I love Frank Rich (hopefully start of a weekly column on a column)

Let’s be honest, Frank Rich is the conscience of our times. Or at least a really good writer who by the end of his week in review columns (one of the major reasons I trudge through the 200+ pages of the Sunday times) has me in tears.

The losses to our country over the last six years are truly staggering. We know it, we feel it, but we feel powerless to do anything about it. Reading Rich, you feel like you’re seeing sunlight again, for the first time in a long time. After trudging through the irrational fog of deceitful leaders, hucksters, fascists and relativists who claim to be conservatives but are truly nothing more than demagogues, I read Rich and feel like I’m getting my bearings again.

I’ve been so checked out politically for so long now, just plain depressed with no hope that this country will ever get itself together again. And he doesn’t help, to be honest, but at the same time he makes me feel like there’s right in the world still if we’d only just be honest and true to our ideals and ourselves.

What’s most disturbing about Rich’s column this week, and rings most true to me, is the truly dangerous nature of the democrats’ and liberals’ conceit that somehow if we can just sweep out the current admin we’ll be able to rectify the current situation, both in this country and without. That somehow we can erase the last few years as if it were all just a bad nightmare. But the degradation of our democracy and our nation is real and there’s no quick fix for what Bush and his cronies have done in the name of their particular brand of freedom.

The Coup at Home

Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Short Stories!

This has been linked and double-linked, but I find it really great and will try to incorporate it in some stories soon! Hope this helps some writers out there in the ether:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.*

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/14/vonneguts_rules_for_.html

Flyguy Pt 3

With that, the fly buzzes out the open door and is gone. It’s either now or never, I push the door further open, peer out, see that no one is in the hallway and walk out. My room is the last one at the end of a long hall. On the right, a large window looks out onto an overgrown garden filled with dark green bushes, giant flowers that seem from here to be at least several feet across and bending under their own weight and moss-covered statues peering through the dense foliage. The sun shines down on an algae-covered pond in the center. Beyond is a forest, whose trees are all green. Even the bark. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

I turn around and look down the hallway, lined with doors, each with a little window and a food tray slot on the bottom just like mine. As I start to walk down, toward the other end of the hall, I look into the little windows to see if there are other patients, but they’re all empty. At the far end of the hall, there’s a heavy looking door that seems to seal the ward and I’m hoping to make my way to it quickly before someone comes. That’s when I hear a key in the lock of the door and it starts to open. I quickly try the lock on the door nearest to me, it gives and I jump inside to avoid being seen.

I peer out the window of the room just as two lizards walk by, and they make their way down the hallway, see my open door, and start hissing. They run back out of the hall, their long reptilian tongues wagging behind them as they move. It’s not every day you see a lizard running, they’re cold blooded and don’t have a lot of energy. So, I guess I must be a hot commodity. In their haste, they forget to close the hallway door, allowing me to run out of the room and stick my head outside of the ward. These lizards are pretty forgetful, I think. I can’t believe that fly has so much trouble, but maybe he’s just crazy.

When I look out, they’re already gone and a desk to my right that I’m imagining must normally be staffed by a lizard nurse or guard is also empty. I see another heavy door facing me, probably another ward, a window to my left out of which I get a glimpse of more oddly green trees and overgrown gardens and to my right the desk and a short hall that ends with a set of double doors. It looks like everyone ran off when they saw that I wasn’t in my room. I run past the desk and prop open the doors, which are also unlocked. Perhaps they’re letting me go? I smell fresh air and see the gardens that surround the hospital. It would be relaxing, save for the giant reptiles.

The lush landscape outdoors opens before me, there’s a path made of half-broken flagstones with weeds sprouting through the cracks. The path curves around a large overgrown hedge which looks shaggy, like an unkempt horse’s mane. Ahead, there’s a cracked and stained stone bench. The crack goes all the way through, but it hasn’t fallen apart yet. It seems like no one has been maintaining this place for years.

I know I need to get out of sight as quickly as possible before they come back, and as I walk around the path and get halfway, I see a worn dirt trail leading off to the left away from the hospital and into an even wilder part of the grounds. I can see weeds and grasses growing at least 10 feet tall and a few equally giant flowers. I look ahead and in back along the path and see no one and duck into the tall weeds.

