10 Minutes & Counting

I’m Liking A Lot of Different Music These Says

2012-02-04T19:23:00.000-08:00

Testing...
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I’m liking a lot of different music these days. Country swing, traditional African, gamelan, underground soul from the ‘70s. I’m feeling very free this way, unjudgmental, like I’ve taken down a barrier, and I could walk into any living room in the world and sit down at their dinner table.

I haven’t always been so easy going. I have to admit, I was a snob, white intellectual music, Prog Rock and Punk for many, many years. It was a way I could define myself as better I think, not like everybody else. But you know, I was just another fucking individual.

Here after 40, I’m easier in my skin, my ears are more permeable. Since my wife died, and I moved beyond the crying and screaming thing, I’ve been able to live with others, I have more empathy, don’t think I’m better. I can let the world in because I know that 99% of what humans have to deal with is all the same, and to try to live as if I was completely a different beast, it’s a fools errand. I was a fool. Or a teenager, one for way too long.

My daughter goes to the public school now, for her 7th grade year. It’s not as good as the Waldorf in some ways, but it’s more like the world we actually LIVE in in so many others. She misses her friends at the old school, but I thin k this is better. A human among humans you know. She’ll be a better person, better at being a person, for all this. What she sees as isolation now, she’ll realize is integration when she’s older.

Once my Lara, my wife, and I thought we would take Sandy out of school for what we thought were the Horrible Middle Years—7th, 8th grade. We would learn to sail, travel around the world and home school Sweet Sand. But then Lara was dying, and time passed. I have gone through a gate, and it only goes one way. It is time for me to be with people.

I Have Liked My Ways.

2011-07-20T06:15:00.000-07:00

I had no idea where this was going when I started, just had Starman by Bowie going through my head, because my daughter just finished performing in a musical version of The Little Prince, in which they sing an adaption of that song.

But then the E. A. Poe voice stepped forward, and then I had to figure out what the twister ("Here comes the twister") was going to be. The twister was you.

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I have liked my ways. David Bowie in the morning, hash browns and eggs, with a glass of gin, for a leisurely dinner.

Living alone has not always been to my pleasure, and I spent three years as a husk after Maria died, kicking the can of the task of living down the road, day after day, unable to face anything but the myriad tasks of the lawyers, the job, keeping the house from collapsing under entropy and sadness. I did not have the strength for hope.

But in Year 4, a scrim gradually began to be drawn from my eyes, and I saw that hope was not needed to live a fulfilling life. Just the opposite. I found that—for myself at least—the trick was to fine tune the moment, bring myself into line with what each second exactly calls for.

I got a cat. She is something of my mentor in this practice. While I never had a desire for another living being under my roof, except first a woman and then more specifically Mariah, Mariah, Mariah, I now find Henrietta—Henry as I call her—quite satisfactory, and I learn a great deal from her in regards to how to lead a life like a self-respecting mammal.

All of this brings me to the matter of you. Your very presence asks me to change my ways. I do not want to change my ways.

When the Dawn Light Changes, Does the Light Change You?

2011-07-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

Struggling to get back to a daily writing practice, but not easy, like exercising--once I stop, all momentum is lost. Pushed this out, but no time for anything else. But this is pleasant, isn't it?

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When the dawn light changes, does the light change you?

I am walking in the morning, before anyone is up—wife, daughter, neighbors. I walk our dog up the private hill road where the retired fire chief yelled at us once for walking…he died a year ago and I don’t think he will yell anymore. The light is gray and my dog has her ears up—she is smelling, seems in conversation with the world. There are small sleepy bird noises coming from the hedge to my right where I know the quail live. We see the birds skittering along the shoulder of the road later on in the heat of the day.

The heat of the day. I like that phrase. The meat of the day, the center. It seems a different, distant world compared to this silent foggy thing. Am I different now, just woke up, not a drink of water or coffee, no one talked to, no one seen? Am I the same me of the meat of the day?

A man steps from the bushes about a hundred yards up the road. He’s wrapped in a tarp or blanket, beard, hat, has a bundle that might be a bed roll that he’s swinging by a rope. The dog sees him and her ears go forward, but she says nothing. I keep walking forward. We pass.

“Good morning,” he says in a deep clear voice, not looking at me, walking past with a decided stride. He walks like he’s going to work. Perhaps he is.

“Good morning,” I say back. And then he’s gone, and the dog and I are walking up the hill. There’s a little more light than there was and I feel it working on my system like coffee, that and the adrenaline. First contact in the day changes me.

They Rose Up Like It Was Judgement Day.

2011-07-08T06:46:00.000-07:00

Everybody loves Judgement Day.

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They rose up like it was Judgement Day.

Leo was loading the tent, sleeping bags, camp stove in the car, and Laura made breakfast, while their daughter ran around feeding pets, pets, so many pets. “Are we sure that Randy knows how to take care of everybody?” Emily asked to the room, watching pellets sink in the goldfish bowl.

