tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78361528770949980012024-03-05T18:02:29.371-07:00American Stories NOWReal people. Real stories. By Mylène DresslerUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-35784161910410466072015-01-24T08:52:00.002-07:002015-01-24T15:51:31.185-07:00300 Tiles300 tiles.<br />
<br />
That was how many Bruce ordered for the guest bathroom. That was almost how many he used. There were a few left. I store them in the garage. They are bone-colored. Some are square. Some are elongated and bull-nosed. They sit in their open cardboard boxes like perfect teeth, like baby teeth, that smooth but sharp edge without a single bit of use.<br />
<br />
Bruce died a few weeks after finishing the bathroom. When I look at the tile now, I see Bruce. I see him, and my husband, shoulder to shoulder, slapping on the gray mud, putting each tile in place according to the plan Bruce laid out. When Bruce showed me the design, sketched with precision on draftsman's paper, it looked like a river cutting through algebra. I'd asked him to use polished pebbles in the design, to soften all the hard-edged white. I don't want it to look like a hospital, I said. I want it to look like earth and cloud. The pebbles formed a wild, haphazard but contained band, weaving through the perfect order.<br />
<br />
I never counted how many pebbles. There are hundreds.<br />
<br />
Day after day Bruce and my husband worked to fit each tile and stone into its preordained palm of mud. They talked. They discovered they were the same age. Shared many of the same experiences, of the same places. Or they listened to the radio and slapped and stuck in silence. So many pebbles. It takes concentration as well as teamwork.<br />
<br />
It took almost two weeks to finish the remodel.<br />
<br />
When Bruce's wife told us Bruce had died, we refused. It wasn't possible. Bruce was too young. Only 63. We'd just gotten to know him. Bruce and my husband were fast becoming friends. They were going to play croquet. They even looked the same, the same gray, grizzled beard and wild hair, though Bruce was shorter and stockier, and more deliberate. He stared at problems until they were solved, moved slowly, made sure everything was right. Left to our own devices, we would simply have guessed how many tiles. We are haphazard, that way. Bruce aimed.<br />
<br />
We cried, my husband especially. How can you be a man, a friend, cheeks flushed red in labor, at one moment, and then a cold ember fallen next to a pick-up truck, the next?<br />
<br />
I went and stood in the bathroom. A kind of horror swept over me. A good man had spent some of the last weeks of his life in this small room, because I'd wanted my guests to have fresh grout. Given a choice, would anyone do this? If you could know <i>these are my last weeks on earth</i>? And how slow had I been to choose between three shades of white? Bone, white, cream? How many days had I wasted?<br />
<br />
Bruce's wife invited us over to their house, three streets down from ours. A beautiful house, with snug rooms in colors of firefly matings. Bruce had started an addition, off the kitchen. He was doubling the size of the place. He had the foundation done, the walls, the roof supported by thick beams, the pounded earth floor. He had also just finished a deck for another neighbor, a tricky assignment: the Trex had had to be cut like a river to fit around trees, stones, in the undulating landscape.<br />
<br />
He was very proud of the finished deck, she said. Bruce was a trusted problem-solver, and beloved for that. She knew something was wrong when he didn't come home from the deck-job. She found him beside the truck, eyes open and surprised. The days since then, she said, had been terrible and beautiful. On some days life was so exquisite you looked at the clouds and every pore of light registered.<br />
<br />
She showed us pictures of Bruce going back to their college days, when they had met, in art school. He had always been a builder, a maker. He had always been prized for his work and the care with which he undertook and finished it. She showed us some of his paintings, still-lifes, beautiful. But he mostly chose houses and decks and tile and stone and pounded earth. What people live in, not with. She took us to his workshop, stuffed with tools and long, painted trim boards. Deep blue.<br />
<br />
The other day, I carefully cleaned the tiles in the bathroom. The pebbles, in blues, grays and greens, are cut in half, so they lie flat and smooth, also easy to clean.<br />
<br />
Can we put a niche in, I asked at the last minute, for the shampoo bottles? Framed in the bull-nose? With a pebble backing?<br />
<br />
Bruce rubbed his beard, thought about it. I never saw him answer quickly.<br />
<br />
Yes.<br />
<br />
The niche for the shampoo bottles took an entire day to build and complete.<br />
<br />
It is the most beautiful part of the bathroom, like something you would find built into an Etruscan wall, or the space left when a trout vanishes.<br />
<br />
--M<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-42374839252648710312015-01-24T06:58:00.004-07:002015-01-24T07:03:07.130-07:00The Compiler<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">"I asked Marcy if there was a bird she’d always longed to see in the Matheson Wetlands Preserve but still hadn’t. She told me that every year she hoped for a pygmy owl. In this bad weather, she said, owls might be out—it was just dark enough, nearly crepuscular. (Google has a website, Ngram, that counts how many times a word has been used in print between the years 1800 and 2000. “Crepuscular” is on the decline.) No sooner had Marcy said this than I started imagining I was hearing hoots."</span><br />
<br />
My thanks to <a href="http://flyway.org/nonfiction/the-compiler/">Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment</a>, for publishing my story about bird-watching and bird-counting. You can read the full story<a href="http://flyway.org/nonfiction/the-compiler/"> here.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-25196834285933092072015-01-24T06:52:00.001-07:002015-01-24T07:03:41.051-07:00Live Toy, Dead Toy<span style="background-color: white; color: #0c343d; font-family: minion-pro, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;">"The desert is made for solitude. There is no exchange. No conciliating. No compromise. It doesn’t barter. If the desert shows you something beautiful—a slot canyon filled with light as the sun passes over—it isn’t because it cares what you will think of it. It doesn’t woo or spurn, it has no expectations, it shines without being a mirror, it goes deep without meaning anything profound. The blackbrush isn’t hellish, and the rabbitbrush, also known as chamisa, doesn’t care what you call it, and neither does the rabbit you almost never see next to it. The tumbleweed is stubborn but it isn’t going anywhere decided."</span><br />
<br />
Read my story about the Utah canyonlands, married life, the intensity of dogs and the mad tug of the heart, published, with my thanks to all the good folks there, <a href="http://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2014-winter/selections/mylene-dressler-656342/">in the Kenyon Review.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-15982124241939003842013-08-12T10:49:00.000-06:002015-01-24T07:04:33.299-07:00The Point<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDEE8gdK1w7EjbF39CAJ-X5g00VCFuDnR9L1tLte1GKx9PVuXbiATvHwfOOcYx8-crCWZ8oHnJeir3UCM2pSgRp7CN1jtFC8D5MEIvy8Qg-vYrpZwaAXl6Tn6VwnO_8bJiTMPUmzH3pNc/s1600/Hardin+arrowhead.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDEE8gdK1w7EjbF39CAJ-X5g00VCFuDnR9L1tLte1GKx9PVuXbiATvHwfOOcYx8-crCWZ8oHnJeir3UCM2pSgRp7CN1jtFC8D5MEIvy8Qg-vYrpZwaAXl6Tn6VwnO_8bJiTMPUmzH3pNc/s200/Hardin+arrowhead.JPG" height="200" width="70" /></a></div>
Yesterday, near Round Mountain in Utah, I found a jagged stone struck by many tiny blows, leaving behind the trace of the human being who had met and shaped it. It wasn't a perfect arrowhead--part of the bottom was missing--but still I held it in my hand, wonderingly. All my life I've hoped to find arrowheads, or "points" as they are known by those who study them seriously; but rarely have I had much luck. In fact, I've noticed that I am luckiest at finding points when I'm not really looking for them.<br />
<br />
Now let me tell you a story:<br />
<br />
Many years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I was living on a large ranch in the Texas hill country near Austin. The ranch had been set aside by the university there as a place for writers to be left in peace to do their work, and I had been lucky enough to win a fellowship which allowed me to live in the ranch house and on the grounds for half a year, all alone but for the limestone cliffs and the blowing grass and the animals that came to peek in at the windows. When I wasn't writing, I wandered the hills and bluffs and creeks, my nose pointed downward, because I knew Native Americans had once lived on the land, and there must be signs, artifacts. But all I found were jagged bits of rock that could have been anything, that looked more like accidents than intention.<br />
<br />
One day as I sat at my desk writing, a pick-up truck crossed the creek, pulling up to the ranch house, and two men in workers' jumpsuits jumped out and came knocking on the door. One was small and polite and explained to me that they had come to check on the well. (Writers are not expected to care for the <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/Paisano/ranch/">Paisano Ranch</a>; most would have no idea how to do so.) The other man was tall and bitter-looking and rudely crushed his cigarette out under his heel on the porch right in front of me, giving me a look that said, plain as day, <i>Yeah, you arty types. You think you're special, look down on the likes of us, I bet, but you can't even take care of your own backyard.</i><br />
<br />
I tried to undo his thoughts, thanking both men profusely for the work they were about to do and smiling and explaining how appreciative I was; but the taller man turned a cold shoulder on me as the smaller man walked to the well house. I went back to writing for a while, and then came out to see if they needed anything. The polite young man was still there, by the well pump, but his angry partner was nowhere in sight.<br />
<br />
"Is your friend okay?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"Mike? He's fine. He went off looking for points."<br />
<br />
My heart jumped. I stayed inside until I saw him coming back, then ran out.<br />
<br />
"I hear you know how to look for arrowheads!"<br />
<br />
He looked stealthily at me. "No. Can't do that here. Wouldn't be legal for me."<br />
<br />
"Oh," I slumped, disappointed. "It's just . . . Well, all my life I've wanted to find an arrowhead. I've been looking since I was a kid. But I've never found one. And I've looked and looked and looked all around here, too."<br />
<br />
His face changed slightly. "Oh yeah?"<br />
<br />
"Yeah . . . You find them, sometimes?"<br />
<br />
"Sure, all the time. You just have to know where to look," he said, a little superior now.<br />
<br />
"I envy you. I've found a few things, but I don't think they're anything. I keep them on the desk. I don't suppose you'd be willing to look and tell me if . . ."<br />
<br />
"Well. I guess I could come in and take a look."<br />
<br />
<br />
He sifted through my little pile of chipped agates. "No, these ain't anything. But this here could be a scraper." He held it up to the light of the window, impressed. "It sure could. You should keep looking."<br />