The grasses quickly surround me and although there’s a path I can’t see where I’ve come from when I look back. The tall thin stalks have covered the trail. In front, a narrow path continues to wind and I follow it. I stop as I approach one of the giant flowers. It’s even more enormous when I’m right up next to it. Each petal is as large as my head and it waves in the breeze along with all the grasses around me, making a swooshing sound like ocean surf. There are more of these large flowers all around me, higher than my head and what I thought were trees from the hospital are in fact giant flowers themselves. When I look up I see petals blocking out the sun, like leaves creating a canopy high overhead.

I finger the petals in front of me in amazement. The flower looks like a giant African violet. Each petal is at least a foot wide. I had trouble accepting the lizards, Dr. Komodo or me being a fly, but at least the rest of the world had remained the same. Now, I’m human again but the entire world has changed. Or is it that I’ve gotten smaller. I don’t know, it’s all relative. Either way, I’m afraid to meet whomever might be here. If the hospital had giant lizards, what’s in the giant garden? But until I find out, I might as well smell the roses, as they say. And what a smell, the giant flowers are emitting a scent like a hundred flower stores, a rich and earthy perfume. It’s intoxicating and my vision starts to blur a little. When I touch the petals of the African violet, it’s not soft like I’m expecting, but spongy and thick like a pool toy. Otherwise, I guess the petals would just flop from under their own weight.

I look beyond the petals in front of me and see bigger than life dandelions, daisies and other wild flowers all around, I feel my eyes enlarge just trying to take it all in and realize this is when it would be good to have fly vision. Lost in this reverie, I at first don’t notice the clicking sound coming from somewhere dark between the flowers or the shiny bright green compound eyes attached to a long green stalk that looks like a living piece of celery. The eyes stare at me, hardly a blemish in their unblinking alien green. The stalk moves forward through the stems, its long antennae leading the way. The clicking I realize comes from the sharp side jaws that are moving rhythmically. The clicking is joined by a snapping sound when it moves its front legs, which end with what I can only describe as serrated scissors, lined with black spikes. The monstrous insect snaps at me menacingly.

“L-lost little f-f-fly?” says what I realize is a towering praying mantis, whose voice sounds like a heavy breathing prank caller, clicking after every word. The mantis stands up on its four rear hind legs, rising from its hiding place amid the thick underbrush and large flowers. One of its serrated pincers snaps the purple flower in front of me in half. “Y-y-you’ve d-disturbed our m-m-meditations.”

The clicking when he talks is hard to understand and I think he might even be stuttering. While he eyes me, his body pushes even higher, towering above me and his eyes mounted on the long stalk come down disturbingly close to my face, as do his terrible snapping arms.

I try to speak, to make the mantis see that I’m not going to be intimidated, large green scissors or not. But instead of a voice, I barely get out a croak. Every time I open my mouth I let out just a gasp, which becomes more and more of a buzz. Oh no, this is definitely the wrong time. I look down and my body is transforming into fly form. I look down at my arms, and they’re covered with a black exo-skeleton again and my hands are back to suction cups. How embarrassing. I pivot my head a few times nervously.

“H-h-have you ever tried… m-m-meditation,” says the stuttering mantis, slowly lowering his long, celery-stick like body back down to the ground and propping his head on his prayerful yet deadly arms. “Y-y-you seem a-a-anxious. We r-r-recommend meditation. Some of us p-p-pray, but we meditate. It helps u-u-us stay … c-c-calm. In such a vast universe we can easily g-get o-o-o-overwhelmed with questions, Why are we here? What’s o-o-our p-p-purpose. These are h-h-hard questions with few answers.”

The most unnerving thing about the mantis, besides his razor sharp forearms or his existential yearnings are those enormous, unblinking green eyes. There’s no escaping them, jutting out on that stalk-head with his all-seeing stare.

“Well, I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” I say with a nervous buzz as I start backing away. “I’ll be on my way. I really didn’t mean to disturb your meditation, I realize how difficult it is to keep your concentration and I couldn’t agree more on those questions you’ve got there, they’re the universals, no doubt about it.”

“O-o-oh,” clicks the mantis. “It’s n-n-o bother, w-w-we often spend our time th-th-thinking deeply. Anyway, m-m-m-meditation generates such an ap-ap-appetite, don’t you agree? And it looks like we’ve found something quite tasty to n-n-n-nibble.”

And with that, he picks up the snapped flower and brings it up to his hideous mouth, and pops it in, it goes down his gullet like a branch through a wood-chipper.

