixed my fence.  Somiley ducked like he was in a war, not even laughing too hard when I got him.  He was all under-handed, sent them soaring high up in the air.  Those snow-bombs could have been heat-seeking, I swear.  I was constantly looking up while I ran to make more.  I’d see these things hovering, really stopped and thinking at the arc of their trajectories, before they plummeted right down on my head.  Every time.  Every single time, these snowballs came right out of my line of sight.  I finally plunged into the snow, almost swam through it knit hat and all, to get close to the end of my yard, you know how it’s stacked up off the street, like a fort wall?  Note, that is the reason why I had to leap over the fence, sort of.  Not because I was attacking you in a rage, like you started yelling.  I also thank you for not calling the police like you promised you would.  Remember that too, okay?
The other rowhouses across the street are sloped like the wrong side of a trench.  Behind enemy lines, that upper crust sunny side of the street, Northwest DC.  By the way, I thought you weren’t like the rest of them.
At the edge of my yard (because our fence is brand new, now.  It didn’t lean into your side, like you accused), I finally got Somiley good.  He was wheezing with laughter, crouched on the sidewalk directly beneath my perch, when I looked.  Then, I called him ‘Smiley’, he actually responded to it, and I let him have a mud-flavored ice ball, right where he could taste it.
We laughed so hard together, we forgot how cold we were.  He was pitiful, he really was.  I felt bad for him, I said, but he didn’t feel bad for me at all.  He said that to my face. 
“Can I help you get up to your porch?”
“Yes, Tim, you can, in fact shovel my walk for me.  I earned more points than you did, that is how people tend to win games, isn’t it?”
I got as far as his front steps in snow shoes when he gave me his house keys and explained where a second shovel was, by his front door.  Then, Dr. Somiley did the last three stairs in his Sunday coat and I did his porch and the first two.  Five stairs up to the porch just like my house.  Just like your house.  In case you forgot, though some might have the advantage of melting snow faster than others or growing greener lawns on the other side of the street, they’re all the same, Mr. Tannenbaum.
He and I would say hello from time to time, after that.  I eventually caught my wife’s flu–with everything else going on, I forgot to get my shot–and Somiley came by with tea, which I don’t like to drink, and homemade pork chop soup, that I didn’t have any freaking clue existed!  What I’m trying to say is, after the Phelps-Somiley Snow War of 2009, that creepy old dentist guy and I became better neighbors.  Whenever it snowed, every year, we’d come onto our porches, shovel at least as far as the yard and then re-start the battle.  Well, we’d try as early as the first snow, but there isn’t always enough of it in DC.  So then we’d wait until there’s at least an inch.  That’s a normal, healthy snowfall here. 
Somiley beat me every year, except for, I think it was two years ago, when the kids got involved.  Charlotte screamed–I was already yelling too and she told us to stop before we broke any of our windows.  Snowballs are pretty great at getting through wire fences if they’re hard packed and small enough, and even past iron bars over your front windows.  Not that I was hoping to aim for your front windows.  So, the Phelps-Somiley Snow War of 2010 ended in a draw.
The following year, he and I got up really early and shoveled our back porches together.  There’s perfect quiet in the back yards, here.  The alley was almost completely quiet.  And I never really liked my back yard.  Very primordial.  Mountain lions kill deer in the silence of the woods all the time–okay, so, not around here, but I hear it does happen.  But to go out and do that with a friend, and for there to be no more flare than the thrill of adrenaline, no snarky kids with snot-noses, just aiming into the silence, daring to see it land before ducking again for cover.  Cars pass through the alley and slow, peer up into our yards to tell if it really is an old black—err, African American man and his pudgy, winter-pasty, worse-for-wear neighbor.  No neighbor able to deny that both of us have the bravery of real athletes in that pristine moment, to have risen to the occasion.  Amazing.
Afterward, Somiley asked me about my two boys.  Daniel is a freshman in college now with the Facebook page I’m not allowed in and all at, but back then he was just a shrimp starting out with texting callouses on both thumbs.  I told him how Dannie drove me crazy, and Dr. Somiley gave a half-hearted snort, I think it was laughter.  He said his son Bo never grew out of it, but that the father’s attitude has more to do with how the son comes out and not to get upset if I can’t make Dannie work harder right now, or eat better, or back-sass less.
“Back-sass?  Bo?  Pork chop soup?  Did you say you were Southern, or did I always just assume as much from your accent?”

