Another move.

I have moved again.  I joke, but only out of truth, that I am nomadic.  I go from state to state, city to city and house to apartment to duplex to rooms.  I am getting used to this new space of my own.  My pup is dreaming and twitching and gently moaning as she chases cats in her sleep.  I've had the A/C off for two days now, a blissful cold front having moved in with the rain bringing the high-90's down to some damp and welcome 70's.  To us Texans, it feels like 45.

And as I walk Roxy for the fourth time today, because I don't have a yard anymore, because I have a real neighborhood now with a bakery a block away with the best damn latte I've ever had, I think about where I could have ended up.  I think about Seattle.  I think about how this weather would be much like it would be most of the time there: gray, cool, slightly damp, and muted.  Greener, and saltier for its closeness to the Pacific.  I would have never known these people that I have met since moving here to Austin.  I wouldn't have adopted Roxy, my sweet girl.  I would not have learned so many lessons, made so many mistakes, grown, shrunk, expanded and contracted.  Would I have been happier there?  It isn't too late, you know.  I could go there too.  I could someday live by the sea.  Escape the heat.  Pack up my little life again and drive through the deserts and the mountains and the forests.  I don't know what will happen.  But at the very least, I am here, in a little home, so close to what I dreamt of when I thought of starting a life on my own.  Holding in the cool that is only going to be here fleetingly, the wood floors and wide doors and many windows keeping the air chilled, my thoughts cool, and my feet planted until December, until my short, short lease is up.  That will be a good time to decide, a good moment for new beginnings or a renewed decision to be where I am.

NYC Flash Fiction Challenge #1: "The Special Ones"

“He said ‘special,’ right?”  Jeremiah was pacing around, chin-to-chest so his head wouldn’t hit the metal ceiling.  He and his bandmates called it their “tour bus,” but really it was just a rusted and hollowed out van they had paid $600 for three years back.  Lily was trying to care, but all she wanted to do was leave and pick up her packages. 

“And then he said ‘talented.’ They want talent.  Well, I’m pretty damn special and I think we all can agree I’m talented.”  He wasn’t really even talking to her. 

“Oh ya, sure.”  He seemed so small-minded, so arrogant.  He had no idea just how un-special he was.  He played in a garage band and he was no closer to leaving his job at Starbucks than when he had started.   Before, Lily had believed he was special.  She had been there at every show, watching and supporting his Midwestern dream of “making it big.”  And the glow of being the lead man’s girlfriend had been enough for a while.  Before, she had felt lucky as she looked out at his small but dedicated fan base made up of screaming tween girls.  Before, she had looked at him like he was the only thing in the universe.  She could have stared 

at him forever.  But not now.  Not anymore. Not after they had arrived.

As Jeremiah rambled on, she thought about them, the Jewels, those who had come down and introduced themselves a few weeks back.  Their representative gave a speech to the nation from the White House.  Lily thought about the look on the President’s face as he stood behind him.  It was a mixture of joy and fear, elation and terror.

Good evening.  It is a pleasure to be here tonight.

She thought about how normal it seemed, like they had just moved into the neighborhood from another city. 

We appreciate your hospitality.  We have traveled a very long way to see how your spectacular race lives and works and participates in its community.  We are impressed. 

He looked human, mostly.  His eyes were larger, and more oval.  He wore a dark blue suit and a red tie.  He stood tall and straight at the podium, looking directly into the camera.  His hands rested gently on the edges, his fingers were thin, longer than human fingers but still human in shape and color and form.  His voice was soft but clear.  He didn’t need the microphone. It was as if he didn’t need to use words.  He was able to be understood without speaking at all. 

We will not be imposing upon you long.

He never looked away from the camera.  Lily got the feeling that he could see her, looking right at her, but after the speech, that’s what everyone said.

We will be seeing some of you soon.

“Lily, hello?” She snapped back to the “tour bus.”  “I mean, come on.  Let’s listen to the last song one more time and tell me what you think.”  Jeremiah crawled in the front seat and restarted the CD.  He looked smaller than she remembered, hunched over the steering wheel, staring at the radio, looking young and hopeful and scared.