<br />
"Really? If only I knew where to look, <i>how</i> to look."<br />
<br />
He put the stone down and left the house, quickly. "You just go look along the limestone bluffs. By the creek. Look for old fires. Signs of burning. Look for middens. Piles of waste. That's all I can tell you."<br />
<br />
"Okay. Thanks."<br />
<br />
They left, and for days, for weeks, I did as he instructed. I looked along the creek, I tried to find signs of work and habitation and discard. I scoured the earth--but I couldn't find anything. I could not see what he so clearly saw.<br />
<br />
A week or so before I was, sadly, scheduled to leave the ranch, the two men came again to look at the well. The polite one came to the door, but the gruff one, Mike, did not.<br />
<br />
"Oh, he's off lookin' for something again," his partner said. "Cheers him up."<br />
<br />
I went back inside. A little while later I heard a knock on the door, and opened it, and tall Mike was there.<br />
<br />
"So here," he said. "See?"<br />
<br />
And he held out the most perfectly sculpted, elongated, bone-colored spear point I had ever seen.<br />
<br />
"Oh," I said wistfully. "Oh. That is so beautiful. Wow."<br />
<br />
"It's for you."<br />
<br />
"Excuse me?"<br />
<br />
"You take it."<br />
<br />
"What?"<br />
<br />
"Take it. It's a good one. It's about 10,000 years old. It ain't from around here," he said quickly. "I brought it for you."<br />
<br />
"What are you talking about? It's yours. You found it."<br />
<br />
"It's no big deal. I got hundreds. I brought you something else, too."<br />
<br />
He reached around, and from his back pocket took out a neat yellow bandanna, unfolding it. On it was printed the outline and shape of every kind of major point to be found in Texas, he explained to me, along with the proper name written underneath. So now, he said, when I went out point-hunting, I could wear it, and check the stones I found, to see if I had really found anything at all.<br />
<br />
I was speechless. I stared at his sun-worn, smoke-worn face.<br />
<br />
"These are the most beautiful gifts anyone has ever given me," I said, and I meant it.<br />
<br />
"Nah."<br />
<br />
"I have to hug you now. Get ready."<br />
<br />
We held each other for a long moment, two seekers.<br />
<br />
"Okay. You just keep going," he said roughly as he left. "Don't give up, now."<br />
<br />
The truck pulled away. I left the ranch the next week. And I never saw the point hunter again.<br />
<br />
I keep the stone he gave me on my desk, and the bandanna in the drawer beside it, ready.<br />
<br />
Not long ago, hiking in the desert at Joshua Tree, in California, I had given up again. I climbed over a little bluff, and at the crest of it a gust of wind blew up and knocked dust into my eyes. I had to stop and duck my head and wipe the grit out. As I bent, I saw something lying on the ground. A spear tip, long, bone-colored, pointed to where I had not been looking.<br />
<br />
<br />
--M<br />
<br />
<em>Author of <a _mce_href="http://www.amazon.com/Deadwood-Beetle-Mylene-Dressler/dp/0425187608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220145404&sr=1-1" href="http://www.amazon.com/Deadwood-Beetle-Mylene-Dressler/dp/0425187608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220145404&sr=1-1">The Deadwood Beetle</a> and <a _mce_href="http://store.untreedreads.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=80&products_id=949%29" href="http://store.untreedreads.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=80&products_id=949%29">The Medusa Tree</a></em> <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-32174996738407755722013-04-12T08:06:00.001-06:002013-07-28T21:28:07.316-06:00"What Are You Afraid Of?"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
A story from American Stories NOW is now available at your magazine stand . . .</div>
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Check out the May 2013 issue of Reader's Digest . . .</div>
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(and yes that's me walking the slack-line :-)</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-51147374323287974632013-02-22T21:49:00.002-07:002015-01-24T07:04:53.488-07:00Persimmon TreeTonight I heard a story. The interesting thing--well, there are two interesting things--well, no, there are so many interesting things, on any given evening, in any place in the world, American or otherwise--the interesting thing among many interesting things is that it did not seem, immediately, like a story. The funny thing--not ha-ha funny, but isn't-that-curious funny, isn't that just what you might expect, but you didn't, funny--is that I was about to get up in front of an audience and tell a story myself. I was in Columbus, Georgia, getting ready to read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Wedding-Anna-F-ebook/dp/B00BEBBYDG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361595152&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wedding+of+anna+f.">a strange and haunting tale</a>, when a woman I knew walked in with a woman I didn't, whom I had only just met. I knew the two were sisters--that much I knew--and I greeted them both. They sat down. We chatted while the rest of the audience found its places. What are you doing tomorrow? I asked. We are going to see our mother in her rest home, they said. How old is your mother? I asked. She is 91 years old. My goodness, I said, 91. How is her mind? Well, she knows who we are . . . and she knows when her mind isn't working properly. She's very aware when it isn't and she'll look quite amazed and smile and she'll say, "You know, someone really ought to try to get into my mind and study it and see what on earth is going on there."<br />
<br />
Then, without really deciding that we were all listening to a story together, the sisters told me that their mother knew when something wasn't quite right about the way her mind worked, these days, and that she tried to describe it.<br />
<br />
"My mind is so focused. It's strange. I keep coming back to the same thing over and over. I keep seeing the persimmon tree by our house when I was a little girl," she said. "I'm so <em>focused</em>."<br />
<br />
The sisters do some quick caculations in front of me. Their mother would have been no more than ten years old when she lived beside that tree. At ten, she and the family had moved away from that house.<br />
<br />
"But my mind keeps going back that persimmon tree, I tell you. I don't know why. I never thought about it much when we were living there. I never ate its fruit. I never climbed it. I never played around it. I never thought about it at all. It was just a tree. Now I think about it all the time. My mind goes there. It just goes, I can't stop it. Why, why am I thinking about that persimmon tree?"<br />
<br />
The audience had all found their seats and it was time for me to tell my story. As it happens, this particular story is about <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Wedding-Anna-F-ebook/dp/B00BEBBYDG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361595152&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wedding+of+anna+f.">an elderly woman whose mind is doing some very strange things</a>, and as I am telling the story, a little part of my mind is caught, like a small paper kite, in that persimmon tree. I keep seeing the persimmon tree, as if it is growing straight out of the center of the audience. I notice, with that part of my mind that knows how to do these things while another part of my mind is doing something else, that everyone in that audience is gathered around that persimmon tree, a persimmon tree that we did not even know existed, and maybe did not even exist anymore, except that it did, because memory had turned it into a living, growing thing that had sprouted inside and then outside the brain of an old woman, who had connected it to two daughters, who had carried it like a cutting into this space where it rooted and grew in a place with no soil, where it grew in thin air.<br />
<br />
And I thought, unable to tear my mind from the persimmon tree: here is a story about a persimmon tree. Except it really isn't a story at all. It is nothing really. Just a whisper, a snatch of conversation, a way to fill the time before a real, published story began.<br />
<br />
And while I told my own story, my finished and published story, printed and bound story, behaving like it was the most solid thing in the world, outside it began to rain, and the rain caught in the trees and made a sound like a kite trying to get free.<br />
<br />
And the sisters were nodding and giving me all their attention, and so was everyone, very nicely, in this audience in Columbus, Georgia, and I realized that this is what a story is, it is a thing we all agree to look at, and focus on, although it is not there.<br />
<br />
After I am done speaking someone raises a hand and asks how I get my ideas, where my stories come from. I am not 91, so I answer quickly:<br />
<br />
I have no idea. They just come.<br />
<br />
<br />
--MUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-23060037534300066122012-11-03T14:07:00.002-06:002015-01-24T07:08:33.235-07:00Wedded to My Seat: Keeping Faith With a Story<div class="content">
My new novella, <i>The Wedding of Anna F.</i>, has been published this week in <a href="http://www.bigfictionmagazine.com/about/index.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Big Fiction</a>. Here is how the story, about a woman who believes she is Anne Frank, begins:<br />
<br />
<i>The interviewer is coming today. So. Here is the simple part:
choosing what to wear. I’ve told my little assistant buzzing
downstairs—no, that isn’t fair of me, she isn’t little, she looms over
my life, in fact, and she’s more than an assistant, she’s almost a kind
of nurse, at times—I’ve told Maia to leave me alone for a bit, to let
me be quiet, so I can get ready for my time with him, and then for my
birthday celebration to follow; because I need a rest after having spent
the whole morning in my study, organizing my documents and letters,
the private papers that will sum me up, in my eighty-third year—work
that has been the easier part of this day, now that I think of it, at
least compared to what’s going to come later on, compared to what is
coming on now.</i><br />
<br />
<i> I hope I can manage it all. I don’t tire easily, thank goodness.
For my age I’m still fairly sound—apart, that is, from the slight
deafness in my left ear, the result of being left lying in the mud at
Belsen. Of course, no one knows I’ve ever been there. But this much is
true: I’ve never needed or wanted much rest, since then.</i><br />
<br />
<i>***</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Such "easy" lines, as I look at them now--easy in the sense that all
work has been erased, all the sleepless nights spent worrying over a
story, a voice, that wouldn't leave me alone; all the clumsy drafts
hidden behind this one, the final, polished version; all the hours spent
staring at the keyboard struggling to understand what this stranger was
trying to whisper to me; all the moments when I leapt from my seat
because something that had eluded suddenly barked, clear; all the doubt;
all the frustration; all the hours when I could have been out in the
sun.<br />
<br />
And yet the lines aren't "easy," even now. They are a suspension
bridge, the kind made of ropes cast over ravines in jungle places. They
led and lead into a place that is both dark and light, both myth and
reality; they go places I didn't expect at all. Even now I can feel the
swaying, the tension, the danger, though all the work is behind me.