“I’m leaving him a spreadsheet on the table,” her father said as he hoisted the cooler, “with the routine for everybody. Everybody has a routine, and they should be fine, Boo-Boo.”

“I just want to make sure we beat traffic,” Laura said, scooping oatmeal into bowls.

The phone rang. It was 6am. Emily picked up the cordless. “Selko residence,” she said officiously, then waited. “Yes, we have a cat, and yes, it’s name is Rudy. Who is this?” Pause. “Uh-huh….” Pause again, then she threw the phone to the ground and ran out of the room, sobbing.

Leo picked it up. “Hello?” he said.

“Hello sir. I live around the corner on Willow.” A man’s voice said on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news at such an early hour, but your cat--uh, Rudy--seems to have fallen off the roof of my house and broken his back.”

As Alina Walked in Her Front Door the Phone Was Ringing

2011-07-04T05:51:00.000-07:00

Trying to get back to my prime directive here--write a story in 10 minutes. For me, a story is a piece of writing where at least one individual starts out at one place--emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, ethically, etc.--in their lives, and then is changed. I tried to just do that here: coming home from work as always, an unexpected phone call, information that is transformative.

By the way, I imagine it's insurance fraud.

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As Alina walked in her front door the phone was ringing. She ran to catch it, but it stopped just as she picked up the receiver.

She poured herself a glass of wine, red, and waited for the phone to beep indicating a message.

A few minutes later: “Ms. Prigard, this is David Lionels from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Can you give me a call at your convenience? The number is…”

Alina felt scared. She had a life as the program director for a Senior Day center that did not include the FBI, and she had never expected it to. She called back the number.

“Hello? This is Alina Prigard. How can I help you, Mr. Lionels?”

“thank you for calling back, Ms. Prigard. Is your father William Prigard?”

Her stomach sank, although she didn’t know why. “Uh, my father was William Prigard. He’s been dead for three years.”

“Ms. Prigard. I don’t want to alarm you, but can you come down to our local office here? We believe your father is not dead, and may be in trouble.”

The Dog Preferred Rum to Gin.

2011-06-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

Not a complete story, but the premise alone made me laugh. David Foster Wallace talked in some interview he did about how he had a weakness for the gag in his stories, and he always had to be on the lookout for that.

Well, I'm no DFW, and I am surrendering today to amusing myself. I imagined this story going on to being some variant on the old joke about the second-hand parrot that spouts obscenities in front of its new prim owner. This dog is an unrepentant alcoholic. Shirley and the narrator run experiments, setting up a line of shot glasses with different kinds of drink in 'em. The dog drinks them all, moaning to herself, but starts with the rum every time. They speculate on Sheba's previous life.

That would be a pretty little story.

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The dog preferred rum to gin.

The second night after we’d brought Sheba home from the pound, she was asleep on her pillow in the living room, and we were celebrating the first warm night of spring with the windows open and rum & Cokes. We had—how shall I say it?—abandoned the living room suddenly for the bedroom that evening. We had barely sipped our drinks before moving on to the next stage of the night, and we were in some state of disarray, when we heard a noise from the living room: a bump, a lapping and a crunching, and what sounded like a human kind of moaning.

We were supposed to be moaning, so who was that?

In the living room, on the coffee table in front of the couch where we’d just been sitting, was sheba, our new rescue dog, standing over our abandoned drinks and lapping them up, chewing on the ice.

“Sheba! Down! Off the table,” I shouted. She looked over at us, tail down, head low and ashamed, then stuck her nose back in my glass and did something I didn’t know a dog could do—she pursed her lips and sucked up the last of the brown liquid from the bottom of the glass. Then she jumped off the table and fell asleep on her pillow, snoring. They hadn’t told us at the pound that the dog snored.

Now, we are not regular drinkers, maybe once a week we imbibe. We could only assume, based on our knowledge of dogs in general, that it was the Coke part of those drinks, the sugar, that our new pet was after.

Whispering, Whispering, Whispering, She Gently Moved

2011-06-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

There is nothing hidden in this. It is what it is.

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Whispering, whispering, whispering, she gently moved.

The child was asleep, the husband was asleep. Before opening the door, coming out of her office, she turned off the light so that no rays would bleed into the late times of the house, wake something. The only variable she could not control was the thump, then click click click of the dog’s toenails across the hardwood floor, glad to see her, goddammit, but the husband was a light sleeper and the dog was going to wake him up in the bungalow house.

“Goddammit, Bruno,” she whispered. The Australian Shepherd was bumping her with his nose, but she put her hand on the dog’s head softly, and guided him to the front door so he could pee. Dog always had to pee in the middle of the night. Like her husband when he woke up.

They walked out into the driveway, woman and dog, and while Bruno squatted over a ragged patch of grass growing through the concrete she stared at the wire of crescent moon, the toss of stars. The book was done, she wanted to shout.