She suddenly didn’t feel like wasting any more time with him.  She knew he wouldn’t get picked.  He wasn’t what they were looking for, not that she knew.  She opened the side door to leave, already late for her rounds. 

“I’ve gotta go.  I’ll see you later.”  She stepped out and shut the van door. 

“K.”  He said distractedly. 

And just like that, he was no longer her entire universe.

She circled around the back of restaurants, knocked on the locked doors of closed bakeries, waiting for the managers, chefs, and bakers to hand over the dried up and picked over pastries their customers hadn’t chosen from the day before.  They were just going to throw them away; they might as well let Lily take them off their hands for a neat $20. 

Once back in the kitchen, away from Jeremiah, Lily set to work.  The serrated knife cut the pastries easily, the blade connecting to the wooden prep table with a hollow thunk after making its way through an old cinnamon roll.  The recently purchased pile of rejected rolls and croissants lay waiting to be sliced and repurposed into pudding.  She tried to keep her mind focused on what was in front of her, having cut herself more times than she could remember at that old and beaten prep table.  Her boss walked by, stood across from her, and smiled.

“Your bread pudding does to celiac sufferers what Dr. Atkins’ death-by-heart attack did to his bacon-munching followers.  I swear girl, no one can resist this stuff.”  He walked towards the front, too hot to stay long in the kitchen but happy to see she was getting her job done.

Because the pudding was the only thing he let her cook, Lily had begun to resent his praise.  She wanted to try something else, anything else, and the heat just made her angrier.  The air conditioning was broken again and the fan wasn’t doing much more than blowing around the humidity from the ovens and the boiling stock pots.  The icing from the cinnamon rolls was starting to melt and stick to the knife’s blade and handle.  The sugar and warm dough gummed between her fingers, gluing them together. 

Then surprisingly, she felt a cool breeze.  She thought maybe one of the chefs must have come up behind her and opened the freezer door.  But she didn’t hear the door open or the approach of squeaking shoes.  She turned around to look and in shock dropped the knife.  A Jewel was standing behind her.  He was tall and lean and smiling.

Are you ready to go, Lily?

The knife stood balanced on the blade where it had dropped, the sticky handle unwilling to fall.  And then it did, slowly, but Lily was not there to see it.

Don't Forget to Remember

We are not enough.  We cannot hold everything that we do and see and touch and experience and hear and feel.

We are not enough.

These bodies of ours - they are too frail.  They are too small.  They are not enough.

I stare at my face every night before bed, before washing off the day and my makeup and my sweat and my worry.  Before the washing I look at my nose and my chin and my cheeks but never at my eyes because I don't want to see the wrinkles that might someday be there soon because I age everyday we age we get older.  I don't want to see them.  But I don't want to miss them creeping on.  I am between wanting to be warned and the dread of being surprised at their sudden arrival.  The creases between my brows, the feet of crows crackling out of the corners, the etched in parentheses quoting all those things that I said and I laughed and I screamed and I whispered.  All those things leaving their mark on my face.  I don't want to remember that way.

I forgot about a mole on my neck.  Had it always been there?  I don't remember it being there, in that spot.  I remember having it, sharing it and its place on our necks, the Vanderbosch women, moley necks and wrinkled chins and large front teeth.  But it wasn't there, was it?  I have stared at my face for years every night and I forgot it was there.

And then just like that, for no reason at all, I am shot back, back to that night those nights weeks months when he and I were together.  A remembering that I might have forgotten.  A part of us.  A part of my story.  A chapter whose pages had been stuck together and mashed up in between remembering to pay the utility bill and my sister's birthday and the time that I hit my first ball that muggy afternoon at softball practice the clink and connection and joy of metal hitting leather.

I was a baby when I was with him, so young and so naive and so innocent and so sweet. And we didn't want to say goodnight.  We said everything but goodnight because then it would be the end and it couldn't be the end.  And I remember wanting to be as close to his body as I could, that if we separated if we disconnected if we came apart then the whole wide world would fall apart and I would crumble right there in the alley in front of the bar where he lived and slept above it where he was without me and would go up and be alone and I would have to make my way back to my own room and I didn't want that to happen.  I wanted to melt into him. Through our winter coats and past the small melting flakes of snow that he said he hadn't seen in ten years because it didn't really snow there but I brought it with me, all the way from the States and I brought them for him.