There were many times when I thought I wouldn't finish this tale. It is
too hard, I told myself. It is too strange. There be animals in the
shadows.<br />
<br />
How do we keep faith with stories . . . not just the stories we
write, but the stories we read? Where does that faith come from? A
story is such a fragile thing. Today I met with a few students, and we
discussed how stories are powerful, how they have the ability to move us
and arrest us, stop us dead in our tracks, at the same time. How anyone
who knows how to tell a good story holds the keys to a city.<br />
<br />
But stories are tents, too. They are tenuous, canvas and stake and
knot against earth. They can, and do, collapse if we don't put our backs
into them, and even if we do. There are no guarantees. There is no law
on earth that says a story must be finished, or when it is finished that
it must be read.<br />
<br />
I kept faith with <i>Anna</i> over several years. I put her aside
for long stretches of time. I came back to her when she grew noisy and
her mystery unbearable. I set her aside again when her impossibilities
wore me out. I lived. I worked. I moved to a new state. I picked her up
again like a cold I kept catching over and over. And slowly, slowly,
something started to take shape. I felt better. She got stronger. I
picked up an ax. The bridges behind you don't matter. Cut. Chop. Burn.
The only way, for a writer, is forward. A path through the trees.<br />
<br />
Now here I am. The story is finished, the faith is . . . what? Not "rewarded." Reward is the wrong word.<br />
<br />
Faith is not a stolen bicycle.<br />
<br />
Perhaps it is the chair Anna sits in as she tells her story. Is that
what faith is? Hard but steady. Adirondack you take over and over again.<br />
<br />
Forget all the rest, the story says, forget everything up to now.<br />
<br />
Sit with me.<br />
<br />
--M</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-77895416798955979202012-09-08T08:48:00.001-06:002015-01-24T07:05:47.770-07:00Lost Our Lease<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been a while since I posted on this blog.<br />
<br />
I could tell you I have been busy. I have been. I can tell you I am sometimes overwhelmed by stories, that I don't always feel up to the challenge of honoring the real people I meet; that sometimes it's easier to write fiction; that often the people I meet contain, carry, stories so large that the very idea of trying to capture them in a blog entry seems paltry, even mad: like throwing a dart at a tidal wave.<br />
<br />
Two things happened yesterday. I met a woman in a furniture store. And I read a poem by <a href="http://www.mbpratt.org/">Minnie Bruce Pratt.</a><br />
<br />
Klausen's Furniture in Greensboro, North Carolina, is closing its doors. "Lost Our Lease!" the brassy banners read in the windows. My husband and I are still trying to furnish our new home, so when we see the italics, <i>Total Liquidation, Everything Must Go</i>, we pull in, park the car, nudged like flies toward meat.<br />
<br />
"Lost Our Lease" is, in North Carolina, a euphemism for <i>We can no longer hang on and compete with cheap goods from other countries. </i>Deserted furniture stores litter the landscape. Dying ones put on a bright face. To walk into a dying one is like picking your way through a tree farm after Christmas. You try to pay attention to what's still standing, but all you can see are the holes.<br />
<br />
No sooner have we come through the door into the half-empty showroom than we are approached by an elderly saleswoman. She reminds me instantly of my grandmother: short, stout, close-cropped gray hair, bright eyes behind no-nonsense glasses, right hand leaning on a polished black cane. The hand itself is encased in a fingerless black leather glove, I guess to protect it from chafing. But it makes her look like a fighter, or a biker.<br />
<br />
"Can I help you with anything?" she smiles and comes toward us, not slowly. She keeps ahead of the other sales people, who are half-lounging, as though they've given up.<br />
<br />
"We're just going to wander through."<br />
<br />
"Well I'm Nikki. Let me know if you see anything."<br />
<br />
We walk quickly past the naked mattress and the sausage-link couches nobody, including us, seems to want. We make a circle through the store; and at the end of it there is Nikki again. I look at a pile of bright throw pillows, marked down fifty percent and more. My husband stands close by. He doesn't care about pillows. He turns to her.<br />
<br />
"Nikki, is the store maybe moving somewhere else?"<br />
<br />
"No. They're just completely going out of business."<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry. Have you been working here a long time?"<br />
<br />
"Four weeks."<br />
<br />
"I'm--did--did you say four weeks?"<br />
<br />
"Yes," she nods. <br />
<br />
Pressed to my stomach I have two turquoise pillows originally marked at twenty dollars a piece. In a few minutes Klausen's will sell them to me for ten.<br />
<br />
"Let me write that up for you and get you a bag," Nikki says, and balances her cane on a sofa table so she can take the pillows away from me.<br />
<br />
My husband's eyes follow her limp. When she returns, he asks:<br />
<br />
"Nikki, did you know the store was going out of business when you took this job?"<br />
<br />
"Oh, sure. I had no choice, though. I'm sixty-three, and I can't afford to retire. And it's not easy, these days." Nikki doesn't say this in a complaining way. More as if she is genuinely amazed. She looks at my husband as if for a question somebody ought to ask. Then: "Because, if you're old, they don't want you, and if you're a woman, it doesn't help. And then they see this cane, and even though I get around just as quick as anybody, it doesn't help when they see it. Well. Here you go, dear." She smiles professionally and hands me a brown bag, too big for the small pillows inside.<br />
<br />
They don't have the right size, I think stupidly. They're just using whatever's left.<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry, Nikki," my husband says. "It's hard."<br />
<br />
"You bet." She sighs. "I just start, and it's over. I was just getting to know people, and know what to do, know the place, and then . . . Those are really nice pillows," she turns to me, remembering, professional again. She has learned. She wants me to see it. "I hope you get lots of enjoyment out of them."<br />
<br />
We go home. The pillows look wrong, as bright things against dark often do. <br />
<br />
<b>Temporary Job</b><br />
by Minnie Bruce Pratt<br />
<br />
Leaving again. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be <br />
grieving. The particulars of place lodged in me, <br />
like this room I lived in for eleven days, <br />
how I learned the way the sun laid its palm <br />
over the side window in the morning, heavy <br />
light, how I’ll never be held in that hand again.<br />
<br />
From Pratt's new collection of poems, <a href="http://carolinawrenpress.org/books-and-merchandise/poetry/inside-the-money-machine"><i>Inside the Money Machine</i>.</a><br />
<br />
Nikki estimates she has three weeks of work left.<br />
<br />
<br />
--M<br />
<br />
Photo: Detail from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, DC.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-20031580267682304602012-05-01T08:09:00.001-06:002015-01-24T07:06:14.289-07:00At Fifth and Market<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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An old woman sits at a window. A street runs below her.