Back inside, after moving the door slowly to decrease is creak, she got Bruno settled on his pillow then stood outside her bedroom, undressing. Inside, she dumped her wad of clothes on top of where the dresser was in the dark and slowly lifted the blanket and slipped onto the cold sheet.

“Are you finished?” her husband’s voice asked.

“I think I’m finished,” she whispered, reaching a hand out to him.

“Be right back. I have to pee,” he said.

A Peach Is Juicy, but You Are Not a Peach

2011-06-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

A risk--or a prerequisite--of any genre is that the author will play to the form. In this genre-of-one (do I flatter myself? Is it just any blog?), I find myself writing to the opening line and thus the title. I post new entries to TMAC on Facebook and Twitter, and I know I have such a short moment to gain attention, get someone to click, that I often give into the good opening line (which by the rules of the game I've assigned myself, becomes the title). This is one such moment of weakness. A nice sentence, but no real story today. Just a scene.

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“A peach is juicy, but you are not a peach. That would be a false syllogism.”

“But isn’t a syllogism in the formation of, like, the formula?” They were walking in the Arboretum of the park, a dilapidated section around a reflecting pond where the weeds and willows had overcome any sense of display. She was in a sundress, to meet the sun on its first big day of spring. “A peach is juicy. I am juicy. Therefore, I am a peach.” She looked at Dan under her eyelashes. It was an old fashioned kind of flirting, not usual for Wanda, and he thought it nice on her. “That would be a false syllogism.”

He took her hand. “Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t.”

“Oh no,” Wanda took her hand back and flounced. “Now,” she said in a sing-song, “you are talking metaphor.”

They were silent, looking at a turtle on a log. “Where did your parents get the name Wanda?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know. My mom always said Ask your dad, and my dad always gave a different answer. Because we Wanda little girl like you. Because you’re a magic Wanda. And don’t even ask about my middle name.”

“What’s your middle name? I didn’t know you had a middle name.”

“Parnassus. I was named after a bus route.”

No More Time of Endless Days

2011-06-22T05:28:00.000-07:00

Been reading Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel this week. He's such an old-fashioned, European, unapologetic intellectual, and he talks about a lot of things. But one idea that struck me was about characters that aren't based on psychological traits, but historical ones. He of course discusses Don Quixote as a in a time who is just facing the bare inkling that the future might not be endless, and he is rebelling against that possibility.

I've been thinking a lot about--I won't try to speak for all of these times and everyone--how people around me, give off the smell of the end of time, a lack of future. How many of us really believe anymore in endless vistas of years, centuries, eons? It would be a great relief (for me) to believe in such a thing.

Raymond here makes a conscious decision to do that. He's kind of a modern Don Quixote, or perhaps Christopher Robin.

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“No more time of endless days,” Raymond thought. “I am on a one way street, and could stop now as well as later.”

Ray didn’t seem old to his wife, or to his neighbors. Not young, not old. But to his son he seemed ancient, and when Ray looked at his child, he could remember how the world smelled at 6am after a first rain, when bacon was frying, or when he was forced to kiss his gramma. Holding hands with his son, Ray brushed up against an old immortality, and knew it was in the rearview mirror.

“Can I walk back?” he thought to himself in bed. “Standing at the edge of the world, just turn and walk back.” He didn’t say this to Mary, his wife, who was reading Modern Chicken magazine on the pillow beside him. She was confident it was the end of time, an American Apocalyptic, and she would just think he was having a midlife crisis, Peter Pan Syndrome, in denial.

The next morning, Raymond turned around. Was that sun rising or setting? The road was so long and it was all uphill. Raymond hoisted his pack, but he already felt very tired.

The Bird Was Diving

2011-06-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

It's ok, but a little obvious. Layer a metaphor on top of a bad situation. Nothing actually happens. I could have done, "Watching the poor cat, I knew I had to leave my job no matter what."

Yuck. That would have been even worse.

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The bird was diving, squawking, swinging back and forth over the cat’s head like a pendulum. The cat just sat in the middle of the road, his head down, scowling I imagined. He gave a slight jump each time the bird pulled a tuft of hair out of his head, but other than that, he showed no acknowledgment.

We had wondered about Smokey going bald this spring, had sat in the evening on the couch with him in our lap, petting him, speculating: flea allergies, fights, etc. But now I had the answer. I called Terrie outside.

“Look at this!” I shouted.

She stared. “Why don’t you think he does anything? Why doesn’t he fight back? He’s a cat.” The bird was clearly flying away with tufts of the cats fur. To soften the nest of beloved babies? Raise chicks with no fear of the smell of cat? A taking of scalps?

“Maybe he doesn’t know any better?” I wondered. “Maybe he thinks this is the whole world, just one peck, peck, peck after another.”

I hated my job, I had hated my job. But I had continued at if for six years because it’s what I knew how to do to make money. Unfortunately it was the skill set I hated and the attitude it made me take in the world—not these particular customers, not this particular boss, not coworkers who I could escape from. I hated to do what I had to do to make a living.

