stories & starfish

i’ve been a busy, busy bitch. at the moment i have stories submitted to the following: Black Clock, Juked, Avery, Camera Obscura, Dark Sky and PANK. probably all way out of my league but i’ve been advised to stop dicking around and aim higher…

applied for a job back at the saddle shop. it’s a coin toss as to whether they hire me (again) - i’m not reliable and may quit at any moment, but while i’m there i’ll sell the shit out of thousand dollar saddles and accessories. in other words, if beth is in charge of hiring i don’t have a shot, if jerry is in charge of hiring i’m back tomorrow.

mom got back from florida last night, she brought back starfish that had washed up on the beach after the storm – i would never tell her they could’ve lived, that they had a chance, if she’d just have left them or tossed them back. she would be as horrified as i am by them. they’re drying under bricks on the picnic table in her backyard. one of them is PURPLE. it’s insanely beautiful. my mother murdered a purple starfish. 

adam will be 3 a week from today. i don’t even know what to say about it. he’s tall and strong and beautiful, he’s quirky and a little evil and all perfect. when i see him take off in his star wars underoos through the house, howling with near-naked freedom, it’s hard to remember he began as a post-coital conversation within earshot of the ocean. i can’t take credit for that kid. no one can take credit for their kids – they’re self-made. i can feed him and read him One Fish Two Fish and explain every night during “Gypsy” what the word ‘gauzy’ means, but mainly i can just watch in awe.

the sun has reappeared. i’ve gained 7 pounds. eric is in love with me every day. my son is happy and healthy. things are pretty damned good.

brief whoring for some fellow workshoppers, should anyone wade through the personal cheese to the end of this blog:

Pela Via, working on 31 throwaways for her birthday: www.pelavia.com

Richard Thomas, supporting the shit out of me and taking the time to give some advice, has a story in Shivers VI along with Stephen King - his blog is linked to the right, “What Does Not Kill Me.”

Chris Deal introduced me to the works of Charles Dodd White, and also he loves zombies and has stories all over the fucking place:  www.Chris-Deal.com

Charles Dodd White is just plain amazing. i’ve read every story i can find. i know his voice, i love his voice. he is here:  www.charlesdoddwhite.com

i’ll get around to more as i go along, and as i find them - 4 is a good number for one post i think.

OH AND ME!!! www.thundadome.com  on tuesday – i’ll be there with ‘Fever.’ but i’ll be spamming that on tuesday… click over now, all… 2? 3? people maybe that look at this? i could just say: hey eric, angela and heather: if you click to the site now, there are some great stories up already by some fellow workshoppers as well as others.

read, people. turns out there’s tons of stuff to read…

Photos from an Old Cell…

2006  in no particular order….

twas a good year

chapter 2 (2) & In the Night Garden

it is not finished – i open and look at the fairly well-aligned scraps, i knit my eyebrows in a very studious way, put my fingers over the keyboard – remove them again, take a sip of coffee, scroll up and down, sigh deeply and with much thought, fold my lip between my fingers, adjust the font size, another sip of coffee, wonder what will happen in chapter 7, rub the furrow between my brows, glance across the road at the llama standing at the mailbox white on white in the snow staring at me and i think  ’surely that llama can’t actually see me from here, if nothing else the glare on the window would keep him from looking in’  another sip of coffee – minimize the window, go to the front door to take a better look at the llama who by this time is taking a shit because that’s what all animals i make eye contact with these days DO – they take a shit - then i frown and go back to my seat, pick up the laptop, open the window again, cut three to four lines that definately do not fit, say “adam, do you want more eggs?”  ”no, i just want to crash cars.”  save the document, close it – fast forward 8 hours, repeat…..

headcold gravity. my legs are simply too heavy to do anything domestically productive besides cook, and do a little laundry – i guess what i mean to say is i will continue to step over matchbox cars as i walk past the precarious pile of dirty dishes until possibly thursday. the sky is no color. my brain and eyes feel veeeeery far back inside my skull, even further distanced by my glasses. adam is bored with me.  he’s headcold heavy, too, and wants toys brought to him. i get it. i’m not doing it, but i get it. if someone would bring me coffee i would rather have it that way. i will fetch him tissues and juice and popsicles and food, but i will not bring him new matchbox cars or a different comb to work on my little ponies’ rat’s nest hair.  eric is as we are, only putting in 12 hour days at the lab regardless. i would have him here. snotty and in his pajamas with us.

i like makka pakka the best. i get that, collecting rocks and washing random things. i have a lot of rocks, and they are very clean.