It once shuttled fattened taxis past her building. Now buses, on natural
fuel, run silent as fog.<br />
<br />
Men, one day, stopped wearing hats. Young people dressed
without buttons. Taxis lost their hips. In its center, a mirror grew a
round spot, like a coin fused to a fountain.<br />
<br />
The demolition crew comes. Window, she thinks, you’ll give up before I do.<br />
<br />
--M<br />
<br />
Photo by <a href="http://www.brucebarone.com/">Bruce Barone</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-29662234603038839782012-04-26T07:29:00.001-06:002015-01-24T07:06:51.322-07:00Story on the Streets!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Dear Friends,<br />
<br />
I'm very proud to announce that I am now part of <i>new graffiti, </i>a
grassroots publishing project that gets literature out of our iPads and
Kindles, off of our bookshelves, and onto the streets! Want to get
involved? Go to <a href="http://newgraffitipublishing.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="http://newgraffitipublishing.com/">http://newgraffitipublishing.com/</a>
and check out its latest project, which marries my short story
"Observatory" with artwork by Sarah Stone. Visit the "Downloadable"
page to print a poster-, letter- or postcard-sized image of
"Observatory"--and post it wherever you think it will create something unexpected in the world!<br />
<br />
And thank you, friends, for all you do to support writing, words, and
creativity. It is a joy to be part of this time and place with you.<br />
<br />
--MUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-58213433339262436152012-03-16T19:31:00.013-06:002012-04-26T08:04:41.624-06:00Six-Word Memoirs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
From some of my freshman writers at Guilford College, who this week celebrated the power, mystery and impact of brief language:<br />
<br />
<br />
Bills unpaid. Memories destroyed. Kick. Push. --Joe Able<br />
<br />
Missed Period. Frightened Girl. Waiting Results. --Kimberly Newton<br />
<br />
What a jerk. Who's she? Broken. --Haley Andrews<br />
<br />
Alone. Music blasting. Clenching the wheel. --Mollie Sewell<br />
<br />
Darkness, black. "PERMISSION." Brightness, white. --Soobin Park<br />
<br />
Time never dies, powerful, powerless . . . --Issa Abdallah<br />
<br />
Dread-head. Honor Student. F**k Stereotypes. --Devin Martin<br />
<br />
<br />
Rock, air. Look down. Life, death. --Elliot Freshwater <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-73704069294567165502012-03-14T07:07:00.007-06:002012-03-16T19:44:33.200-06:00Ask That<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzpQAUtfZ-3K5d1YRCZRYAvcsspkOuqi-DvNckJzlvSmx34NLKB3UQN3O20Ojc5Ru1xEvyIqp7KbJmIxjDHdaTQhcbB6qrSn2g3C1aJdzHR9ZW08Yt204OaiVEzfZAv4fM_-cZB0k1pjQ/s1600/tin+bath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzpQAUtfZ-3K5d1YRCZRYAvcsspkOuqi-DvNckJzlvSmx34NLKB3UQN3O20Ojc5Ru1xEvyIqp7KbJmIxjDHdaTQhcbB6qrSn2g3C1aJdzHR9ZW08Yt204OaiVEzfZAv4fM_-cZB0k1pjQ/s1600/tin+bath.jpg" /></a></div>My husband, wonderful man, asks questions. He collects stories. He loves to listen to you. He is not, by choice, a writer. He's simply very curious, and attentive; and he would much rather speak to you about something moving and unexpected than about something dull and plainsong. This is why, sitting down to dinner with my parents this week--we hadn't seen them in quite some time--he turned to my mother, and rather than intoning "pass the salt" or "let's have a moment of silence" or "how was your flight," he looked her in the eye and smiled and began with,<br />
<br />
"Now. Tell me a powerful moment from your childhood. Don't think about it. Just share the first thing that comes into your mind. What is it?"<br />
<br />
"The smell of tin."<br />
<br />
Instantly.<br />
<br />
After a moment's surprise, and a pause, she said again,<br />
<br />
"Tin! It's tin in the sun." <br />
<br />
She went on:<br />
<br />
"I'm very little. This is the first house I can remember. We had other houses before this one, but I don't remember them. This one had a backyard, and my mother used to give me baths in a tub in the yard. That's how children were bathed then."<br />
<br />
"In the 1940's."<br />
<br />
"Yes. You took the tin tub outside, and you filled it with warm water . . . And so when I smelled tin in the sun, I knew, I knew, I <i>knew </i>. . ." Her eyes grew big, and she smiled the way a child does, with eyebrows going up as if the sun has risen in the sky for the first time. "I was going to get a <i>bath</i>."<br />
<br />
We all sat for a moment. Smell of warm metal in the air. Wet skin. Quick as that.<br />
<br />
Naked.<br />
<br />
Fire.<br />
<br />
Fork tastes sharper.<br />
<br />
Mama doesn't look the same.<br />
<br />
Sharper.<br />
<br />
All for the question. All for the asking.<br />
<br />
You didn't know. How could you?<br />
<br />
Not what you thought you should: something else, my husband reminds me all the time. Ask that.<br />
<br />
--MDUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-46562991116788934582012-02-26T11:08:00.001-07:002012-08-06T14:35:56.853-06:00Hibernaculum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx_PGlVLTMoV-yiX6_JQFQazHR1ZX6oG9KgbhHRRXyX2xKB54uIoUpNwEL9o7Pvr0JbzNlBaPPDiQxdW3s5dYwnkNMigDjB8X1T9x3WViU6ehqUjwE_FMin58Dz18IvrH6CB9zvwmfxO4/s1600/The+Batcave+door+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>I am waiting for the bat.<br />
<br />
In July, when we moved in, he was here.<br />
<br />
He roosted in a corner of our screened attic window, wadded tightly, a velvet sock rolled into the lower right corner. Sometimes he hung upside down, a hooded bulb.<br />
<br />
Smaller than the paper lanterns hanging above him, the two empty wasp-nests.<br />
<br />
Heavier than the dried leaves clinging in the spiderwebs.<br />
<br />
Little brown bat.<br />
<br />
I ran to the computer, looked him up. <i> Little brown bat. </i> That was, in fact, his name. <i>Myotis lucifugus. </i>American little brown bat. Male because solitary. Sleepy because summer. Works for four hours a day. Flies and darts and catches. But that's hard work, so he must rest much of the time. I understand this. I am a writer.<br />
<br />
I fell in love.<br />
<br />
Although I knew I shouldn't, I visited him daily. I have never lived with a bat, and I couldn't help myself. I opened the door, ducked under the beam, crept toward the eave to stare. Often I couldn't see his face. It was hidden like a pea in a mattress. When I could see it, it was small and strange and sharp, like something I should be comfortable with, but wasn't.<br />
<br />
Little brown bat. <br />
<br />
You are not allowed to kill the little brown bat. He is protected. When the exterminator came to the house, I made sure he knew. There are some things, of course, you are allowed to do--like turn on the light three times a day to look at him--but you probably shouldn't. Eventually I got a hold of myself, cut back like a smoker. I came late at night, to see that he was gone, off hunting and catching. I came in the morning, too, to see that he was back. Every time, this terrible dread that he wouldn't be.<br />
<br />
One may fret over a bat in the same way one frets over a lover or an idea.<br />
<br />
"The little brown bat can be distinguished from the Indiana bat by the absence of a keel on the caclar and the presence of hairs on the hind feet that extend past the toes"--but I have no idea what this means, and I never got close enough, and I am vaguely resentful. There are some things about a bat that should remain a mystery.<br />
<br />
One day, late in fall, he didn't come home. I scurried to my computer (I wasn't at my computer because there is always something you can do that is easier than writing, and looking at a little brown bat is one of those things). A little brown bat must hibernate; he will fly south to find a mate, procreate, and seek a hibernaculum. The beauty of that word made up, a little, for the loss.<br />
<br />
The little brown bat is now, I assume, in a cave or an abandoned mine. I too am drawn to caves and abandoned mines, and often go and live in them myself. Sometimes, it's important to not even try to do anything.<br />
<br />
Now I am waiting for the bat.<br />
<br />
The computer says he might not be back until May. It says nothing about whether the little brown bat likes to come back to the same roost, each year, it says nothing about ambition or variety. The little corner where he slept is an empty yoke. I don't go and look every day. The last time, I mistook a fresh leaf for his body.<br />
<br />
The wingspan of the little brown bat is eight to eleven inches. Its membrane is dark brown.<br />
<br />
What is the definition of little?<br />
<br />
<br />
--MDUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-15679087248540730322012-01-22T12:06:00.007-07:002012-02-26T14:58:05.532-07:00Breathe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_pl6N0ImHPdCPjMBb-cGZ8raHgixqPMS4mXAnIBwG0DTtO3_ZeCIowAQoBO8O4YkkCqa_G4E1VlZMmCkjQCDghnjZq7dUDIVaQM6Ruxs32hRShB-UBqFbKSWism7dwCYppvs4pA7aGtU/s1600/October+2011+111.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_pl6N0ImHPdCPjMBb-cGZ8raHgixqPMS4mXAnIBwG0DTtO3_ZeCIowAQoBO8O4YkkCqa_G4E1VlZMmCkjQCDghnjZq7dUDIVaQM6Ruxs32hRShB-UBqFbKSWism7dwCYppvs4pA7aGtU/s200/October+2011+111.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>I want to remember this, and so I write it down.<br />
<br />
Ted spoke today. Ted doesn't often speak, but when he does, I listen. Ted is eighty-six years old, a former chemistry professor--he and I have taught in the same classrooms--and an emigre who as a young boy was lucky enough to escape Hitler's killing machine. During his long career, he taught both philosophy and science, and asked his students to think not just about how the world is bonded together, but about the very idea of bonding itself. Ted has been retired now from teaching for many years; his hands are calm, and when he stands in a meeting to speak, he grips the back of the chair in front of him, if one is there. If not, he stands and folds his hands over his belt, balancing himself from the inside. His voice is soft, and it shakes slightly. I should be clear: this is a bit like saying a tree shakes softly. You don't confuse the delicacy at the edge with the welded rings of the core.<br />
<br />
Today Ted stood and gripped the back of the chair in front of him, and this is the story he told, as nearly as I can capture his words, and his lilting voice:<br />
<br />
"Today, I am thinking about meditation. I have practiced meditation for a long time. When I do so, I do it by focusing on a single sound, or a word; or else I will concentrate only on my breathing, my breath going in and out. It is very important to me, this meditation, and I am very interested in meditation as a subject.<br />
<br />