“Maybe Smokey thinks this is as good as it gets, when all he has to do is walk away.”

As if on cue, the cat stood up and briskly started trotting toward the house. The bird continued diving, screaming, pecking. Later that evening, we saw that the cat had scabs on his head.

Dolly Had Watched through the Kitchen Window

2011-06-09T08:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome back. To us all. It's been a long time since I did a 10 Minutes, hopefully this is the beginning of something beautiful. A summer fling.

I got at a little of what I wanted this story to be, but it didn't quite go the limit. Maybe in an extended version, Dolly could get to some of her own wildness, her own inner hive. In this, I just got to her fear.

Enjoy.

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Dolly had watched through the kitchen window as the man settle the box of honeybees into their new home. When imagining their arrival, she had seen herself out there with him in her new veil from the store, her soft leather gloves, the jacket so white that even the zipper was white. But when he got out of his truck in the driveway with the box of stinging insects, after he had insisted that she put her hands on it and she had felt the steady hum of its small, endless motor, she had demurred from joining him in the hives installation.

“You go ahead and insert it,” she had said to the man, “and when Reynard comes home, we’ll open up the hive together.”

He replied, “It’s nice to do it with someone who knows what their doing first.”

“I’ll wait for Reynard.”

From her safe spot behind the glass she had watched in horror as he opened up the beautiful empty white hive box with the little copper roof she and Reynard had set in the catnip in the corner, then had unceremonious poured thousands upon thousands of bugs into the box. It looked worse than pointless. You pour them in but they’re just flying right out again. He might as well be pouring a box of air and expecting it to stay. Hostile, wild air.

Even after Dolly heard the man’s truck pull away—she had brought him a glass of water to the door and thanked him, afraid he might bring in one of the tiny attackers with him—she stood at the window and watched the black cloud fly around the box, aghast at what she and Reynard had done.

They had put in a raised bed vegetable garden—good. They had taken up their lawn and planted native plants—good. They had three chickens in a small vertical coop in the corner of their yard from which they were already getting eggs—messy, but alright.

But now they had done this. On the lure of something sweet—saving the world, creating their little Eden, preparing themselves for something, anything that history might bring tomorrow, or tomorrow, or tomorrow—she had allowed this venom to enter her home.

She watched the bees fly around the white box, her garden. They were not tame, they were not fenceable, they were wild. How had she and Reynard let this wildness enter their life?

I’m In Love with Weasel.

2011-03-10T06:51:00.000-08:00

This girl seems to be a character from "Grease."

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I’m in love with Weasel. He’s a quiet man, but when he says something, it matters, and even if he doesn’t say much his presence speaks volumes. Weasel walks in the room, and everybody notices.

And he’s no slouch on the eyes either. Tall, a little over six feet, I think what they call an aquiline nose, dark hair and pale skin, with a bit of a widow’s peak that makes him seem vulnerable, human.

I am in love with Weasel.

Last week, Weasel showed up at my house and just waited on the front porch while I put myself together. I invite him in but he and my mom don’t get along well. “What kind of boy is named Weasel?” my mom says.

I tell her, “It’s Hungarian. It’s an old family name.”

“Bella,” she says, “It’s a fucking rodent.”

Anyway, he was out on the front porch, when Christie’s “boy friend,” Raymond, showed up. Raymond is not trustworthy, and Weasel knows it because I told him so. Not to gossip, but so that he has all the information is all. Anyway, Raymond comes up on the porch and sees Weasel standing there, waiting.

“Dude,” Raymond says. He calls all guys dude like he’s their friend. He’d call my dad dude if he was still alive. Mom thinks Raymond’s something excellent because he calls her Ma’am. “Dude. Why you standing on the front porch? Mrs. Randall always makes cookies for the boys.”

Now Weasel knows about Raymond, but he chooses not to engage. “Diabetic,” he just says.

Because that’s the kind of guy Weasel is.

When the Elephants Come to Town

2011-03-08T05:44:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I just really want the opening line.

Another rule that has evolved in this blog, but is not in the Official Rules, is that I use the opening sentence, or some piece of it, as the title, sort of like is done with poetry sometimes. I started doing this so I that I wouldn't agonize over a title after I had dashed off a story. But over time what I've found is that it has a bit of the opposite effect: I know the opening line, here on the web is going to be the sales pitch for the posting, so I try to make it a good one. I'm basically ok with this, I gave into the idea that I'm an entertainer (or want to be) with an audience (or want to have one) some time ago. But this means I often have a whizz bang opening line and no idea where it's going to go.

Not to say this isn't sometimes the way I'm writing when I do longer stuff with no timer on.

This story, if it works at all, has the locus of it's narrative evolution in the reader instead of in the characters.

Blah, blah, blah.

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When the elephants come to town, there’s hardly enough living rooms to accommodate them all.