february 1st i go LIVE with my second ever online published (anywhere published) story on http://thundadome.com/ , in the Bleeding Hearts issue.  i’ll list that in my hopeful Things of Mine page when it comes to be. it’s a stripper story, an idea given me by angela and cropped in half for the purposes of  fitting the wordcount and somehow becoming a better story…. i have a vampire story that might work for the next issue but don’t want to push my luck, i have sleep to get and feedback to give and am waiting to hear back from a couple other places about different stories and there’s always CHAPTER 2 to be fixing, and i do not want to overwhelm one place with a kind editor with story-pressure… also i think the vampire story mentions the 12 step program, and as i just sent them a story about someone in AA that seems a bit excessive for one topic, though they were written years apart….

i will close with a photo selected at random from a hotmail folder i just found containing a bunch of old cell phone pictures – i  clicked on a photo code and this was there. it was taken on 12/15/07, out the back window of our old apartment – there’s a vase of dried flowers (from our one year wedding anniversary), and a ton of snow on our back deck. i was 7 months pregnant….

  and this photo, which would have been used today if i were continuing with that Author of the Day business: F. Scott Fitzgerald was next, here’s scott & zelda:

e.e. cummings: Author of the Day

“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance”

***

“may my mind stroll about hungry

and fearless and thirsty and supple

and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong

for whenever men are right they are not young”

***

“I imagine that yes is the only living thing”

 

i know nothing about ee. cummings except his words and face – i am incredibly fond of both.  not going to type his name into google and ruin the impression i have, name and verses floating space.

 

(this is a fitting author to leave off this Author of the Day business, as i have grown weary of it already. also this post makes number 5, so there you go.)

(ALSO – 100th post!)

David Foster Wallace: Author of the Day

“The older Mario gets, the more confused he gets about the fact that everyone… finds stuff that’s really real uncomfortable and they get embarrassed. It’s like there’s some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn’t happy.”

“Wind, etc.” “pilot light blue”

everything is influential.

he kind of had a crush on Alanis Morisette before he was “famous,” i thought that was cute.

Chuck Palahniuk: Author of the Day

“Without access to true chaos, we’ll never have true peace. Unless everything can get worse, it won’t get any better.”

what can i say? it’s chuck.  

his dad almost chopped his pinky off with an axe – on purpose.

he made me believe the novel has a present and a future.

 and yes, the author of Fight Club is gay.

Choke is my favorite. read it. read Fight Club and Invisible Monsters, too. read Guts.

Bret Harte: Author of the Day

 

“A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing.”

the most optimistic thing i could find from the likes of a man who is most famous for “The Outcasts of Poker Flat.”  he wrote a play with Mark Twain, didn’t know that!  it was called “Ah, Sin” and was very unsuccessful.

“How santa Claus Came to Simpson’s Bar” will always make me cry. read things by this man – he is underrated and sometimes criticized as cliche, but he wrote those characters BEFORE they were cliches. his short stories are phenomenal and heart-wrenching.

Ambrose Bierce: Author of the Day

(stealing this “something a day” format directly from delaney – and figuring i might as well be educational about it. i’ll do an Author of the Day, including a photo, quote, and trivia tidbit. i be learnin’)

“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.”

from Meigs County, Ohio!!!  he drew topographical maps during the Civil War as an enlisted man, was also shot in the head.

in 1913, he disappeared…..

hope this was enough to pique interest – now dig for yourselves, please…..

the things i’ve seen in january….

yes, Magneto IS in that Nativity scene. as well as a dinosaur. earlier today the baby Jesus was playing in an unoccupied terrarium with two sheep a helicopter, and a cow…..

kids always live in Inception…

this entry will be lame and boring and possibly unreadable as it is motivated by whiny loneliness.

well, it’s snowing again. adam is happy on the floor, he has spread out 3 coloring books, crayons and markers, a racetrack and cars – he colors and hums for a couple minutes, then puts down the marker and drives a car around the track.  it’s only a matter of minutes before the worlds cross over, one of the coloring books is open to a maze page…

second cup of coffee is doing nothing. it’s 10:30am but might as well be 7:35 as far as my waking-up process is concerned (7:35 was 5 minutes after i woke).

ONE hour later. adam and i have eaten half a package of turkey bacon, discussed fire-eating, other normal things. his worlds are overlapping. there is an alligator on the freeway ramp. dinosaur in the animal fortress office, using the computer. gorilla in the firetruck.

we may both be getting sick. we alternate sneezing fits, and he’s getting blue under the eyes. he wants to sit on my lap. that’s sort of abnormal. i will go, so he can.