Somiley said, “No, Mr. Phelps.  You never did ask.  You appropriately minded your own business until now.  I was born in Georgia, came up here to live with my father and then got sent back to finish out with his mother and my grandmother, down South.  Satisfied?”
So, I assumed it wasn’t a happy shuttling back and forth.  Somiley became aware of his tone and assured that Washington, DC was now his home and he’d raised his kids here and all, in our very neighborhood, in fact.  I didn’t realize this because their son was about my age and living in another part of the District with his own family.  They never visited.
Last year, I did not see Somiley as much.  We weren’t those kinds of neighbors to go over to one another’s houses.  I had my family and my work, and he had an axe to grind that I sensed I could never ask about.  I didn’t see any of his house except for the front door where the snow-shovel was kept during winter.  Once, I was locked out and asked to use his bathroom and he stayed inside the house, though I could hear PBS Create blaring from the living room.  He sort of shrank into his chair and pretended not to be home.  I was, of course, perplexed, though one can’t be perplexed about peeing for very long.  Afterward, I didn’t judge.  I made myself forget about it.  Then, late that year, Somiley started to have visitors.  First, my wife said Somiley’s son was there–wasn’t it funny that he was named Bo?–she said.  Charlotte’s always interrupting herself.  ‘Not really, Charlie’ I must have said because she shoved me at some point during that conversation.  Charlotte remarked at how Bo had two boys to match our own, and that she couldn’t tell if his wife was wearing a weave or not.  Her hair was styled so beautifully and she wondered if she could try it?  Was there a way to politely ask?  One of my wife’s co-workers took her to see Good Hair, with Chris Rock in it during the summer.  I assume it was a funny movie.  I also assume that Charlotte likes me making fun of her, for coming to me with such easy set-ups.  Oh, dammit, I can’t cross that out, either.  Anyways, my wife is charming, really charming if you would just try to get to know us, Mr. Tannenbaum.  She’s silly, but she doesn’t mean any harm.
On the other hand, and what I want you to know is, your walls are thin.  I heard you when you shouted that I was a terrible neighbor.  Have you lived in a rowhouse before?  When Somiley was there, we heard a few arguments come through the walls too.  First, with his daughter-in-law with the ‘good weave’ as my wife says–sadly, I don’t know this woman’s name.  She should have been the one who sold you the house, the real estate agent.  Next, Bo would come without the kids or wife and he and his father would get loud.  I heard only parts of their arguments.  At that time, it was something about Somiley needing a ride to get places.  His Cadillac hadn’t been moved from its parking space all last winter, come to think of it.  After I got laid off, I didn’t have much else to do.  I found a way to offer him a ride, politely, I thought, but that conversation ended badly.  We heard less and less from him and more and more from his son.  The Metro Access van and sometimes a shuttle from George Washington Hospital Center would drop him off.  I was born at GW, not that I remember it.  But I always think it when the name comes up.  A worker would try to help Somiley inside his house every time, but he refused.  I could tell by their looks, they hated Somiley like I did once.  If it weren’t for the economy, the one hospital guy I noticed would have pitched that snowball in his hand, during the winter of 2011.
The snow almost didn’t come at all that year.  In fact, I felt certain that it wouldn’t, and I also wanted an excuse to talk to Somiley, so one day, making my snow shovel more than obvious where I stood on his back porch, I knocked on his door.  He came bundled up and we sat on his porch.  Somiley did not look good at all.  Pale for him, even gaunt-looking.  He wasn’t going to the hospital anymore.  I think I knew.  Charlotte says that I can’t have known, but right then, I knew.  It was going to be his last Christmas.
“You know, my son works down at the National Zoo.  That’s why he’s here sometimes.”
I doubted that, until Somiley started to smile with his abominably straight teeth.  I watched him talk about the Invertebrate House, Bo called it ‘Inverts’ and that his son cleaned a tank full of hissing cockroaches when he started out.  Now, he ordered a team of volunteers around who giggled through cleaning up after animals, chopping earthworms… you name it, they did it with him and they loved it, for some reason.  Somiley was proud, saying that about his son Bo.  There was an octopus at Inverts–I’d seen the octopus, but I hadn’t realized it wasn’t the exact same octopus I knew as a child.  Somiley knew all the good stuff, the real stuff.  The reasons behind everything. 