As winter wraps itself up, and the rains lessen but don’t stop, the days get longer but are not long enough, the nights are above freezing but we feel the first kick of spring winds, all those elephants that have been crowding toward our city line come tramping into the houses of the town, and they all want a living room to stand in the middle of.

The wife down the street, in the couple that seemed like such an odd, good fit, casually mentions to somebody while she’s walking the dog that she and her husband are getting a divorce.

The adult brother and sister who live with their ailing father, stand in front of the house they grew up in, screaming at each other in the middle of the afternoon.

The nice man who lives by himself and works in his garden all summer and waves? We haven’t seen him for two weeks, but the lights are on in his house in the evening.

Everybody loves a circus at the end of a long winter, and everybody is watching their own private elephant in their very own living room.

If the Almond Blossoms Maintain Their Set

2011-03-03T10:44:00.000-08:00

This one, unlike yesterday, has a narrative arc, slightly, but I don't like it very much. It feels sarcastic and insider-ish to me, both only understandable by the Urban Homesteading set, and a little too disdainful of True Believers. Too easy.

Tomorrow is another day.

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If the almond blossoms maintain their set after the rain, she would be vital to the overall maintenance of the Transition Town plan in her neighborhood/quadrant.

Dolores stood at the kitchen sink, watching the rain bucketing down on the beehive equipment, watching the tree that looked so laden with popcorn a few days ago, humming like a power line with honey bees, like a power line she would never let her children walk under, Dolores watched the tree in the bucketing rain, the tree now looking like a sodden, crumpled piece of typing paper.

“Shit,” she said.

“Mommy. You said a swear word,” her daughter said from the couch, not looking up from her book.

“I’m sorry, Honeybee. I’m just worried about the almonds and the whole Transition Plan.”

“Oh.” Her daughter was silent as Dolores stared, then, “What does that swear word mean again?”

“Stop that. You know what it means. Poo.”

Her daughter giggled, reading this Saturday rainy day away. The Transition Plan was supposed to be a dry run for what was clearly the approaching crisis, households each providing the food and goods that the others needed, and the guild would keep track of the weights, the numbers of people involved, and have an idea then of what was possible, what was still needed. Dolores was providing almonds, some honey, dried plums, canned apple sauce, dried tomatoes and beef jerky at her ex-husband’s behest.

The rain poured down on the almond blossoms, probably ruining the set.

“Mommy? Can I have some more cheese puffs?” asked her daughter.

“Apple sauce,” Dolores said. “Homemade apple sauce. I’ll heat it up and melt a glob of the Riley’s fresh churned butter on it.”

“The butter smells weird, and I don’t like the apple sauce. Can I have cheese doodles?”

A Personal Story About Me Would Start

2011-03-02T11:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is a total SOL, a "Slice-of-Life," derogatory term in some circles, and often seen Do-Not-Accept lists for literary journals. Doesn't even match my rules for having a narrative arc...does it?

But it's a pretty little thing.

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A personal story about me would start:

The plum blossoms were blooming. It was February, and there had been those warm winter days that can fool a person, make them think that the woodpile will last, that you can put down the top on the car and change the filter on the heating system, that the worst is over. But this, like most fixes, was temporary.

He was in the backyard at 7 in his robe, sun coming up because it was still winter after all, and he was getting the rabbits out of the hutch and into their pen so they could enjoy the weather as well. He heard heavy metal music coming from inside the neighbor’s house on the upslope from him.

“Jesus. One man’s ceiling really is another man’s floor,” he muttered as he walked backwards carrying the white one, backwards so it wouldn’t see where it was going and get too excited, it’s feel kicking against the air. Ralph smelled the air that was already slightly warm: the smell of soil pollen. A good smell from an earth as yet unravaged.

“Hey Marley,” the neighbor leaned over the back fence just as Ralph’s young daughter opened the back door, “when are you going to eat those rabbits. You should have us over. I love Hasenpfeffer.”

Ralph saw his daughter blanch, turn and slam the door. Probably run crying to her mom: We’re not going to eat Blizzard, are we Mommy? We’re not going to eat Fog?

“Hi Raymond,” Ralph shouted back, tossing Blizzard into the pen and watching the boy bunny look around then run to the far end and poop. “Told you. They’re not eaters. It’s all for love.”

“Yeah. Whatever. I like rabbit, “ the neighbor said.

I Am Lost, and Only You Can Find Me

2011-02-26T22:44:00.000-08:00

I started this one out with just an opening line, feeling like I wanted something dramatic. But then I though, Oh no, first person who is lost, and who are they talking to? I don’t want to write a story placed in a dark cave or room. So then I thought, What if this voice is talking to the narrator? But who would say something like this? This sounds both like an archetypal call for help, and the stilted language of make-believe. So of course it’s a child. And if they are the only one that can find the child, then they must be the parent.

Now of course, all that happened in about three seconds. I have a daughter, so on the principle of saying Yes to my instincts instead of saying No, I went with the child being a daughter, but on completion of this, I realized that the same opening line with a son and a father, would have been a totally different story. Go figure.