And I don't want to forget those things.

Then I remember the cab ride.  That horrible, disastrous, achingly depressing cab ride when you were sitting next to me a thousand feet away.  It was our last trip.  The last time we were going to go somewhere and be something and see something and feel something together.  Our togetherness was ending.  That trip, that moment in the cab, as I stared out at the void of night falling over Lake Michigan with the life and the lights and the noises and the hope for a bright tomorrow of the city on the other side of the cab, the side of you, the side with you, that I could not look at.  I could only look at the dark.  I could only look at the night married to the depths of the lake.  I could only see the sky and water melting together as if they were always meant to be the same and together and joined.  I could not breath in that back seat.  I could not move.  I felt you over there but you were so far.  We had separated.  We had been broken.  The cord between us had been cut and there was nothing that either of us could do to repair it.  We could only sit there.  In that cab.  Alone together.

And I don't want to forget that either.

Because forgetting that thing, forgetting that hurt and that pain and that ache and that void would mean that I forgot how deeply I could feel.  It would mean that we hadn't meant anything at all.  It would mean that I wasn't capable of feeling or caring or wanting to join my life with someone in a way that truly meant something, in a way that was preferable to spending my time with any number of somebodies or alone because you were someONE.

So I remember.

Horses and Denim Skirts

I have made the same joke, probably a thousand times, when I tell people that I was homeschooled.  I never volunteer the information unless it's in some sort of defense for not knowing some strange rite of passage that all other "normal" high schoolers went through.  It usually comes out when people ask what high school I went to, or where I graduated from, or where I grew up.  I went home for high school.  I graduated from my dining room table.  I grew up everywhere.

But the joke, the funny-ha-ha moment comes right after I give the damning information that I did not have a locker or report cards or lunch hour but actually received my education from my parents and myself.  The joke serves to soften the blow that they may not have a point of reference in discussing my upbringing and education.  And it goes something like this:

"I was homeschooled actually.  Yes, for ten years.  Second grade until graduation.  But don't worry, I don't like horses or wear denim skirts."

Inherently, there is nothing wrong with denim skirts or horses.  However, coupled with being homeschooled, you run into a bit of a stereotype.  Most "homeschoolers" or at least the ones that I encountered in Alabama and Indiana, did wear denim skirts and did love horses.  They didn't know how to make and keep friends.  They loved their parents and siblings - a lot.  They were usually religious in some extreme way or another - and I had met them all, from a Wiccan bi-sexual with purple hair dancing naked in the moonlight to the devoutly Catholic friend I made my junior year whose sister (one of nine other siblings - God bless Catholic's opinions on birth control) wanted nothing more than to become a nun and the man who eventually knocked her up wanted to be a priest.  And the horses - I can't quite explain the horses or homeschoolers' fascination and love for them.

But even in spite of the jokes, in spite of my attempts to delay the inevitable judgment about my parents' choice to raise and educate me, I did, once, love that equine species.

I wanted to ride.

I wanted to have one.

I wanted to feed and groom and trot and brush my very own Black Beauty.

But my family was poor.  And horse riding lessons were not cheap, even in the most rural towns in Alabama.  But one day.  One early morning.  One miracle of a chance that my mother gave me, I remember being taken to a ranch, or at least I think it was a ranch.  Deep in the dark of the early morning.  Before the sun thinks about rising.  Right in the middle of everyone else's dreams.  During that hour that you wake up, afraid you've missed your alarm and sink back, relieved that you have another three hours before it will go off, a glaring and red reminder that you have another day week month year lifetime of work ahead of you.  I remember so little about getting there, being driven or setting up this experience that I must have been very young, probably less than ten-years-old.  I doubt I was even homeschooled at that point.  I was probably just another young girl, taken, and in love with those majestic creatures who stood tall above my small frame, all rippling muscle, rapidly moving eyes and knotted coarse tail.