“I think I can… I think I can ask him.  You could take your boys with him to see what goes on behind the lobster tank, or how they feed the spiders.  Would they like that, Tim?”
“Oh, that’s kind of you, but my boys are getting too old for the Zoo.  They’d just complain at me and make fools of themselves.  Don’t trouble yourself.  If I can’t shovel your walk, since the forecast was wrong about snow, yet again… is there anything else I can do for you, Dr. Somiley?”
“Nobody’s too old for nature, Bo.  Don’t go thinking that just cause you do something unconventional, that it’s useless.”
“But I’m Tim.  Dr. Somiley, are you alright?  I think you should get back inside.”
“You chose to work from the heart.  No shame in that.  Sometimes it’s not as tangible as looking inside a person’s mouth and seeing that they need a filling.  Sometimes, people need to smile.  The one thing daddy, your grandaddy taught me.  Nature can heal a body like nothing else.  It’s why I got sent back to Georgia.”
I’m a bit of a sleuth, you might have already sensed it.  “Was that really the reason?”
Somiley stood in the doorway, looking exhausted.  He’d slipped into some kind of… I dunno, another way of speaking, as if he were at home, really down home.  “No.  But it’s what your granddad told me.  He had some stuff goin’ on… but now that I’m older, I think it was nice of him, to go out of his way and make it bigger and better than it really was.  Just because he did it in a strange way don’t mean it wasn’t gettin’ at the truth.  Now, you keep at it, Tim.  Keep those boys smilin’.  You reach out however you can.  Whatsoever you do, do good work.”  He lifted his hands up and reminded me of a preacher.  That’s not racist, is it?  I hope not.  He looked like a preacher.  He felt to me like a preacher.  That was my last conversation with Somiley.
He also spoke a lot differently around his son than he did me.  Sometime after New Years’ an ambulance came to the house.  Mr. Somiley had passed away.
So that you understand, the house you’re living in right now isn’t even yours.  It almost went to Bo and his sons who are the same age as my sons.  My wife was dead-set on asking Bo’s wife about the weave, over tea someday.  We were ready to help the family move on.  I found a plastic snow-ball gun thing at the Target on Columbia Road.  I told Dannie and James that they would be in charge of artillery and would have to keep the snowballs coming.  Dannie was a senior in high school.  He actually wanted to be in the Phelps-Somiley Snow War of 2012.  It was to be the snow-ball fight to end all snowball fights.  But only if Dannie could use the Snowshooter Mega-Apocalypse 9000. 
Mr. Tannenbaum, the land you live on is sacred ground.  It is a battlefield where men who spend their entire summers wrestling with, um, lobsters and invertebrates and stuff come home then make ready to dig into the trenches.  It is a place where oldsters and youngsters make a pact to be bad once a year, while the wives sit down to talk about fake hair, of all things.  If you had any balls about you yesterday, you would have taken that snow-ball to the face.  You would have liked it and you would have returned fire!
I suppose this started out as an apology letter, evidence of how I’m a good neighbor, but now it’s not.  This is documentation, with a copy for myself to-file, that when the Somileys could not move in and raise a third generation because it was too painful, I didn’t give up.  We invited you over and you never came.  I asked you politely about where we should build our new fence and you only grunted at me.  I always try and scooch up so that you can have a parking space if no one else takes it.  I ask if you’ve been to the Zoo yet.  I understand that people want their privacy, especially these days.  Especially in this city.  And just because you’re of an age, I know you don’t want others assuming that you need help, so after this, I won’t push anymore.
But now you know that’s why I did it.  I was trying to be a good neighbor.  I am sorry that I aimed for the head.  Being out of work, I play too many console games not to make it a kills hot on the first try, it wasn’t anything personal.  But I no longer want to live in a city where people don’t say hello on the streets or know how their neighbors are really doing.  Nor do I want to live in a world where a grown man can’t throw a friendly snowball across the fence. 
Regards and have a Happy Holiday,
Tim Phelps
Northwest, DC.
Tim Phelps, his family, and all his neighbors are fictional characters based on many of my real life experiences growing up, volunteering, playing, and working as a black—err, an African American–uh, no let’s stick with black woman in Northwest Washington, DC.
June 7, 2012
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Most embarrassing writer moments evar