10pm. eric came home on time and we played all evening. also i’m staying a gemini.

Jason Statham

that’s just the title because i don’t have one, and i was thinking of him.

the snow has stopped. eric worked 12 & 1/2 hrs today, (yesterday – whatever, it’s 1am), crazy overtime the day before, too. adam pops up and runs to the window when headlights appear on nights daddy isn’t home on time.

my brain is working. i took a hop skip and jump ahead and started brain-writing from there. what was it my horoscope said? avoid your escape reflex. i think i just effectively ignored that, leapt my snags and rewrites, and started thinking out scenes that are only single lines in my notebook outline.

i don’t know how to work the photo software on this mac, all my pictures are piling up and it’s making me insane. my son has new hair. the puppies are growing up. the SNOW. all i have to use is from my phone:

i didn’t originally intend to do that, but i know little enough about this stupid computer as to be having trouble with the phone photos, too, so fuck it. this is the only photo i can access, saved on my desktop for screensaver purposes. it balances the post title anyway.

snow, etc.

the snow is having a strange effect on my conscious and subconscious. i think it’s shutting me down – i don’t feel sad, or tired, or frustrated…. just … nothing. the deeper the snow the more disconnected i feel. all the rapidly spinning and creaking wheels and gears are sloooowing down, groaning – not stopping, mind you, just slowing down to minimum function.

i’m only technically conscious.

no writing. in the past couple days, no editing or reconstructing, either. mainly just staring. i can feel ideas stirring, beginning to wake up, trying to move around in the sludge, but my subconscious gives a big yawn and i feel that under-the-skin twitchiness that means things i don’t know about are cooking, i can feel it become still. winding down. like the key needs turned.

that knot on the back of my head from the bolt on the underside of the swing – that’s where the key goes. someone needs to shove something in there and give it a good crank, and soon. late at night, i can open an in-progress chapter, or a document i want to do notes on, and stare at the screen for an hour (yes, an hour) with my fingers over the keyboard. not reading. not contemplating, not daydreaming. not watching tv. just being unplugged.

january is a suck-ass month. the thing is, i love snow. i love to watch it snow. but it has a sedative effect on my brain, my creativity, my ability to form thoughts and ideas….

i opened the ‘new post’ page four times this morning before typing anything. just sat here, fingers over the keyboard. staring out the window at the swirling falling snow. occasionally sipping coffee. adam is next to me with a notebook and coloring book, a box of crayons and a bucket full of markers and colored pencils. deep in thought.

if i could crawl in bed and open the curtains, lie for hours watching the snow fall, thinking nothing, lost in limbo, stuck in the place between thoughts, i would.

not unhappy. not anything.

this is winter.

black market babies

blanche:  it’s a little bizarre that one with a fondness for pachouli was able to solve my spoiled little girl gift issue in under 2 minutes.

dorothy: i’m a good problem solver. and an even better shopper. and i’ve spent the vast majority of my life wanting a daughter.

blanche: i browsed a little.
i want a daughter too. those little bathing suits with the ruffly bottoms make my heart ache.

dorothy: i know. actually, the bathing suits, underwear, tights…anything with a ruffly bottom. and those little dresses always make me want to cry.

blanche: i love little girls. but you have to remember, they’re like puppies and kittens – little girls grow up into something horrifying, 9 times out 0f 10.

dorothy: i know. that’s my attitude towards babies in general. they turn into children. then they turn into adults, and that’s almost never good.

 blanche: but we should still adopt foreign girl babies simultaneously and force them to hang out.

dorothy: i’m fearful you’d be more successful in acquiring a girl baby.

blanche: nope. i have medical history, my file is thick as me. i think you’d do better,what with your penchant for steady jobs and making payments on things. my past is a wreck. yours looks impeccable on paper!!

dorothy: yes, but you’re married. and i have a ten month marriage on record. i smoke and my cat ran away.

blanche: i’m crazy on paper and my husband has a “hazardous” job.

dorothy: i’m crazy on paper too. you have prior experience.

blanche: shit. we may just have to go black market.

dorothy: i think we both knew it would one day come to this. you and me. buying black market asian babies. it was bound to happen.

blanche: well shit, neither of us are going to traverse the baby black market alone. and i’m pretty sure we’ll also go shopping together for improbably large sunglasses to wear when we go pick out our babies.

dorothy: yes. and a very big purse. to carry the baby in.

 blanche: almost a tote or carry-on.

dorothy: yes. it could be used as a tote, and most people would, but i’ll be confident enough to pass it off as a purse. just remind me to not be yelling all the time about how i can’t find my lighter in this damn thing. that would completely blow my cover.