However old I was, however I came to find myself there, I remember sitting on a footstool.  One of those plastic ones you buy at Lowe's to step up a foot or two or to allow a small child to brush and spit and rinse their mouths at the sink after they've learned to brush their own teeth.

I sat there on that plastic stepping stool and I watched a woman riding a horse.  It was Alabama then, it must have been because I didn't live anywhere else except there that I can remember and the places where I lived after, the memories are much more clear, much more concrete, much less filled with joy, and hope, and exhilaration.

And it was cold.  Sometime in December or January because I shivered, the entire time I sat on that stool.  I sat there, outside of the ring, on the other side of the fence, fifty yards or so from the horse and her rider.  And I watched them.  I watched her lead the horse from a slow walk to a trot to a steady gallop.  She worked the horse.  She rode her in a way that I couldn't stop watching.  Her body told the horse where to turn and to move and to go faster or slower.  I remember seeing the horse breath heavily with deep exhalations, the giant clouds of air bursting from its dark nostrils.  She was majestic, this mare.  She was beautiful.  Even in the cold, even as I sat shivering, watching, I could see the sweat on the beast, glistening beneath the light from the barn on the other side of the ring.  I don't know why I was there.  I never took a lesson.  I never got on a horse to ride and learn where to put my feet and how to squeeze my thighs and lean in and to one side or the other to get the horse to go my way.  But I do remember sitting there, feeling the hours go by as this woman rode her horse, and it really was that simple.  A woman riding her horse.  But I couldn't stop watching, I couldn't stop staring as they welcomed the day together, as they breathed in and out at the same time and moved their muscles in the same direction, feeling the cool dirt beneath their warm hooves and feet, panting, trotting in their measured pace in the dew-soaked air, damp and sweating from the birthing of the heated dawn from the chilled and cooler night.

I haven't thought about that early morning, sitting on that uncomfortable stool in the cold predawn air in a long time.  It is one of those memories that I might have lost.  One of those moments that reminds you that you were once young, and didn't care if people thought you were strange because of the school you didn't go to or the ways in which you dressed.  Just a memory.  Just another story.  Just another moment that is nothing more than a small joy and a remembrance of a brief childish wonder.

Dear Veronica...

Dear Veronica,

I am writing this in the third person because I think I am the only one you might listen to.  Open your mind, open your ears, quiet your worry, and listen to me, please.

Be kind to yourself.  Be forgiving and be patient.  You will be fine.  You will not fail.  Like your professor said in that kind email, you will never starve. If your body needs rest, let it sleep.  Do not feel guilt for taking time to adjust to this new schedule, this new job, this new life.

Sweet girl, take care of yourself.  Schedule that cleaning at the dentist.  Drink lots of water. Eat something green today.  But don't hate yourself for wanting to order pizza instead.  Sometimes pizza is good, sometimes pizza is necessary, (just not all the time).  You do not have to go and kill yourself at the gym for two hours every day and if you aren't feeling sore that doesn't mean you aren't working on your body.  Stretch.  Breath deeply.  Sit up straight.

You are only responsible for your own happiness.  You have always known that no one is going to take care of you - you never wanted that.  But remember, it is not your responsibility to take care of anyone else.  They will all figure their own lives out, and if they don't, that's not on you.  Do not regress and change your values and goals and look for a partnership because things are a little harder right now.  That is no partnership.  That is a crutch.  You have taken the steps to lift the heavy weight of your single-income financial burden and changed it so it doesn't feel quite so large, quite so overwhelming.  You can do this.  Like he said, you will never starve.  You are strong.  I will take care of you because I know better than anyone else what you need to be happy.

This is the only chance you get, the only go around.  And just because you aren't doing what you thought you would be doing at this age, just because you aren't using your degree, just because you aren't writing thousands of words and dozens of pages a day, it doesn't mean you are allowed to throw your hands up and give in to self-loathing.  Shaking those tiny fists at the universe will not change anything.  Nothing will be given to you if you pout long and hard.  It will only make YOUR day miserable.  If you want to change your attitude, your circumstances, your productivity and your life, that's on you, kid.  Small changes count.  A smile instead of a worried brow is a start.  This post is another step forward.  The practice, the stretching of those fingers as they strike your laptop keys is progress.  Even it doesn't feel like it, even if this isn't seen by anyone but you, it is enough.  You are doing the work, you are putting in the time.