“Y-y-you still look so nervous,” clicks the mantis, his mouth filled with plant and spittle. “Did y-you think we were going to eat y-y-you? W-w-we’re a Buddhist, veg-vegetarian, m-m-mantis. No more flies for u-ssss, although y-y-you were ever so… t-t-tasty.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. But I’ve never heard of a vegetarian mantis and I’m ready to flick off at a moment’s notice, I am a fly after all.

“So…” says the mantis. “What is y-y-your religious persuasion, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Well you know, I didn’t really think about it before,” I say, not sure where this is going. “It’s pretty funny, but just a few minutes ago, I was a human being who thought he was hallucinating that he was a fly, being kept in a mental hospital by giant lizards.”

This would sound totally ridiculous if I weren’t telling my story to an oversized praying mantis. I cover the whole thing, waking up in the mental hospital, talking to Dr. Komodo, turning into a giant compound eyed fly, then waking up and talking to the small fly who wanted some of my lunch and then getting out when they forgot to lock the door. “I realize it’s kind of far out, you know?” I say. “It made me think I was really losing it. But then, here I am and if I’m not losing it, and this is real, well then I don’t know what to believe.”

“S-s-s-sounds bizarre,” the mantis says. “But y-y-you can’t question the spiritual with the rational. W-w-we’re all just flies in God’s spider web and when you get caught and he ties you up and sucks your blood, there’s not much you can do about it.”

Mmm, I don’t really like his example.

“Well, that’s just it. I don’t or at least didn’t believe in God,” I say. “It all just seemed such an obvious wish-fulfillment thing, everyone just dreaming of some kind of cosmic sugar daddy to take away the pain of being alive. I thought I was too smart for that. That was until I turned into a fly, I really didn’t see that one coming, it was sort of out of left field, you know? Now I’m clueless.”

I wave my front leg in front of me. It’s thin and covered in minute prickly hairs. I can see the mantis multiple times and notice that my field of vision has enlarged too. I can see all around me, even behind my head. The flowers are amazingly patterned, in ways that I never noticed before. It must be the UV light that I can now see as an insect. I guess there are some positives to this whole transformation.

The mantis looks deep in thought, even though it’s hard to tell with his unblinking green eyes staring at me and his jaws still working over the last bits of purple petal. “But what w-w-w-would the point of existence be without belief?” he asks, clicking disapprovingly.

“I don’t have an answer for you, but maybe that’s why I was sent to that hospital, maybe such a world was just too much for me to take and I lost it. Maybe there are no answers out there or maybe there are. I think I need to follow this fly thing I have going, see where it takes me,” I say, motioning with a leg towards the forest of flowers. “If I find anything out, I’ll come back and let you know.”

“S-s-s-sounds good fly,” clicks the mantis as it pulls back into the undergrowth so that within seconds I lose sight of him in the tall grasses and flowers. If I look carefully I can still see a pincer and nearby his bright green eyes. “We must all find o-o-o-our own way and we can’t all be m-m-mantises,” he whispers.

I turn back to the trail and make my way towards the immense tall plants, until I can no longer see the sun when I look up. The great petals diffuse the light overhead, letting only a few rays break through the petals to the forest floor where I walk forward on my six legs.

Flyguy Pt 2

When I wake up, there’s light shining in the room from a large window out beyond the foot of the bed. The heat through the window feels good. For a few seconds, I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. I’m just sitting in a bed in the sunshine. But then, it floods back. Dr. Komodo, the orderly with the needle and me as a giant housefly. It’s like a hang over, you only remember snap shots of what happened.

I move in the bed and my hands come up. They’re human hands again, all five fingers and on human arms too. Nothing seems to be missing. Things are looking up. I’m back to my dry pink skinned self, no exo-skeleton, no third set of limbs and no restraints. It’s copasetic. I guess it really was a dream, or some hallucination like the good doc said. But, just to make sure, I look up at the ceiling and walls for suction cup marks. But there’s no sign I was up there last night, clinging to the ceiling as a scared fly. So far, the coast is clear.

I hear a knock on the door, and a small slot on the bottom opens. Someone slides in a tray, there’s a bowl of what looks like greenish tomato soup, a plate with a tri-layered club sandwich and potato chips but they’re moldy. On the side of the tray is a glass of brownish rusty water. I sit up in the bed, and twist around to put my feet, my human feet, on the floor of the room.

“How disgusting!” I yell out. “You expect me to eat this?”

I look up through a small window in the door, hoping to see the human orderly staring back at me and get ready to keep complaining. Instead, I see a long forked tongue darting across the rectangular framed window. Then a green snout appears and finally a yellow eye with a sharp dagger for an iris. It blinks. Holy shit! I’m back to being human, but they’re all still lizards.