 blanche: yeah, because then you would upset the baby, and your relationship would be off to a bad start. unless the baby handed you a lighter….

dorothy: That would steal my heart

blanche: i think my baby will have a very old-timey name – a name that fits no one. cecilia. opal. june.

dorothy: oh, for sure. i like cecelia. i think i’ll go with clara. charlotte. celeste. ruby.

blanche: if they were opal and ruby, they would be DESTINED to be best friends, based on their shared hatred for us for those names.

dorothy: they’d have to be. with a bond like that, and the fact that we’d force them to be friends, there’s no way they couldn’t be.
the other option would be may and june.

blanche: that’s TOO far!! it could wedge them apart. they could blame each other’s existence on their month names. i vote opal and ruby. so when are we going to new york, again? that’s where they keep the black market babies, right??

dorothy: god. to find a good black market baby, i’d have to find j—. she was always talking about black market babies. mainly she was interested in selling them, so that may be as far as we need to go.
i like opal. opal —-. that’s a good name. ruby —- is not so great, but —- doesn’t really go well with anything.

blanche: ooooh, ruby —- is actually quite good. they’re BOTH quite good.
now we just need to rustle up some cash and find j– or whatever name she runs her underground operation as….

dorothy: i have no idea what ever happened to j—. i know she went to college in d— …and i have no idea what happened to her after that.
i’ll start saving immediately

blanche: i’ll start saving immediately also.
well, shit. there goes my vagina.

dorothy: what!?! where goes your vagina?

 blanche: IT’S THE ONLY THING I HAVE TO SELL!!!

 dorothy: fuck. there goes my vagina.

 blanche: exactly. you know, paradoxically, the only other way we could raise money to buy babies is to rent our body space as surrogates. ain’t that a bitch???

2am, no tylenol pm, no benadryl…

,,, and so i’m awake. feedback given on 2 pieces, photo funya explored, Deadly Women watched, mild facebook stalking complete and unsatisfactory, dogs with full bellies (ALL ELEVEN), menfolk asleep, fire humming (i know crackling would sound better, but it’s just NOT, it’s humming), ceiling stared at, head cocked, tomorrow planned for, today evaluated and found satisfactory (and more than satisfactory), domesticity planned including heels, snow falling – or drifting, or floating, slowly. slowly, slowly….

low lights and the sounds of the keys. typing to hear them, too braindead to put my fingers to good use. listening to the fire and my fingers, and the drone of a documentary voiceover.

can. i. feel. my. heartbeat. as a sensation or as a sound? sensation. i never hear it. it rattles, coughs, bounces off my ribs and laughs, large and sloppy wet. the color of meat in fridge light at midnight, in the last hours before it goes bad.

but it’s been this color since….

well, at least it’s fat, and it works. my eyes are swollen – they might be getting rounder, my contacts slide around on them a lot lately.

bridget is drumming her fingertips (no nails, they’re bitten down) on a greyish formica table in the rec room, chin on her opposite palm, waiting for me to get my shit together so she and charlotte can get on with their dastardly plans – charlotte now fancies them villians, with arched backs and arched eyebrows, black capes and snickers and mischief. bridget now knows they are children, doing things movie-style because sometimes there is simply no other way to do them….

my soft kitty entry video wouldn’t load, that sucks, the timeslot is closed. i didn’t even know what the prize was, but i wanted to enter.

that’s all, i think. for now. glad when i wake up it will be friday.

wait, there are real things!

tomorrow is adam’s big Haircut Day. he goes in a baby, comes out a man. i’ll take too many pictures. he won’t be scared, he’s too excited. I’M excited.

the puppies are 4 weeks old this morning. they eat mush from a cracked devilled eggs platter and bark and growl and wink and blink. adam has selected a large and fluffy one, not the largest but easily the most mellow – and dubbed him R2D2. now when there are puppy riots and escapes, he heads directly for the door and into the house. he wants snuggled and scratched, and to sprawl on the lap of my son, to make eye contact and sniff, to learn about their relationship. my son wants them to play all the time. he is tender and careful and comfortable – they make a good match. i like them together. every boy needs a dog.

that is all. and here are the corresponding photos:

 

chapter 2

oh chapter 2,

how i hate you

i have boxed myslef into form -

BOOO!!!!!

i stare at the screen,

at the scraps

at the glue, 

with new chapters racing in my head – fuck y0u!!

(what i’m doing instead of rewriting chapter 2. GODDAMNIT. thousands and thousands of words already written to follow this HINGE….  i’m going to print it all out and set it on fire)

(not my photo but i wish it was)