"But one day, not long ago, something began to happen to me. I did not only meditate, but I began to think about meditation. I began to read a few books on meditation, and then more and more. Then, in the way of things, other people began to recommend books to me, and before I knew it I had quite a pile of books beside me, books about meditation and about other subjects that are also very important. At about this same time, I became aware of a feeling--a feeling that I had not only so many things to read, but so many, many things to do, so many things that I<i> must</i> do. I became overwhelmed by this feeling, and began to be quite unwell. I went to my doctor, and my blood pressure was elevated--it had gone through the roof, in fact--and he put me on medication, and told me that we must do some ultrasound tests to check my internal organs. At this point, I contacted my sons, who do not live near me--one of them lives in Tokyo, and has done so for a generation now--and I told them what was happening, thinking that I should let them know just in case something was going to take me off to the hospital. My son in Tokyo wrote back to me right away, and this is what he said:<br />
<br />
'I want you to go back to breathing. I want you to think only about your breath. Your body needs oxygen, and so you must take it in. You must breathe in what you need, then you must breathe out what you no longer need. You must breathe in the oxygen. You must breathe out the carbon dioxide, which you no longer need but that something else--the plants--can use. I want you to do this, and think in this way. Breathe in what you need. Breathe out what you no longer need. And I want you to do this for twenty minutes.'<br />
<br />
"It was amazing, the difference this made. I realized, as I breathed this way, that the books that I had did not have to be read right now. And that the things that I had to do, they did not have to be done, not right now. When I went in later on for the ultrasound tests, nothing showed up on them at all. My blood pressure was normal again, and the doctor congratulated himself that it was the medication that had done it.<br />
<br />
"As I breathed in and out again, I remembered things that other people had taught me about breathing. That, for instance, when we breathe in we have the chance to take in the suffering of the world, of a group or an individual, or maybe of the suffering we are immediately aware of . . . and then we have the chance to breathe out our compassion and love. This memory came back to me as I breathed, as I concentrated on taking in what I needed.<br />
<br />
"When I told my son about this memory that had come to me, he reminded me that the idea that we breathe in the suffering of others and breathe out our compassion for the world is a practice known as Tonglen, and that it has been practiced in India and in Tibet. And I wasn't at all surprised to hear this. And then I thought of something else."<br />
<br />
For a moment I had trouble, as Ted's voice shook, understanding. He was saying that he had been watching a television program earlier this week, and the program had been about . . . I breathed, and then I decided that the word he had said was "god." But that didn't sound right. Then I breathed again, and I realized he had said the word "garden." He was saying that he had been watching a program about gardens here in North Carolina, and that one, the Charlotte Botanic Garden, had a section devoted to a meditative garden, a space in which to sit and breathe.<br />
<br />
". . . out what you no longer need," Ted ended, and sat carefully down, feeling the chair beneath him, while in the room around him the words god, garden and breath danced, forming an unstable compound.<br />
<br />
--MDUnknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-48265058086198149162011-08-12T08:09:00.001-06:002011-08-12T08:11:27.493-06:00Humanity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>In Boone, North Carolina, a three-mile track of narrow asphalt and iron bridges creek-hops and rolls past meadows, sports fields, the ruin of an old dam and the pale blue tanks of a sewage plant. Start at the Armory, and you'll come first to the Equestrian Field. It was empty as a Roman arena yesterday when I and my husband and our two dogs strolled by, its grass perfect, untouched, an oval platter. The fence was freshly stained and smelled like biology class. Joggers went around it, not through it, and passed us going in both directions. A woman too heavy for her feet rested on a bench, then got up and tried again. Another runner passed, and for a moment the air smelled of eucalyptus. We aren't trees, but apparently we don't, from time to time, mind smelling like them.<br />
<br />
At the first bridge we met a mother and her small daughter walking a tiny dog. I asked what breed it was. It looked like a pug had crawled inside the glove-box of a terrier.<br />
<br />
"Oh," said the mother, "she's a Humane Society dog. Great dog. I think she'll find a good home."<br />
<br />
"So you're fostering her?"<br />
<br />
"No." The mother stroked her daughters' curly hair, and the daughter, holding the leash, imitated her, bending down and stroking the dog's fur. "We just like to stop by the Humane Society and take a doggie out for a walk. They really appreciate it when you do that. And it's so convenient, right here on the Greenway. Except that now they're moving at the end of the month."<br />
<br />
"That's a pity."<br />
<br />
"Well no, not really. We won't miss the sewage plant."<br />
<br />
We waved and walked on, taking a path that led away from the main one and into the trees. There we met a woman walking an old, gray-muzzled cattle dog off-leash. She made a move to tether him, considerately, but we told her we didn't mind. I asked where the trail came out, and she showed me where it joined the Greenway again. The arm she pointed with was bright as a chalked sidewalk, tattooed with blue and yellow daises. Her hair was wild, and it looked as though she'd been lying on her side, dreaming.<br />
<br />
At the power station was an old marker explaining how electricity came to Boone in 1915, lighting up a school and six residences. I wondered what it must have been like to get that first surge. The dam was nothing but old oak beams on the floor of the creek now, and the station a stone ruin that looked like a bombed church. At the creek's edge we met two college students. One was studying criminal justice, the other wanted to be a veterinarian. Her, dog, a Blue Heeler-Aussie mix, was named Beau, and playfully fought our dogs to hold on to his own toy.<br />
<br />
Around the next bend we started to smell sewage. The breeze flushed the stink up our noses, that smell you're ashamed to recognize as so familiar, as your own, magnified and gone stale. What a nuisance, we said. And right along the Greenway, too.<br />
<br />
"Although maybe we shouldn't fuss," my husband said, staring through the chainlink fence toward the cesspools. "We're looking at what's probably the single greatest human achievement, ever. It's what the whole of modern civilization rests on."<br />
<br />
Right next door to the plant were the low, dilapidated roofs of the Humane Society. It was easy to see why a move was underway. The buildings and kennels were small. The human stench too close. Two young women came out leading a hulking white dog. We stopped to say hello. His name was Scout; he was a year-and-a-half old, and they had just adopted him. It was sad, they said, how many dogs needed a home. Then Scout pulled them off into the grass. He had to use the bathroom.<br />
<br />
The Greenway ends here. Time to turn around and run the gauntlet of need and shame and power back to the arena and the Armory, with our dogs pulling ahead, sticking their noses in everywhere, judging how recent a mark was, and whether its architecture needed redoing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeohD3E-elI6ZHkOeYnFXVbki88wb1jmWIvdy1Jz5_phCyFM3J9k_rgdYrCLbvQZugY5_g2AQc0fAuxMBFvjONj79bQAP9ER9pb3TrYM85w8L1fRCPfX7CTXGZI72SKXtCY3FoMnLfh2E/s1600/New+River+Power+Plant+Boone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeohD3E-elI6ZHkOeYnFXVbki88wb1jmWIvdy1Jz5_phCyFM3J9k_rgdYrCLbvQZugY5_g2AQc0fAuxMBFvjONj79bQAP9ER9pb3TrYM85w8L1fRCPfX7CTXGZI72SKXtCY3FoMnLfh2E/s200/New+River+Power+Plant+Boone.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-47915921440783541882011-07-07T06:18:00.000-06:002011-07-07T06:18:25.778-06:00WallfishI learned a new word this week: to "wallfish" is to bury or conceal wires behind a wall by means of creating a hole in it, and then hooking or fishing the wires up through it. It's a mechanism for hiding what's messy, or for trapping what's live and dangerous in a safe place. I have Andrew to thank for my new word. He came to my house this week to install cable television in a room where wires and plugs had been lying around scattered like kelp with teeth. The first technician who'd come to the house hadn't wanted the job, but Andrew was up for it.<br />
<br />
"Sounds like in-house," Andrew said about the other guy. "They're always looking for excuses not to do things."<br />
<br />
"He said my cable wasn't grounded," I told him, "and it couldn't be done. Are you not in-house?" I gathered that meant he wasn't someone who worked directly for the cable company.<br />
<br />
"No, ma'am. I'm a contractor. But the ground's no big deal. I'll do it, and they can come by and ground it later."<br />
<br />
"If it's safe for you?"<br />
<br />
"It's no problem. Long as there's no lightning."<br />
<br />
"Have you ever been shocked?"<br />
<br />
"Not by our wires, ma'am. But by other people's, sure. Like the phone company. Somebody calls in while you're handling a line, and man, it can make your arm go numb." He grinned. Mischievous.<br />
<br />
Andrew was maybe nineteen, cleanshaven as a bootcamper, hair like a Beatle's. His accent was thick and smooth, butter melting in his mouth.<br />
<br />
"Andrew," I said while he got his monster of a drill bit out, "are you from around here?"<br />
<br />
"No ma'am. I'm from Ruffin, North Carolina. Tiny place. Only one stoplight. It's got lots of space. It's nice."<br />
<br />
"You like it better there than here?"<br />
<br />
"I do. But it's good work here, even if they don't pay us as much as in-house."<br />
<br />
"But I hope they pay you well," I said as he got ready to crawl under my house in the narrow and the dark and the heat, so he could fish the line up.<br />
<br />
"Did till a few months ago. Then they cut my pay about thirty percent."<br />
<br />
"But why would they do that?"<br />
<br />
"I'm not supposed to talk about the company. But they're trying to get rid of us independents, is my guess."<br />
<br />
He disappeared, and a few minutes later a line appeared miraculously through the sheetrock.<br />
<br />
He told me, when we were on the same floor again, that sometimes customers expected him to work in rain and lightning. He wasn't supposed to work in storms, but the week before a man had wanted him to run an aerial between two twenty-foot poles with a driving front blowing in.<br />
<br />
"So what did you do?"<br />
<br />
"I told him his line wasn't grounded," he laughed. "Sometimes, you know, you gotta find an excuse."<br />
<br />
I asked him if he'd gotten much training for all the unexpected things he had to do. He said he'd gotten a full eight weeks, but now the company was pushing trainees out into the field after only three. "It's crazy. Half the time I still don't know how to do what I need to do. I go real slow to make sure I'm doing it right. I don't know how these new guys are managing."<br />
<br />
"You don't seem slow to me."<br />