I’ve got the writer’s blues again…

Getting time and energy together to update is a bit of a process still, so here’s some more writer’s chickie soup for ya (you’re not alone, I’m even willing to share evidence of this!):

Hey, remember the time that writing fanfiction became so unsatisfying, I started leaving comments for my story in-character(s)–and these were hilarious, but they still didn’t change the fact nobody else was reading or commenting? Talking to myself has never ever so much fun… in public. Where everyone can see/read. And, screw up their faces. And, shake their heads quietly.

Maybe this will cheer everything up? Failed to convince
myself not to post this strange, happy monstrosity

Most embarrassing moment as a writer #29

All those really sweet and tender love poems I posted that didn’t mean anything to anyone except for me, apparently. But, at least they were hella good anyways–I don’t care if You never read them, I can do better than You! Wait, can I really? …Crap.

Most embarrassing moment as a writer #302

Oh yeah, that’d have to be the random Spore video I posted and then tried to pass off as some inspired reflection about the creative process. Except… no, I was just really writer’s blocked, up the ying yang.

April 25, 2012
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Delay today

Hello Everyone,

I’m a bit behind schedule and will try to get a new chapter of Damsel up tonight. But–I’ve still got something very cool for you to read.

Animals

I’ve realized that Randitty’s second anniversary is coming up soon–I recall that I launched around Cinco de Mayo in 2010 and with a bilingual story about people cursed with losing their humanity if they didn’t use it…

I’m going to hook you back up with my favorite chapter of Animals, in which a red-headed ichthyomaniac who, on his first great date in years after a rough time with gambling and the mob in Florida, definitely takes this ‘love of fish’ and his new lady way, waaay too far. Out into the oily gulf, in fact. You’ll also get to see what happens when Harmon finally catches up with his hot-blooded (in that she goes on as if she’s constantly in heat), cheating wife in Las Vegas.

Read more about “Captain” Zues Finnegan, the stranded New Englander >>

Have a read, and enjoy. I’ll try to get Away to Arusalem, Part II up tonight.

-J

April 10, 2012
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Heya everyone,

Remember how I said that I wrote Damsel 4 years ago, and that it wasn’t finished? Well… okay, so first, before you panic, there’s still plenty of story left. There’s maybe 200+ pages to come, and then I had also started a Damsel Part Two: Once upon a time, when I was a virgin and then there are slivers of Damsel Part Three: Once upon a time, when I was a bitch.  You’re reading Damsel Part One: Once upon a time, when I was Catholic, by the way…

So, I have lots of story, but there are holes in it, in places wherever I got stuck or bored and wanted to write two chapters ahead or three years ahead, for the hell of it.

That said, I’m on the brink of one of these ‘holes in the story’ which means I need to write something new for this week. But, I’m also in the middle of another writing/editing project that takes priority. So, for this week, I will give you a chapter of something… if not Damsel, then perhaps a chapter of one of my other unpublished novel manuscripts or short stories.