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“I am lost, and only you can find me, Daddy” my daughter called out from under the blanket. I had been wondering at each time we wrestled, if this was going to be the last time, was she going to outgrow this…now…? Or now? Was my daughter going to not need me like this anymore? How would my daughter need me? How would I still be useful for her?

“I am lost, and only you can find me,” my daughter called out again from under the blanket.

Wrestling had once been a daily thing, sometimes twice a day. I had described it to my wife as “wearing out the puppy.” We would do it after dinner, leaping on the king-sized bed, playing Bucking Bronco, playing keep off the bed, or spinning her in the air on my feet. But now she was nine and a half, and had been quieter on the couch each day, immersed in Harry Potter, moodier. Last week she complained to my wife that her chest was feeling sore. My wife has called a friend who is a nurse, and she says that nine is young, but perfectly natural, at one end of the bell curve.

“I am lost, and only you can find me.” My daughter was rolling around under the blanket like she was trying to put out a fire. I’ve been letting her call the shots, following her lead, letting her ask to play. If we don’t wrestle still, how will she need me?

I work a day job. I come home at the end of the day and my wife has dinner on the table, my daughter is on the couch, reading. Once, ten years ago, my wife and I sneered at this kind of family life, called it so 1950s, but now here we are. My daughter used to sometimes meet me at the door, “Daddy! Take me to the bed!” she would yell, jumping on me. My wife would always laugh from the kitchen, and call out something about Electra. These days, I walk in and the dog is glad to see me, but my daughter mostly doesn’t look up from the couch. Wrestling has become maybe three times a week.

“I am lost, and only you can find me, Daddy.” My daughter was calling out to me from the cave she had made. I yanked the blankets back.

I have found you!” I cried, and she screamed and giggled, then grabbed the blanket back, throwing it over her head.

“I am lost, and only you can find me, Daddy,” she cried out again.

He Had Been Going to The California For Drinks

2011-02-25T20:20:00.000-08:00

We're in a hotel in Auburn, California, on our way to the Claire Tappaan Lodge at Donnor Pass. But the road's closed. My daughter's asleep in one bed, my wife in the other. I'm laying on the floor between here typing.

There is a bar here called The California with a very beautiful sign.

This story doesn't feel done, eh?

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He had been going to The California for drinks since he moved to the small gold country town five years ago, after his mom died and his boyfriend left him. It wasn’t exactly a gay bar—in fact it wasn’t one at all, and he wouldn’t have felt safe any of the other regulars or the bar owner knowing he was queer—but it was friendly for Lionel usually, felt safe as a bar can feel, and was the closest thing Auburn was going to get without a rainbow flag. If he wanted action, which he usually didn’t, he drove down into Sacramento.

So he wasn’t sure what to expect when he walked in tonight. All the usuals were in there—Myra at the end of the bar, Jake and Susan sitting at their usual table by the juke box, Terry was behind the bar since it was Tuesday night. But he didn’t see Alexander. He was sort of relieved.

No, he was definitely relieved, but he knew he’d be disappointed later.

He had gone to have breakfast at the Outside Inn that morning after finishing his shift at the bakery. There was somebody new behind the counter of the empty cafe. “Hey, where’s Purvis?”

The new person turned around and Lionel felt like he should shade his eyes, shout hallelujah, or both. The man that was smiling at him had sandy curly hair, and a nicely weathered face with blue eyes, about six feet tall. “Purvis is taking the day off since they hired me. What can I do ya for?” This was a new man, friendly, a waiter, in the 5,000 person town, and Lionel was in love.

It was a slow morning, and they chatted while Alexander—his name, not Alex—puttered, doing little chores, and Lionel ate his eggs and homefries. As he paid his tab, he got up the nerve to casually say, “You should come down to The California tonight and have a beer. Nice place. Nice people. Not much to do around here, but it’s something.”

Alexander had looked at him and his eyes had crinkled with a smile. “Well, maybe I will.”

She Had the Face of a Youngest Child

2011-02-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

When I sit down to do these, I feel a sense of dread. Not huge dread, but I can't deny the sensation: What if I set the timer for 10 minutes and nothing is there? What if it's embarrassing?

I'm almost always pleased, or at least relieved. This is the advantage of low expectations. Only once have I not put up what I wrote, and that wasn't because it was badly written, but because it maybe too closely tracked my own most sordid sexual fantasy.

Not that I have sordid sexual fantasies.

This one today was no different. I was actually having flop sweats at my desk before I started. I used the face of a woman from a catalog I had in my recycling as a prompt. I was pleased with the results.

I am, mostly, not pleased with these TMAC pieces because they are excellent, but because even with the limitation I put on myself (write for 10 minutes, no revision, should try to have some narrative arc and not just be a scene) they are functional.

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She had the face of a youngest child. At 42 years old, with two kids of her own, this woman Lucy Petrinni was mugging and eye rolling and making people laugh as if she was the princess, and all she had to be worried about is whether people noticed her or not.