“Hey,” I hear from somewhere near the floor. “Hey! You gonna eat that? It looks delicious.”

I look around. I don’t see anything.

“Who said that?” I ask, a little self-consciously into the air. I keep looking around, worried that I’ve gone from visual hallucinations to the audio kind. You know, classic schizo behavior. And things were looking so good just a few seconds ago. But, all I can see is my human body, the bed, the window and the lizard eyeing me from outside. He’s waiting for me to eat up, but the food makes me want to vomit.

“Hey,” I yell out toward the orderly. “Do you expect me to eat this? It’s rotten!”

The eye winks again. I’m not sure if that was for me or it’s just that lizards blink a lot. Reptiles. They’re hard to read.

“Did you hear me!?” I yell, oh what the hell, that lizard doesn’t care.

“He-llo?” it’s the voice again. “I’m talking down here,”


That’s when I see him and I can’t believe it. There’s a fly on the soup bowl and he’s looking right at me. I think about swatting him away, but I hold myself back. It’s not every day you have a conversation with a fly.

“Uh, hi,” I say, feeling like I’ve lost my mind. “I don’t think I’ll be eating any of that, so why don’t you feel free.”

I’m thinking I could ask the lizard for a new soup, which would seem pretty ridiculous since the whole thing is bad. But I mean, this is the oldest complaint in the book. However, I’m not sure how the orderly would respond, he’d probably just continue silently winking. Anyway, I’m curious what the talking fly might say.


“Thanks,” says the fly, moving down the bowl. “I won’t eat much.”

And with that, he sticks his stalk-like mouth into it and starts sucking. He’s lapping it up, although without a tongue I’m not sure lapping really applies. He takes a break and looks over at me, cleaning his mouth with a leg. “So, how long you been in the joint?”

“The joint,” I say, more a statement then a question. “The joint?”

“The joint you know, the lock-up, the can, the clink, the farm.”

“Ya, I got it,” I say.

“I’ve been inside since me and the boys tried to rob a nursery for fertilizer,” he says.
“You know, one day you’re happy as a maggot on… well you know, and the next you’re in here. Anyway, glad to make your acquaintance.”

“The feeling is mutual,” I say. “Yeah, you know I don’t know what I’m doing here. Everything before yesterday is a haze. They haven’t told me where I am or anything. But you, you’re so small couldn’t you just fly out an open window, find a crack somewhere, under a door? How hard can it be?”

I swear the fly is rolling its compound eyes at me. He’s flown over to the ripe club sandwich, has a moldy crumb in one pad and cocks his head at an angle. He throws down the crumb. “You don’t think I’ve tried that?” He says buzzing with anger. “I’ve tried everything, holes in corners, under doors, over doors, through an open window. Anything to get out of here. Any crack in their defenses, I’ve tried to find a hole. But the lizards, man, they’ve got it covered. They just sit there, watching, always watching. Those tongues are just waiting to catch you. But that’s where you come in, you’re gonna help me bust out of here.”

“I’ve got enough troubles of my own,” I say. “One day, I’m talking to a komodo dragon, the next a fly is eating my lunch.”

“Come on!” says the fly, holding his arm pads away from him plaintively. “Flies got to stick together. You know I’ve got your thorax!”

“Flies got to stick together? I guess you haven’t noticed that I’m human!” I say, pinching my wrist for effect. I stop, the fly buzzes over to the water glass, he carefully makes his way down the inner lip using those suction cup pads to keep from falling in. It looks tricky. The fly sticks his mouth into the water. I wait and he finishes and turns around and flies out of the glass. He buzzes up near my head.

“Listen buddy,” he says. “That’s just lizard propaganda. You’re a fly and you always have been.”

“So what are you saying, I’m a giant house fly? Or maybe a horse fly, right?” I’m tired of this, and turn towards the door hoping to start banging on it and get someone’s attention. This is all too crazy and I just can’t take it anymore, when I push against the door it slowly swings open. The lizard forgot to lock it!

“Listen!” says the bug buzzing around my head. “I know this is hard to believe, but the reptiles have you so hopped up you wouldn’t know your mandible from a hole in the wall and the longer you stay in here, the more likely you’ll end up eaten by that Komodo Dragon.”

Flyguy Pt 1

I open my eyes.
Nothing.
Total blackness.
Where am I?