Either way on Wednesday, look forward to a glimpse at one of the following:

The Celestial War – A perverted young prince, haunted by the angry spirit of one of his dead pets, must now fight his way, alone, through the Jungle of Life. Zyrcon will either find his true self, or go extinct like the last victim of his unfunny, civilization-ending race after a woman.

Godkillers – Wild Zephra Fahn, solemn and white-eyed Non Dom Nirra, Raman who is the Hi Bodur, and the sweet goatherd Joshua are four holy warriors who must face a false goddess, a charming athiest king, and deal with their own religious frustrations (and really hilarious, polar personalities) with each other’s cult beliefs and ethnic boundaries. Villains and heroes test strength and conviction against one another to finally control real power in their world–the beating hearts of the masses–in a very dark age.

Spring white and red roses growing on a fire escape, Romeo and Juliet-style.
April 6, 2012
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Something Special for Easter

I just re-read some of Rhune, the Easter chapter, and fell into writing a stream of consciousness:

There’s a blend of lovely things–longing, restlessness, hope–that were manifesting in my real life at that time I wrote Chapter Two of Rhune: ‘A really good woman.‘ I think that I captured what it can really feel like to go through your hum-drum routine in DC… feel trapped and want to get right the Hell out… and then, at home, at some point (if you’re an artist and you’re lucky), you can rescind back into your pearlized shell and begin painting the walls with new colors. Here, is that romance I wanted so badly, but never got–alive, possible… let’s have lots of heartbreaking sex in all kinds of beautiful ways, all over the page, you.  Let’s not wait at all… and now, my work-life is not so boring. Then, let’s make up silly people who float around and don’t understand. They wouldn’t anyway… but let them be innocent. Let them stuff their mouths with sloppy, pink apples that leave paint smears on their cheeks and stick in their teeth like something you sweep stubby childlike fingers through, inside Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.

Let’s undo the tie, or unstrap the work shoes, lay-out all over the floor and just dream about the most meaningful parts of life, the best, the best–running through the field, rolling down the hill, standing by the silver lake and having her wind blow your tears away and promise you better, and then while walking away, you sing your story-songs, and they do all make sense, they do feel better…

The hills have your eyes,
and they know of your wrong,
So please, little sister,
come home…

And then, the other one, her wind always carries best when your voice rises that one weirdest, feminist song only you know, about the Willshe, and then begging the delicate flame to ‘teach me and change my name, come to me in this place…’


Later, you do try going to church again and what do they do? They light a flame for you…

Fuck every day. Fuck routine. Again, lay out on the floor, dream it, dare to speak out about it. Write that down. That is what you write down.

The wolves talk. The sky laughs out loud at how stupid you both are. The world turns–it gives up one long, blubbering fart, whatever. People dance while they wait on a bus and it isn’t weird. Isn’t it beautiful? The time I took a long walk with horses in Rock Creek Park and pretended the people weren’t there. The time I got lost in Rome and only survived by my rosary and the kindness of strangers… The time I gave up on rosaries forever and found God in a park in Andalucia, and saw Spaniards practicing bull fights with no bull, and the time that I sat down lonely in the park and a strange man asked me whether I was hungry, and I knew that, depressed or no, I had to pull myself together, whether I was black and alone in this country or not, just be on vacation and try to smile…

The time I went down the waterslide as a girl and almost drowned. The time I went up in the Washington Monument and really, finally understood that it had no windows. The time I walked into Amazonia, and a sting ray swam up, splashing, happy, and genuinely greeted me, with joy that dogs don’t have, with joy that people don’t have, whom any of us might see every day…

The time that someone pointed out the sloth to me. The time I saw a young girl pet an amazonian river catfish, and its happy whiskers licked her tennis shoe. The time the turtles very-slowly-tried-to-kill-us-by-chewing-our-tennis-shoes. We had finally figured that out. The time I played “Lion says” with the children, and their joy made me the happiest I’d been in a very long time. The time I couldn’t see that everything was okay, that it was alright to be in love at the wrong time and in the wrong way and with a complete stranger, and so I went home and panicked. For days.