No, I wasn’t resentful, even though I was an elder child in a family of six. Looking across the room at school board mixer, I thought about how I just know how to recognize them, their need for attention, somebody to pick them up and coo over how cute they are. Richard, my husband, was over there in the little flock of people standing around Lucy and laughing as she told some story, doing all the voices, leaning over to play a six year-old. I watched and looked at my phone—ten more minutes, then we should get home so we don’t have to pay the babysitter extra.

In the car on the way home, Richard said, “Well, that was a lot more fun than I would have thought one of those functions could be. Whaddaya think? Should one of us go on the board this year?”

“Who’s on it?” I asked stopping at the light after the bridge.

“Weren’t you listening?” He wasn’t annoyed. That was just how we talked to each other. “Four of the lower school parents, Rich Harron, Elias’s dad from the preschool, he’s on. That Lucy lady. Then there’s five from the upper campus that we don’t know, but two of them are going off.”

Richard was quiet for a second. “I would do it.”

“Richard,” I said, bringing him back to reality, “you hardly have the time for family, and this would take you away two nights a month.”

“But this is family,” he said, leaning back in his seat as the light turned green. “And it looked like it could be fun.”

When the Chickens Returned to Her Yard

2011-02-21T11:08:00.000-08:00

Okay, today is Urban Homesteader Action Day, a response to one family trying to copyright the phrases "Urban Homestead" and "Urban Homesteading" (you can learn more about it at my wife's blog, Urban Homesteading). In response, bloggers all over the web are taking the phrase back, and since my family takes part in this social movement (my wife has a book coming out in April, I keep bees), I thought I would write something in honor of it. You will have to read Rachel's, my wife's, book to see if this story is based in any reality or not.

Farm on.

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When the chickens returned to her yard for the third time, Hanna did what she had told herself she would do: she chased after them and captured one, a red Orpington, while the others hopped over the fence and back into the Nunes’ field, Hanna shoved the big red hen into a dog carrying cage and put it in the backseat of her car.

“I can’t believe you stole my chicken,” Leila Nunes was saying to Hanna a few weeks later. “You’re a therapist, with kids, and you stole my chicken?”

“It wasn’t my best moment. But I warned you if they kept coming into my yard and eating the vegetables what would happen. Your chickens were eating the food I grow for my family.”

“Okay. I hadn’t gotten around to caging them up. But you stole! You didn’t say you’d break the law! You’re a chicken thief.”

“It was not my proudest moment…How did you figure out it was me?”

Leila was silent for a minute, staring at Hannah, then looked away. “You’d mentioned you kept chickens with a neighbor, and I’d seen your car over there before, and they had a coop, so I figured that must be where you kept them.” She seemed a little embarrassed herself for a moment, then puffed up again. “I thought it might be you, and when I looked in that coop, there was my Orpington, my chicken that had been gone for two weeks! You act like you’re sorry, but if I hadn’t found her, you never would have returned her, would you?”

Hanna said it a third time. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my finest moment.”

“How many eggs did she lay? You owe me eggs!”

The Horse and Buggy Will Not Return

2011-02-19T06:42:00.000-08:00

Who are these people? And where do they come from?

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“The horse and buggy will not return. The bicycle superseded the horse, not the automobile.”

“Why do you say that? Don’t you think that as the effects of peak oil are felt to a greater and greater degree, that all the different heirloom technologies will have a rebirth?”

“No. It is not going to be a strict and orderly de-evolution until we’re living in caves banging flints on the ground and scraping skins…”

“Too bad…”

“You are a romantic if you even think you want that. Lucky for everybody you’re not in control.”

“I am definitely not in control. I look at the news everyday and I see how not in control I am.”

Anyway, the horse is too labor and resource intensive as a true mode of transportation…at least until we lose the ability to create replacement parts for bicycles—rubber tires, chain links, stuff like that…”

“See? That’s what I’m saying!”

The moon was coming up over the lake, laying out a silvered path across the water to the two of them sitting on the shore. A light wind blew slightly cold, but it wasn’t winter and they had coats, and each other. They leaned into each others’ shoulders as they talked.

“I just think that we can’t really know what the future will look like with all the feedback loops of causation, the chaos of panic and the kind of surprising valor that crisis draws out in individuals and communities. There’s just too many particularities and branching story lines to be able map out what will happen in the next ten years with any certainty.”

A cell phone beeped. One of them pushed the button on the side and stared at it. “They say our table is ready. We should walk back. I’m starving.”

Rolling the Eyes Counts

2011-02-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

Here's a little pre-valentines story for you married folks out there. I actually like this as a story, it feels pretty self-contained, and it's nice to have a happy ending.

Happy endings are always nice.

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“Rolling the eyes counts as criticism.”

“No it doesn’t. It’s an involuntary response to distress.”