I’m on a bed, when I move my fingers, I feel sheets, a comforter. There’s a pillow under my head.

The sheets feel different than mine. They’re not mine. Mine are soft, these feel new or starched like in a hospital. I try to get up, but then feel the straps along my chest. I try to move my legs, but they’re restrained too.

What’s going on? I struggle.

The door on my right opens. I can turn my head and see someone enter. The light is so bright and my eyes aren’t used to it. So all I can make out is an arm with a watch on the wrist. I think it’s a man’s watch. He’s holding a needle.

I feel the pressure of his finger on my arm, the point pushing into my skin and the sting when he injects. I drift off again.

When I open my eyes, I’m in an office. I’m sitting in a chair, restrained and in front of me is a lizard dressed in a white doctor’s jacket.

No, that’s not quite right. He’s got a human body, he’s wearing the jacket and I see arms and he’s wearing pants and shoes. His hands are pale, almost green. But it’s the head that worries me. It’s a lizard’s head all right, right on that human body. And if I’m not mistaken it’s a komodo dragon head. There’s no doubt about it, I saw those nature specials when I was a kid. He’s got the long snout and the fat tongue darting in and out with every breath. Yep, he’s a komodo dragon. Definitely.

“So, how do you feel today?” asks the komodo dragon nonchalantly, leaning back in his desk chair and holding a pencil in front of him with his thumb and forefinger. It’s a classic ‘I’m a doctor’ pose.

“I’m fine,” I say. I’ve got to be dreaming. The office is small; almost a box really. In front of me is the lizard’s desk, and then the lizard. And behind him is a full bookcase. I can see the Physician’s Desk Reference, some works on psychology, even some herpetology studies on turtles, lizards and snakes. And then there’s a few works by Nietzche, Satre, Camus and Freud. “But, you’re the strangest looking doctor I’ve ever seen.”

“Ooh?” he asks, in that professional bemused tone that doctors make when they sense you’re about to give them something juicy. “Why do you say that Stuart?”

Well, the komodo dragon knows my name, that’s interesting. As he’s talking, his tongue comes out of his mouth exposing two rows of serrated short teeth. Lots of them and they’re really sharp. The tongue flies up about a foot above us and catches what I think is a fly. And then it darts back in there. You can’t deny he’s quick.

“Well, first off you’re a shrink with a komodo dragon head and that’s kind of unusual,” I shoot back. He chews over the fly in his mouth and then swallows it down. “Also, you just ate a fly that you caught with your tongue and some would say that’s a little rude since we’re talking.”

“A komodo dragon you say?” He opens a manila folder on his desk and writes that one down with his pencil. I swear the komodo dragon is smiling. But since I’ve never seen a lizard, let alone any reptile, smile before I’m hard pressed to describe it. I’d say the sides of his long slit of a mouth creased slightly up. It looked like a smile to me. Who am I to say whether lizards smile or not. And anyway, if a komodo dragon shrink is sitting in front of you, you better hope he’s smiling otherwise you’re toast. “Mmmm. I think you’re hallucinating Stuart, that’s a common side effect of the meds we’re giving you. I’ll tell the orderlies to lower your dosage.”

I can’t keep from smiling myself. Perhaps it’s a dream, anyway I’m still hung up on the lizard grin. “Ok doc,” I say. “You’re the expert.”

I look down at my arms and hands where they’ve been restrained by leather straps. But instead of my normal dry, but tender skin, I see a hard, black exoskeleton and where I should have hands, instead I see little suction cup pads. When I look up, I suddenly see the lizard shrink reflected hundreds of times, each one a little lizard all doing the same thing. I realize I’m looking through compound eyes.

So, now I’m a fly, I think. That’s bad news when your shrink is a fly-eating lizard. He’s licking his face with that long tongue and I think if I were just a bit smaller he’d chomp me down too.

“Maybe we should continue this later,” he says. “You seem distracted.”

He pushes a buzzer with his pale human hand, which brings two thuggish orderlies through the door behind me. I don’t even need to turn, I’m a fly after all so can see behind me pretty easily. I see hundreds of reflections of them. They’re lizard headed too and their tongues are darting in and out each time they breath. They undo the straps and lift me up. I suddenly realize I can’t walk. My back legs are so thin and puny. they weren’t made for walking upright, so when I put my weight on them they just buckle. As I stretch a little I hear a buzz and feel a breeze from small filmy wings that extend behind me.