And then, all those Lonely Island music videos got stuck in my head, one after the other, and I couldn’t stop laughing at the thought of T-Pain singing at mighty Poseidon to ‘look at meeee.’ Laughing. For days.

The time I wanted to die because my laptop broke and I couldn’t write and things were hard enough, but then I scraped savings together, but my father had also been trying to grant my birthday wish, and so I ended up with two computers…

The time I couldn’t sleep because I missed you so much.

That time I accidentally asked a mannequin for directions. The time I got stuck in a revolving glass door, on a lunch date. The time the three of us stood in line, for over an hour, for internationally acclaimed beef noodle soup that we didn’t even get to eat. But, we did get to talk A LOT about roller derby. And, I got to elegantly sip “fizzy water.”

The time I begged the creek to have mercy on my beating heart. The time I threw rocks into the water and screamed out how horrible it all was–this was three years ago, and then three years after that, the water fell on me and I cried with relief that I finally felt grounded. Employed.

The time I closed the first Terry Goodkind novel and knew I was no longer artistically alone. The time someone I barely knew from work touched my heart, by encouraging me to enter a writing contest, handing me the very newspaper they’d saved. The time Sherman Alexie made me want to tear the curtains down from my windows. The time I spoke to the dream catcher, knowing better. The time I was afraid to just say “hello” to the Codetalkers when they looked so lonely. The time I wandered around the Air and Space Museum making lots of notes, getting noticed by security guards–while I pointed through the air, observed open spaces between exhibits, turned around myself two and three times, trying to imagine a fictional fight scene between characters coming home from the National Powwow and racist tourist teenagers. Later, Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer made me rethink ever writing it…

The time I spied at a pair of robins mating outside my window because it was so weird. The time the robin stood right on the windowledge and stared in at me taking a nap because he needed revenge.

The three-some, the mourningdove damsel and her two beaus who have been in a strange relationship–really–these last five or more years… flying from tree to tree, fighting over her in the alley. They don’t give up.

The time I sat down and posed paperclips in the dirt, took pictures, with nothing else better to do. But oh! It felt like the best thing of all to do!

The time I dreamed that my dead cat purred at me and really didn’t want me to feel depressed anymore. Remember the purr… she meant that.

That time I found my old toys and played horses, a little while ago… one last time…

The time I found a webcomic about kids living in the Egyptian afterlife and it was so good and so brilliantly clever, researched, strange, ebullient–I wished I could pay this person to keep making their art. I would have done anything… I barely managed to write one decent fangirl letter in the end. Thank God for them.

The time my friend called me and told me she wanted me to take after her, in her spot, and that–yes, she believed that I could do it. That time the other women leaned in, listened at the table and really believed in me too. Gave me extra time to get the writing done because they believed in me this much.

That time they asked us to count our thoughts and I sat there having wild sexual fantasies instead. And didn’t really feel sorry. They were so, so good.

And the time… the time I tried to remember everything special, weird, and meaningful that had ever happened over my 28 years of life… and just almost got there. Thankfully, I could never get it all. That would be horrible, if I could finally catch it.

This is why I write. So that we can always remember how good it feels to be alive. I’m not sure why others do it, but this is why I do. I hope you felt really good, reading this. And that does fit the resurrection theme, I believe.

I hope you do come home sometime, take off your work clothes, lay-out on the floor, and try to remember absolutely everything that has made your life so fucking awesome. Laugh by yourself at it. Never give up on yourself when you do know all of these tiny, and secret, powerful thingies.

I love you, Puja.

December 25, 2011
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Countdown to more random fiction fun

I don’t care, I’ll still be writing during the apocalypse…

In 2012, my hard-core efforts will include (no worries, it’s just a better word for “not quite jaded yet!”):

 Oh my God, I almost forgot Paperclip Safari—don’t forget to spay and neuter your clips next year, everyone!