Scheduling had become an ordeal. Raymond would pretend to be all reasonable, but with both of them having two jobs, one each with no particular schedule, and then it being summertime, and the girl being out of school and having day camp and softball, it was all a bit of Hell. Char didn’t have a bad memory, but Raymond didn’t seem to need the calendar he kept so carefully up to date. All the appointments seemed to be on the inside of his eyelids. Add no sex in three weeks and they were basically contestants on a reality TV show, trying to get the other disqualified.

Their couples counselor (Tuesday’s, 10am, after dropping off Melinda), had told them to try to go a week without any criticism,”…even if it feels artificial, we have to find a way to start undoing some of the impacted bad feelings.” It was Wednesday, and Raymond was a famous eye-roller.

“Eye rolling counts.” Raymond sighed. “Sighing counts too,” Char said.

“What if I just sit behind a screen?” Raymond said.

“Where were we?” Char asked, looking down at her book. She licked the tip of her pencil. “August 2^nd, class parent meeting about next year and are we both going…” When Raymond didn’t reply, she looked up.

He was smiling at her. “It’s the end of June,” he said. “I always loved how you lick the lead on a pencil. It’s toxic, so old-fashioned.”

Char smiled back at him. “What’s your schedule like today?”

“I’m working at home for the agency, and I have a dinner meeting with a client.”

“I have the day off, and don’t have to pick up Melinda until three,” she sighed.

They put their appointment books away.

A Dog Who Loved His Human

2011-02-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

It's been a while, so it seems appropriate I start out with a dog story, because I used to do those a lot. I love maudlin.

Still working on the book that I started during National Novel Writing Month, changing it from first person to third. Maybe someday I'll let you see it.

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A dog who loved his human, lived with the old man as a pack in an apartment, walked every day to the corner store and knew what a flick of a hand or a chin’s nod meant. This dog lived many years, and then the old man died.

The man’s nephews lived halfway across the country, over the hills and in the flat lands and straight lines. They drove out to deal with his stuff. The dog, Orion, was with a neighbor. Orion looked for his old man, for a hand or a chin, and was sad. Neighbor and nephews as one would not take Orion on, would not pat his head or side.

The nephews’ last stop, a U-Haul trailer pulled behind, was at the pound, two blocks from their uncle’s apartment. Orion had never been there, but he’d smelled it for years, heard their barks at night, and he knew what it was when they pulled into the parking lot.

“It’s good we got to do this road trip together,” one nephew was saying to the other. “It’s good for brothers to know each other.”

“And it’s good practice for when mom goes,” the other one replied. Nephew One brought the dog inside while Nephew Two waited in the car listening to the radio.

Orion, ten years old, was sad, and did not leap like the pups around him at every beckoned hand, at every cocked chin. He slept for three weeks, walked when they said walk, and then lay down.

The day they said walk, he walked, and they took him a different way. Orion hoped for his hand, his chin, and who knows? Maybe that dog found what he wanted.

On a Rainy Day

2010-12-25T14:08:00.000-08:00

First up in a while. Continue to work on the book I started in NaNoWriMo. Maybe I'll start posting some pieces from that.

I'm a little uncomfortable with this piece. First, the male narrator is not as nice as I thought he was, and I probably have myself a little confused w/ him, as I tend to do w/ first-person narrators. Secondly, it's trite, with a Hollywoody Mystery Hipster Woman/Girl. Uncomfortable because this is what rises up from the subconscious in first blush.

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On a rainy day, a girl came into the store in a red coat. Woman. Girl.

“Are you accepting applications?” She was worried looking, around twenty-eight. I've noticed that anyone over twenty-three who applies for work at the bookstore tends to be worried looking.

“We're always accepting applications,” I said, “but I don't think we have anything open right now.”

“Well I'll fill one out. I was an English Lit major,” she said, as if that was an explanation for the hopeless act of filling out an application when told that it didn't really matter. I set her up at a table over by the Photography section.

While she filled it out, I watched her, but acted like I was working at the computer. She took off her coat and was wearing a white shirt with a lacy Peter-Pan collar and jeans. She had hairclips that were too young for her, as were her short fingernails that she had painted a blue that matched the jeans. My sense was of an artist who had put all her eggs into the basket of Art, but as she got closer to thirty, she was starting to wonder at night if the harangues she got from her older sister in New York were true.

She brought the application back over to me. “Thanks,” I gave her a smile. “We'll call if there's an opening.”

She stood there. “I've worked at bookstores before. I know that they're a dead-end and I'm okay with that.”

I had gone back to my computer screen, but I looked up at her now, wondering whether to be offended or impressed by her honesty. I glanced down at her resumé. I was right...batchelors in English Lit, an MFA in Fine Arts from six years ago, then bookstores, restaurants, a movie theater as jobs. Clearly has been focused on employment that didn't require a huge emotional investment. Besides in her image of her self.

"I'm the manager here," I said, surprising myself. "Do you want to come in tomorrow around two and do some book sorting in Used, so I can see your judgement about these things?"