Write your pages.  Every. Single. Day.  It often takes you less than twenty minutes.  And you have that.  You have more than that even though sometimes it doesn't feel that way.

You have to go to work.  You are in a good place.  You are surrounded by good people.  You have more support than you know.

And finally, my love, be patient.  I know you want great things, I know you dream of wonder and mountains and stars and sailing on oceans.  That time will come.  Those things will happen.  You have been given this life.  You are so lucky.  Be grateful.  Be kind.  Be open.  Look around you for the opportunities that you might have been missing.  It is all going to be just fine.  It is all going to work out.  You are going to live a magnificent life.

Love,
Me

10,000 Hours

Write often.

Write in short fragmentary bursts.

You will never starve.

Read like mad.

I was once chastised by someone I was dating (if you even want to call it that) for not putting enough energy and time and effort into my passion - my writing. He had read somewhere, and I'd heard the theory before, that to be good at something, to make it a career or reach some sort of fulfillment then one must dedicate at least 10,000 hours into whatever it is they want to perfect.

10,000 hours.

That's roughly 5.47 hours per day over the span of five years - if you'd like to be ambitious and a real go-getter.  A little over 2 hours a day if you want to work at that "thing" over the course of ten years.  And so forth and so on.  I was in college for a little over 8 years.  Combining the time spent in class and the time spent studying, you could say I put 10,000 hours into becoming a really good student, a professional you might say.  If you don't believe me, I've got the diploma and the debt to prove it.

I have also worked in the restaurant industry in some shape or form for the past 12 years - ever since I was fifteen-years-old.  And considering it a rarity that I ended up working less than 40 hours a week, the total amount of time, roughly, that I've spent perfecting those skills is somewhere in the neighborhood of 24,000 hours.  Should I be surprised that I am now beginning to manage one?  And yes, I've had some very serious crises about the fact that I am not sitting in some dusty office somewhere with all the time and inspiration and support and resources in the world to allow me to joyfully (or insufferably) toil away with my pen and paper or typewriter or laptop.  I never thought that I would still be doing this for THIS  long.  Never in a million billion jillion years.  But I am.  And it's paying the bills (mostly).  And it is, truly, allowing me enough time to write.

There is no real point to this post except to remind myself how to use my fingers to type words down and through these keys.  To not consider today a total waste.  To keep my mind moving.  And if nothing else, to put in a little bit more time towards those elusive 10,000 hours.

Routine

“Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?”  She kept repeating that word every time she thought about how much more the mechanic said her car repair would be.  She was furious – he had told her it would be quick and simple, a routine oil change.  But when she went to pick her car up after flipping through a few magazines and sipping on her soy chai, his face told her that it hadn’t been so simple, it hadn’t been so routine. 

She planned on using that money to buy her plane ticket to Cabo.  She had always been a saver and the extra refund from her taxes this year gave her the extra bump in her account to feel free to reward herself, get away, relax, and sit on a beach somewhere.  But now, now all those thoughts of a golden tan, strong drinks with tiny umbrellas, and white sand beaches as far as her eye could see went up in the cloud of smoke as thick and depressing as the oil and dirt under the mechanic’s finger nails.  She cringed at the idea and exclaimed another “Seriously!?” when she thought about affording to do no more than sit on her couch and watch TV during her time off of work.  She could try to get her shifts back but that made her even angrier.  She couldn’t drive home to see her parents because they would still be working on her car, squeezing out those hard-earned dollars as the hours of paid labor was made up of smoking cigarettes, bull-shitting over last night’s game, and polishing wrenches.  It was supposed to be a routine oil change, she was being responsible.  She was supposed to be going on vacation in a month. 