<br />
He was already checking my cable connection on his laptop. I jumped back. His machine had <i>crowed</i>--a rooster's lusty <i>cockle-doodle-doo!</i><br />
<br />
He grinned again. "It's just telling me there's a work order update. It used to be a woman's voice. But I changed her to a rooster."<br />
<br />
"Why'd you do that?"<br />
<br />
"It sort of wakes people up. One time I was doing a job at a church, and there was this prayer meeting going on in the next room, and they all had to come out and see if it was inside, it sounded so real. Plus, it's a great conversation starter with customers who don't want to talk to me."<br />
<br />
"Sometimes they don't want to talk to you?" What on earth did they do? I wondered. Just disappear while a boy jabbed live wire through a baseboard or danced up a telephone pole?<br />
<br />
But Andrew seemed perfectly capable. He didn't even need me to talk to him, I realized. He just wanted me to.<br />
<br />
"Some don't want to talk to begin with. But it gets them going."<br />
<br />
He covered the hole with a plate and gave me extra wire.<br />
<br />
"Do I owe you anything?"<br />
<br />
"Nope. It's already paid."<br />
<br />
It was getting late. "I hope this was your last job of the day."<br />
<br />
"It was."<br />
<br />
"I hope you won't have to work on the holiday." The Fourth was coming up.<br />
<br />
"I do. Saturday too."<br />
<br />
"Well Jesus, I hope you get time and a half."<br />
<br />
"We don't."<br />
<br />
He grinned and reminded me what number to call if I had any problems. And I couldn't for the life of me understand, I couldn't see, I couldn't guess, what lay behind that easy smile. The rooster gave out a last call, then was shut up in the laptop.<br />
<br />
--MDUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-5609516480999432022011-03-10T08:04:00.008-07:002012-02-26T15:01:21.035-07:00Grandmothers' StoryThis week, a dear friend of mine lost her grandmother.<br />
<br />
I lost my grandmother ten years ago.<br />
<br />
My husband lost his grandmother ten years before that.<br />
<br />
Grandmother Number One was named Marguerite.<br />
Grandmother Number Two was named Anna.<br />
Grandmother Number Three was named Cecilia.<br />
<br />
One grandmother lived to be one-hundred-and-two. She spent that last year of her life curled in a fetal position, blind.<br />
<br />
Another grandmother lived to be eighty-six. She spent the last year of her life not knowing where she was, a feeding tube slurping sea-sand into her stomach.<br />
<br />
Another grandmother died shouting at the nursing home attendants. The place where her right leg should have been was the place where they set their black bottoms, instead.<br />
<br />
"When you die you <i>got</i> to die!" she said flatly.<br />
<br />
The grandmother who was blind grew up in a bordello.<br />
<br />
The grandmother who lost her leg chased "the colored" off her property with a hoe.<br />
<br />
The grandmother who didn't know where she was traveled halfway around the world to be with the woman she loved.<br />
<br />
Two of them died without a wrinkle on their faces. (Beauty is that nurse who comes when you don't need her anymore.)<br />
<br />
One of them was married to a wildcatter.<br />
<br />
One of them (the racist) was hired to replace a first, dead wife with the same name. (The children hated her.)<br />
<br />
One--the one who traveled halfway around the world to be with the woman she loved--died on the morning of that lover's funeral.<br />
<br />
They fill the ground, like stars.<br />
<br />
--MDUnknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-4472413392072284792011-01-16T12:16:00.000-07:002011-01-16T12:16:33.732-07:00Adult Swim<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMmrB73yOEcG70RWtcBqfoGHFACZd_0k_98SmlvmTrUQcavVXWQoBxU1RAV9WG59JhZYo7x9BPJYvlSZpirM3osBIwktq0AngUAvvKO7huoW03xy5BjF6w5SdOQmeFucofPpimbmxcL7g/s1600/n651100913_1076612_6599.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMmrB73yOEcG70RWtcBqfoGHFACZd_0k_98SmlvmTrUQcavVXWQoBxU1RAV9WG59JhZYo7x9BPJYvlSZpirM3osBIwktq0AngUAvvKO7huoW03xy5BjF6w5SdOQmeFucofPpimbmxcL7g/s320/n651100913_1076612_6599.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In Austin a few months ago, after one of my lectures on writing and creativity, a woman in her forties came up to me and asked if she could talk to me about her dream of writing a book about her experiences as an immigrant in America. After chatting for a while, we decided to go and have a cup of coffee--my new friend was bright and articulate, the day was beautiful, and the setting (on wide, green Lake Austin) was energetic, with boaters and paddlers splashing all around us. The chance to sit in the sun and talk about memoir was irresistible, so we settled down at a table, and she shared her story, both unique and familiar to me (as an immigrant writer) about feeling neither here nor there, neither one thing nor the other, unsure of home but somehow, slowly, more sure of the self that crossed fluidly back and forth between two cultures. She told me her book would begin on an airplane . . .<br />
<br />
She asked me to tell her everything I knew about undertaking such a project (she was a tax specialist, and this was the word she used) and what it felt like; I remember telling her that the journey was long, required a great deal of passion and doggedness, and would take her through not just intellectual but emotional highs and lows. We talked about what she read, and what she liked to read. She'd never written anything creative before, she told me, or taken a creative writing class, but she had always believed, with hard work, she could do anything. She was so self-possessed I didn't doubt her for a moment. We parted with smiles and hugs, and agreed to stay in touch.<br />
<br />
Last week we spoke again, over the phone, and I was curious to hear how she was feeling about her project. She told me flatly she'd given up on the whole idea. After talking to me, she said, she'd admitted to herself that what she'd been carrying around in her head all these years was the fantasy of publishing a book--not the job of actually writing one. After our talk, she said, quite confidently, she'd understood she didn't have the patience to do it, the will, and it was time to let the fantasy go. She said it felt wonderful. Like a boulder lifted from her shoulders.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
A few weeks later I sat with another woman in her forties, an old, dear friend from high school whom I hadn't seen in ten years. We had dinner, and at first things were a little stilted, as things tend to be when a lot of water has gone under the legs of the bridge. Then finally we started talking not just about our successes, but about our many failures and detours and dead-ends. She told me she had never felt like a very creative person, though once she'd thought she would do something artistic that would make her wildly famous, like be a singer. She remembered, even now, very clearly the moment in her twenties when she realized it wasn't going to happen. She'd made peace with it a long time ago. It was fine.<br />
<br />
But then, very recently and out of the blue, she'd decided that she needed to be creative somehow, because she (a lawyer) was somehow less than she should be. So she bought every book she could find on throwing ceramic pots, and paid three thousand dollars to have a kiln installed in her garage. After a few months, and after much contemplation of the kiln, she sold it. Without ever having fired it up or touched a single piece of clay. She'd realized that it was a fantasy; that she really wasn't interested in doing what it took to make pots.<br />
<br />
"Are you okay?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"I'm fine. Do you know what I really like? <i>Finding</i> pots. Finding things. I love those treasure-hunting shows on TV. That's when I realized I don't want to be stuck in one place, in my garage. I want to travel. I want to find unexpected things."<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
One day I woke up and decided I needed to take swimming lessons. My mind had been seized, almost overnight, by the idea that I must swim the English Channel. It was a persistent dream. That I would become athletic. Buy a one-piece, regulation, approved bathing suit. Register with the Channel Swimming Association. Train for months on end. Arrive in England. Hire a pilot boat. Battle the Channel garbage, the tankers, the current to get to France (which tries to pull you away, I knew, just as you begin to reach it). Return triumphantly and, as is the right of every, and only, successful Channel swimmers, sign my name on that ancient pub wall. <br />
<br />
I read every book I could find about the crossing. I bought goggles. I discovered I had no natural talent for the crawl, that I was sorely lacking in bodyfat and buoyancy, and also that I didn't like and was in fact afraid of depths I couldn't reach with my big toe. I discovered, in fact, that I don't like to swim for more than thirty minutes at a time, and prefer keeping my head out of the water, even then. I started to let the dream go.<br />
<br />
It didn't feel like a relief, though. More like a death. The death of a universe, alternate though it might have been. The collapsing of a star.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
There is an art, of course, to relinquishment. It's often an act of will, not just a giving up. A creative leap. <i>This is not my place. Jump. Here I go.</i><i> </i><br />
<br />
I'm not quite sure I've mastered it.<br />
<br />
I looked today, again, at open swims, places to train in lakes and bays and oceans. I haven't been in the water since last summer. I don't like cold, you see. I won't swim in the winter. (The Channel is forty degrees.)<br />
<br />
When my new friend in Austin had told me it was my describing to her what it took to write a book that had driven the idea completely out of her head, I'd said something like, "Oh my God!" and made a sound that approached blanching over my mobile.<br />
<br />
"No, no, don't feel bad," she'd consoled me. "It made me see more clearly what I really want to do. And what I really want to do is just start working less. And have more time for myself. That is really the dream. The dream of time."<br />
<br />
<i>I want more time. </i><br />
<br />
<i>I want to be able to travel. To find things.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I want to sign my name on that ancient pub wall.</i><br />
<br />
In the dream, there are clues. But then we always knew that.<br />
<br />
<i>I want to sign my name.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
--MD<br />
<br />
Photo credit: <a href="http://www.brucebarone.com/">Bruce Barone</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-22886046058536549542010-12-21T09:39:00.001-07:002010-12-21T09:41:34.224-07:00Oil and Water . . . a Fundraiser for the Gulf Coast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidyfmY4BLRnfRiXzyGboGplmVo4CEsqf6D486mcYPDtB32n1HOlIInKB5LhLJRjBqdrUiMi0zNPl1zvfOb245JHvwEMn78i_IeTitw7CIFgc0EXwqFoe7Ga1jasiz4R3sEH7j5894czbk/s1600/oil+and+water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidyfmY4BLRnfRiXzyGboGplmVo4CEsqf6D486mcYPDtB32n1HOlIInKB5LhLJRjBqdrUiMi0zNPl1zvfOb245JHvwEMn78i_IeTitw7CIFgc0EXwqFoe7Ga1jasiz4R3sEH7j5894czbk/s1600/oil+and+water.jpg" /></a></div>Friends, I'm so pleased to have one of the essays from this blog, "<a href="http://americanstoriesnow.blogspot.com/2010/01/butterfly.html">Butterfly</a>," included in this anthology. If you're looking for a gift with a bit of heart this season, or simply want to support recovery from the BP spill, or simply like good collections of creative nonfiction/essays, I hope you'll check this out. From LL Publications:<br />