*

Should he stand or should he sit?  He didn’t know what he should do while he waited for the news waited for the world to fall apart waited for the verdict that he already knew.  He stared at the framed picture of four happy faces - the doctor and his family, arm-over-shoulder-over arm under some cabana on a white sand beach somewhere.  They were all so happy, with their pink noses and sea-salt-wavy hair.  She wouldn’t smile again.  She wouldn’t feel the ocean again.  She wasn’t supposed to die.  Routine, routine, routine.  That’s what they kept saying.  But she died anyway.  One of the unlucky ones that falls into the slim category where things go wrong. 

His body began to shake, his vision blurring.  He couldn’t be in that room any longer.  He didn’t want to wait for the doctor, see his not-smiling face, hear his kind words.  But he needed to see her.  He needed to know it was real.  So he waited and stared at the tan bodies of the children and wife of the doctor that were still here still alive still smiling. 

After talking and talking and cooing and apologizing, the doctor finally led him to her room.  They had lied.  She looked different than what he had been led to believe about dead people.  She did not look like she was sleeping and she did not look like a monster.  She did not look at all like they all said dead people looked.  Her mouth was rigid and sagged slightly to the right.  The delicate skin beneath her eyes was purple, bruised and sunken.  He couldn’t think of what her skin looked like, he didn’t want to compare it to anything.  He just thought that it wasn’t a skin-color anymore.  It wasn’t right.  It wasn’t her.  He needed to get out, get away, move his body, his breathing still alive body away from her cold and dead one.

He walked through the doors, his legs stiff and moving slowly moving him away.  The tears started then as the air changed from sterile and conditioned to natural and humid.  He heard the automatic doors close behind him he could feel them, collecting, welling, gathering behind his eyes, no longer waiting to burst through and down his face.  He kept his mouth shut, tight and breathed heavily through his nose like a bull like a sleeping dreaming dog like a boar.  He kept walking, away from the hospital, down the street and into a neighborhood.  He walked past house after house, thinking about all the living people inside.  His chest and throat began convulsing, his body racked from the force of his sobs.  He couldn’t hold it in anymore, he didn’t know why he was trying.  He opened his mouth, wide and deep and began to wail, a deep and guttural wail.  His throat began to burn and ache from his screams.  It felt good.  He felt relief that his body could produce a sound that matched what his heart was going through.  And that small, strange-good feeling kept him going kept him from going mad kept him from being consumed and deep inside his own sadness and confusion.  She wanted to schedule the procedure early so that she could go home and watch a marathon of her favorite television show as she came out of her anesthetic haze on the couch.  This memory, this thought of her motives and plans and unfulfilled life renewed the grief and sent him stumbling on, wailing and crying some more.  He kept wailing the length of the sidewalk, and turned and walked another sidewalk and street and past houses and houses, all the while screaming, all the while wailing, all the while thinking that this is the only thing he could manage to do, the only thing he wanted to do.   

He didn’t see the young girl looking out her car windshield at him, slowing down, and stopping.  He didn’t notice her concerned eyes staring in her rearview mirror wondering what had happened – who had hurt him, who he had lost.  She couldn’t know.  She eventually put her car into gear again and drove away.  She was the only one that witnessed his grief.  She was the only one that thought to herself how lucky she was, to be worrying about small things like car repairs.  She wondered what had happened.  She would wonder who he had lost that day.  She kept thinking about him for the rest of the night and had nightmares about the sound that his throat made as he trudged down the street.

He kept walking in the opposite direction.  He kept walking until his shoes were muddy, until his head ached from dehydration and the screaming and the tearing at his temples.  It was supposed to be routine.  It was supposed to be quick and easy.  He was supposed to be home right now, heating up soup on the stove and mocking her terrible taste in television.  

She sat on her couch.  But she did not turn on the TV.  She just stared straight ahead and thought about that man.  She couldn't stop thinking about his mouth, how it looked so big and so wide that it wouldn't have been very surprising if it had opened up enough to consume his body, devour the rest of his head and shoulders and torso.  She sat on her couch and thought about him, her head hazy heart aching breathing short and low and shallow.   She didn't want to turn on the TV.  She wished she had never taken her car in for that oil change.  But she had.  So she sat on her couch and thought about that man.