<br />
Members of the Southern Writers group <span style="font-style: italic;">She Writes</span>, Zetta Brown and Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson Brown, gathered submissions and created an anthology of stories, poems, and recollections in response to the BP Oil disaster in the Gulf. <a href="http://www.ll-publications.com/oilandwater.html">Oil and Water...and Other Things That Don’t Mix</a> features 27 authors, women and men all dealing with the theme: “Conflict...Resolution Optional.”<br />
<br />
All proceeds from <span style="font-style: italic;">Oil and Water...and Other Things That Don’t Mix</span> will go to directly benefit <a href="http://www.mobilebaykeeper.org/">MOBILE BAYKEEPER</a>, and <a href="http://www.bayareafoodbank.org/">BAY AREA FOOD BANK</a>, two charities helping to combat the effects of the spill and help the communities affected.<br />
<br />
Authors included in the collection are Jenne’ R. Andrews, Shonell Bacon, Lissa Brown, Mollie Cox Bryan, Maureen E. Doallas, Mylène Dressler, Nicole Easterwood, Angela Elson, Melanie Eversley, Kimeko Farrar, L B Gschwandtner, John Klawitter, Mary Larkin, Linda Lou, Kelly Martineau, Patricia Anne McGoldrick, Ginger McKnight-Chavers, Carl Palmer, Karen Pickell, Dania Rajendra, Cherie Reich, Jarvis Slacks, Tynia Thomassie, Amy Wise, Dallas Woodburn, and contributing editors Zetta Brown and Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson Brown.<br />
<br />
Retailers who wish to stock the Oil and Water anthology can contact the publisher directly: editor(at)ll-publications.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-26345546961758352032010-11-08T08:58:00.001-07:002010-11-08T08:59:01.977-07:00Celebration! ASN Recognized in Creative NonFiction Issue 39Dear friends, I'm taking a moment this morning to thank <a href="http://www.creativenonfiction.org/">Creative NonFiction</a>, one of our finest journals celebrating the form, for publishing "Meeting House," (re-posted below) in its Fall 2011 issue. Over the summer, CNF announced its quest to find examples of "truly literary blogging," and "Meeting House"/American Stories NOW was one of two blogs selected to be featured, chosen from over 800 considered by the editors. I'm pleased and honored, and delighted to post the piece again, for those of you who may have missed it the first time. Here's to the canvas we call flash non-fiction, and the quest to render the world a few words at a time. And don't forget to order your copy of CNF. Let's support the genre we love.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-37760434868868950802010-11-08T08:48:00.001-07:002010-11-08T08:49:05.236-07:00Meeting House<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXRupf0e0odgBupaFUhWoul-t9-mnA_idcIRdcsNiKPwKgJs5-kOWqUEntJZ6GU9RpBCwfPTPbQ8HYJtCcD1HDTIuVXCFmf4v6vQ8Ci1PpCS2WElkSSi1b0ieBh9DHiWTP6oHQ-4wBLiU/s1600/BarnSnowHatfield.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXRupf0e0odgBupaFUhWoul-t9-mnA_idcIRdcsNiKPwKgJs5-kOWqUEntJZ6GU9RpBCwfPTPbQ8HYJtCcD1HDTIuVXCFmf4v6vQ8Ci1PpCS2WElkSSi1b0ieBh9DHiWTP6oHQ-4wBLiU/s320/BarnSnowHatfield.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The Live Oak Meeting House, where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Society_of_Friends">Friends</a> gather each Sunday to sit in silence until the spirit moves them, wasn't entirely quiet, at first. The child in the pew in front of me whispered as she nuzzled against her grandmother's neck. The couple opposite me turned the pages of the books they had brought with them to read. A man behind me sniffled with a cold; in the windowseat to my left, two more children whispered and squirmed. A woman in front of the couple with the books wiped a tear from her eye, then began writing in a journal. Around and somehow over us was a sound--I was a visitor to the meeting, and thought at first it must be the cooling system, then decided it was recorded audio--inhaling and exhaling. Like amplified, human breathing.<br />
<br />
At last all was silent but for this sound. Even the children held their peace. The woman with the journal continued to write. A middle-aged man behind her, with his eyes closed and his hands folded in his lap, hadn't moved a muscle in the fifteen minutes since the meeting had begun. I turned my head a little to the right, and saw, tucked in the corner, a young, pale woman in a wheelchair, a white hose attaching her to a breathing machine. This was the sound filling the Live Oak Meeting House.<br />
<br />
After a few more minutes, a middle-aged man stood and said:<br />
<br />
"I'm sitting here thinking of a man who once told me he wished he was young again. He said to me: 'God I wish I was seventy again.' It was forty years ago when he said this to me. Across a chessboard. We were playing in a tournament together, and I was a teenager, and I wanted to win so badly. And this man, who was in his eighties, could see it. So he looked up at me and he said, 'God I wish I could be young again. Young people tend to think only about beginnings. What you need to do is think about your end game. Even when you're young. Think. Think that way.' He ended up teaching me so much about chess, that afternoon. And then I never saw him again. Or thought about him much. Until last week. I remembered him, for one reason and another, and realized that after all these years I might be able to look him up on the Internet. And I couldn't believe what I found. He'd had a biography written about him. He'd helped to train Bobby Fischer. He'd been somebody.<br />
<br />
"The more I read, the more I was astonished. He'd spent his whole life in and out of penitentiaries. He'd done time at Alcatraz. One of his specialties was stealing cars. Especially Volkswagens. He loved to steal Volkswagens. He'd steal them and turn back the odometers. And there was more. In the 1930's he'd been arrested while holding the bag of money in the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping case. He hadn't kidnapped the baby; he'd only claimed to, in a fraud, and then demanded ransom money, and when they came and gave it to him he got caught. Off to jail he went. His whole life was like that. Stealing cars. In and out of jail. What finally stopped him was a car accident. In a Volkswagen. When he was seventy years old. After that he just played chess. His whole life he was a con-man . . . I guess I'm just thinking, you never know who's sitting across from you."<br />
<br />
The man sat down.<br />
<br />
The woman's regular, controlled breathing filled the room again. I liked the sound of it. I liked the way it divided up the minutes, made me feel my own breath, and aware of the breathing around me, made me glad the woman was breathing, and getting help to breathe, and glad we were all breathing, and that we still had time.<br />
<br />
At a signal, the children rose and were guided out to daycare, where their assignment for the day was to make a heart like a mirror, a heart covered in tinfoil, so that when you held it up, you would see your own face.<br />
<br />
<br />
--MD<br />
<br />
Photo credit: <a href="http://www.brucebarone.com/">Bruce Barone</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-68330962412973839002010-08-25T17:28:00.005-06:002010-08-29T15:40:50.119-06:00What Am I Doing Here?I meet Dale at the trailhead to Flat Pass. The rains have churned the trail to pieces. Our dogs run ahead of us, open-mouthed, instant friends. They plunge down the hill toward the creek. Dale walks with a dryer sheet tucked like a television make-up tissue into her collar, to keep the flies off. Dale knows unexpected things. For years she worked for the FBI, one of the first group of 35 women to be hired and trained as agents by the Bureau. In those days her neck was draped with gold and diamonds: she worked Corruption, and one of her longest undercover assignments was posing as a rich woman eager to make more money by breaking the law. She fingered wiseguys, businessmen, politicians on the take. In those days, they didn't expect a pretty woman to be packing both a tape recorder and heat.<br />
<br />
"Did you like the work?" I ask, impressed.<br />
<br />
"I loved it. And I was good at it."<br />
<br />
Even though we're in the backcountry her blonde hair is perfectly combed, her powder in place, and I can see it would have been easy not to recognize her for Johnny Law.<br />
<br />
"Was it tough work?"<br />
<br />
"Well, it's just like they say. You go in thinking you're going to save the world. Then you despair. Some of the men I spent months investigating got off, one way or another. You ask yourself why you're doing it. Then you become resigned. Then you decide just to do what you can right where you are. You try to do good where you can."<br />
<br />
Since retiring from the Bureau, Dale grows grass and raises sheep and has the wool shorn and sent to the Navajo reservation to be worked into rugs. She loves her animals. You can have a special bond with sheep, she tells me. They know you, and you know them. "They're my friends, my companions. They're wonderful," she adjusts the little white Bounce sheet at her neck.<br />
<br />
Her days are almost busier now, she tells me, than when she was an agent. From morning till night she's working on her property, and the lack of good help doesn't make anything easier.<br />
<br />
"You can't get anyone to do any labor. It's so strange."<br />
<br />
We talk for a while about the strange shape our country is in. The dogs find the creek again and stand in the middle of it, with the water rushing all around their legs, trying to knock them down. We talk about how much we love our dogs; we talk about our families. Dale never married; in the old days she was always working odd hours, with never any time to meet anyone; then later on she found that men weren't too keen on a woman who knew more about firearms than they did. She could see the insecurity in their eyes before they walked away.<br />
<br />
Her father had died some years before, but her mother was still alive, or rather dying under the care of hospice in Colorado. Not one thing alone was killing her but many things all at once. Once a month Dale left her sheep to go across the state line.<br />
<br />
"My sister and I take turns. I go, and most of the time my mother doesn't even recognize me. She just keeps asking me, 'Where am I? What am I doing here? What am I doing here? Please, what am I doing here?'"<br />
<br />
Dale calls the dogs out of the water and gives them each a treat. They come to her hand and then race off again through the scrub. We turn around and start heading back toward the trailhead. Dale has to get back to her sheep. She also had a llama once, but the relationship didn't work out.<br />
<br />
"Llamas don't like women," she tells me.<br />
<br />
<br />
--MDUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-14127338676329948312010-08-22T11:12:00.005-06:002010-08-25T17:36:51.542-06:00On Noticing Small Things<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRKvfMRXVBVZekSOOcoJkjDQ9BsgyM8GvDoWPu2Z9tecS9lcoWqGaq89nOsbGixvhYnQOuLhhKHZwTa5idTkLJvCs4gAo-5Z2gVx-QObyoX9coi1RcRz1cmaOkD6G3jyP_7Oz4u49Z23Q/s1600/4314_81922555913_651100913_1841606_1235131_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRKvfMRXVBVZekSOOcoJkjDQ9BsgyM8GvDoWPu2Z9tecS9lcoWqGaq89nOsbGixvhYnQOuLhhKHZwTa5idTkLJvCs4gAo-5Z2gVx-QObyoX9coi1RcRz1cmaOkD6G3jyP_7Oz4u49Z23Q/s320/4314_81922555913_651100913_1841606_1235131_n.jpg" /></a></div><br />
On noticing small things: If you haven't done this lately, do it. The world is an astonishment, a golden coin always jingling in your pocket: whenever you want you can take it out and marvel at its richness.<br />
<br />
And you are a part of it. You are of the same value. There is the elaborate beadwork of your own skin. There is the perfect array of your eyelashes (bat your eyes, feel them). There are the textures of the things your eyes fall on, some of them as fine as your own skin, even finer, and some as broad as the hull of a ship. There are tiny things that move and crawl in our gutters, and the way water washes in a gutter, sometimes in long straws, and there is the rather brilliant design of the piece of furniture you might be sitting on, to say nothing of grass and sand, that never complain when we sit there, what resilience, what beauty, what fineness. When was the last time you looked at a cloud, a shadow, the fold in your elbow, the perfect roundness of a dinner plate, a clever, clever cardboard box, the shapes of words themselves?<i> Them selves.</i> Oh it's delicious, it's funny, it's charming! And there is the way rust grows and even garbage lies, waiting to become something else. And sounds. Not just one, most of them come in layers. And your ear can hear. Have you listened? Have you tried to separate the sounds? Take your hand and feel whatever is near you. Lick your lips and notice the taste. Close your eyes and watch color turn down, as though it had volume, as though it were also a sound.<br />
<br />
Open your eyes. Smell the air. What is it? <br />
<br />
Extraordinary. Take time. Count the riches. Brush the earth off as happily as you would the roughest diamond.<br />
<br />
--MD<br />
<br />
<br />
Photo credit: <a href="http://www.brucebarone.com/">Bruce Barone</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-10099753969111736512010-07-22T13:30:00.006-06:002010-08-25T18:26:26.337-06:00The Cut<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2NbvpCcNJ_NgI2lw_JfdqJZw-XwcHlloYSB0vfrKMu8t_ielJN_3veEeUymnXz7-3fU_nL51K8nIzXVRYbNZpnaJoR6oYlGBiHrEqPaBzIw7hh8mSpSDZctEWvSUKV29HXpeGs61yABI/s1600/In+the+Saddle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2NbvpCcNJ_NgI2lw_JfdqJZw-XwcHlloYSB0vfrKMu8t_ielJN_3veEeUymnXz7-3fU_nL51K8nIzXVRYbNZpnaJoR6oYlGBiHrEqPaBzIw7hh8mSpSDZctEWvSUKV29HXpeGs61yABI/s200/In+the+Saddle.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span id="goog_811920512"></span><span id="goog_811920513"></span>She cuts my hair.<br />
<br />
Her own is a starburst of magenta and yellow, fireworks on display. It must be fun, every morning, I think, to stand your hair up on end. It must make you feel constantly surprised.<br />
<br />
We talk. She cuts my hair whenever I'm in town, and though months pass before we see each other again, we always pick up as though she's just lathered my scalp under water the day before. We talk about our work and travels, we gossip about celebrities, we mourn or praise the state of the union, we admit we're not exercising as much as we used to, we share a little about our families.<br />
<br />
"How is he?" I ask about her husband while she drapes the bib around me (it always makes me feel like a little girl again).<br />
<br />
Her husband (like my <a href="http://americanstoriesnow.blogspot.com/2010/06/call-to-my-father.html">father</a>) was diagnosed at 51 with congestive heart failure. He's already lived longer than expected--thanks, she's told me, to his athletic background and his mighty lungs. He was an avid mountain biker and the owner of a successful mountain bike shop in Colorado; but at 51 he'd been told by doctors that if he wanted to prolong his life, he needed to spend the rest of it tethered to an oxygen tank. At first he refused.<br />
<br />
"But . . . but how did you feel about that?" I ask her, wondering, thinking: how do you manage, how do you go on when someone you love pushes away the line that could keep you as one?<br />
<br />
"Well," she combs my hair and then has me part it myself, "it really troubled me at first. But then I made my peace with it. It's his life, after all. We respect each other that way, these days."<br />
<br />
I try to say something reassuring, consoling: "Well, at least you can look back and say it's been a good marriage." <br />
<br />
"Oh yes," she nods her mane and takes her scissors out of her pocket and narrows her bright, eyelined eyes. "But we're not married anymore."<br />
<br />
I stare in the mirror. I follow her round, nimble, aproned body moving around my small, bibbed one. For the last three years, we've been talking like old friends, while my cut hair fell over her toes in her flip-flops--and I didn't know this?<br />
<br />
"You're not married?"<br />
<br />
"No. I still say he's my husband. But we divorced years ago. So many things weren't working. He was very . . . competitive."<br />
<br />
Then she tells me that, years before, when they were first married, he had wanted her to mountain bike with him. And so she had. She had learned how. And she had frantically tried to keep up with him while he asked her to do more and more and more impossible things, impossible climbs, straining, gasping to push her body beyond what it wanted to do, beyond what she wanted it to do, beyond what she wanted at all.<br />
<br />
"I would be on a mountain with him--I mean dying for air, just <i>dying</i>--and he wouldn't even wait for me. He was like that. He loved doing better than other people. He loved beating men younger than he was. Everyone. Everything was like that. He wanted the upper hand. I wanted to live in a city. He wanted to live in the country. He wanted me to work in his business. I wanted my own shop. So, finally, we divorced, and then he got diagnosed, and I came back to take care of him. And now he can hardly do anything. Do you know what happened one day?"<br />
<br />
"What?" I hold very still as she razors the back of my neck.<br />
<br />
"One day he found out he couldn't get up a hill anymore. How nearly impossible it was for him to take a breath. And then he came home and he apologized to me. He said he'd never known how hard it could be to climb."<br />
<br />
"But you've stayed divorced."<br />
<br />
She starts trimming my bangs. Expertly. Fast. "Believe me, we're much better off as friends. We each have our own space in the house. And now I can even admit I learned so much from him. I mean, I was one amazing mountain biker. But me, I know when enough is enough."<br />
<br />
Then she says that the doctors didn't really understand the nature of his heart disease--that that they had told him there was nothing to indicate why his heart was failing, and that they could only speculate that he had used his heart in the wrong way when he was younger, pushing it in the wrong way.<br />
<br />
"He's doing the oxygen now?" <br />
<br />
"Oh yes. 24/7. Wait, this is going to be cute," she says and gets the hand mirror and spins me around in the chair, so that I can see what she could see, what she has seen, all along.<br />
<br />
--MDUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7836152877094998001.post-1288757773520032562010-07-03T17:37:00.004-06:002010-07-03T18:46:57.038-06:00Small-Town FourthWe got to the park just after the parade of water and fire trucks and decorated bicycles had gone around its small green square. Uncle Sam, his top-hat made of something soft, like the coat of a stuffed animal, waded in his long striped pants through the grass. The water trucks had snugged up close to the curb, under the cottonwoods, and their giant hoses were now feeding the white slip 'n' slide the children were screaming and hurtling their bodies over. The park's pool has been closed all summer for renovation. <i>Vote for Sheriff White</i> the side of the biggest, shiniest water truck says.<br />
<br />
The signs around the park clearly say No Dogs Allowed, On Leash Or Off, but our dogs stay politely near the curb, and that woman's mini-Yorkie pup doesn't really count yet as a dog, small as a haircomb, and anyway petting-camels are being unloaded from a horse trailer, the first one already tied by its red leash to a tree. You can forget how huge a camel is, how hairy its hump. The children who've never seen one before stare. Those of us who have, stare. Cotton candy freezes in beards under everyone's chins.<br />
<br />
Jamie from Animal Control comes by in her black uniform--she doesn't mind if you call her the dog-catcher, by the way--and bends down to pet our dogs. She tells us she lost her beloved Yodi, part-coyote, part dog, three days ago. She says she can't talk about it, and goes on stroking our youngest, her eyes wet.<br />
<br />
The mayor walks by and doesn't smile. Maybe he's tired. Maybe politicians need a holiday, too. Under the gazebo a high-school girl is reading her winning essay answering the question, "Does America Still Have Heroes?" We can't hear a single word she's saying, what with the children dive-bombing into the water just to her right. I worry about how long she practiced, if she imagined silence and dignity attending her words. I stand still to let her know I see her. A young Navajo boy is practicing his lasso-work while his mother sells fry bread. He expertly ropes a mock-metal-calf he's brought with him, the knot around its neck as perfect as a pretzel.<br />
<br />
Everyone wants to eat something, ice cream, palm-shaped sugar cookies, popcorn, cotton candy, coffee cake. It's ninety degrees. Our friend Tad is selling oven-fired pizzas, delicious, but business has been slow, and he may have to move with his wife and baby to another, cooler town. Behind him there is one ride, something like a red starfish whirling wildly. It looks dangerous.<br />
<br />
The average age in the park is eight. The old people look young today in their shorts. Only their bare knees show the long haul, like a camel's. A solitary man is trying to sell his apricots from a picnic table.<br />
<br />
Our neighbor walks by; he and his wife built their dream house in this town a few years back, a beautiful bed-and-breakfast; and then, soon after it opened, she died.<br />
<br />
He has his new girlfriend with him now.<br />
<br />
It's a new year, America.<br />
<br />
Just beyond the apricots, behind the sign giving the park's name, every kind of bicycle you can imagine lies in the grass, unwatched.<br />
<br />
--MD<br />
<br />
<b><i>You can listen to me read this story <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFtAKtvSa9A">here. </a></i></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1