They take me back to my room, grabbing my legs on either side of me. They walk me in, and then lock the door behind them. It gives me a chance to explore my new body. My arms and legs have become almost indistinguishable and I look down to see a third set of limbs, buds really poking out from under my hospital gown, growing from what used to be my waist but is now more of a fat thorax, a bulbous, elongating black shell.

I’m leaning down on my four legs, wings fluttering but too small to actually give me any lift. I suddenly feel an itch behind my eye, and I scratch it with my front leg, just like any other fly would do. I gingerly push the sheets on my bed back with my suction cups and try to get in. As I try to get comfortable, I flip over by accident onto my back. I can’t move and start buzzing and moving my head around, my legs dangling in the air waving around ineffectually. I’m panicking. Now I know what flies feel like on the windowsill. I don’t want to end up dead, on my back like this. I manage to extend my wings just enough to flip me over and I jump out of bed again. Human beds aren’t comfortable for flies. Instead, I go over to a wall and put a pad against it. It sticks. I have an idea. I gently put the other leg up to the wall and then starting climbing. I make it up to the ceiling and as I rotate my head, I can see the entire room easily, the door and the bed. I can even do a little self-grooming with a leg, itch behind my eye. No one can swat me here. As I start to fall asleep, the image of hundreds of doors, beds and walls wink out one after the other.

Time dribbling like milk from my chin

You know what I can’t believe, how fast time is moving these days. I mean, I sat down and wrote the last post more than two weeks ago and it feels like yesterday. What’s up with that? Maybe it has something to do with living in such a flat environ like Chicago, it’s all so god damn flat. You wake up and know that you won’t be seeing any exciting geographic or topographic oddities today. Nope. It’s all just pancake, all the day. Not even french toast, but pancake. Or maybe it’s the fear I’ve been having that cold weather was coming. So, I’m sort of waiting for the other boot to drop. Well, here it is. Right now, it’s a warm and balmy 22, according to Accuweather’s registered weather service. According to their “RealFeel” (copyrighted word for what all the schlubs call wind chill) it feels like 11 degrees. That’s better than this morning when it was in the single digits of RealFeel.

We got clobbered, and so now here it is. Winter. I had a hope that we’d somehow miss it this year, maybe that we’d just hit the worst of global warming and then dip back into winter next year (when perhaps I’m no longer here). But, I’m powerless.

Change of topic: When Nance talked about how you need to just expel pages of writing, to just get it out and then if you lost it, you’d actually be better off, it made me feel kind of rosey. Sort of like, the way sometimes you’ve got to just get the bad shit out of your system to get to anything worthwhile. And that writing can help you do it. But then again, is that what blogging is all about? And if it is, who needs it??

I heard that the San Jose Mercury News is going to fire a bunch of people. So they’ve told everyone to wait at home all day, for a possible call notifying them they’ve been canned. This was imagined by the publisher (i think) to be a softer blow than telling people in the office, less embarrassing. So instead they’ve taken the entire 350-person union, told them to hole up in their houses all day and wait for a phone call that will end their jobs three weeks before the holidays. That’s nice. It’s always good that the big corporate parent companies are thinking of what’s best for the employees. It sounds sort of like the psychological warfare I’ve read about in Gitmo. They should also force the Merc staff to be shackled in their homes, just to add to the feeling of helplessness.

I think what the union should do is get everyone together for the day, do a cook out or something. So that there’s no one home to answer the phone. I mean, just come in the next day and say you didn’t get the message.

Shouldn’t the union do something helpful for its members here? If you ever wanted to feel utterly powerless and at the beck and call of a giant corporation, in fact the absolute opposite of what a union is all about, be forced to sit all day, alone in your house, near the phone, waiting for the phone-friendly voice of your outsourced HR department to tell you you’ve been fired.

Also, they’ve said that the unlucky 25 or so people, will be able to come back for two hours to clean their desks and won’t be able to access their computers. So everyone in the whole newspaper (imagine the scene here folks) is frantically downloading files/emails/docs, sending off as many important emails to their private email addresses, etc., because no one knows who will be axed. The staff will be wearing black arm bands and shirts to protest this inhumane treatment from their corporate masters, but perhaps burning and pillaging the corporate office (Medianews, owned by Dean Singleton who was lauded by the Columbia Journalism Review as having had a spiritual renewel) would be a better policy. I’m no radical marxist, but what’s the next step here folks? How bad will it get? And when are parts of our community worth saving, even if they don’t make maximum profits? Things to think about… perhaps it’s time you read this book. I decided not to link to Amazon, because I just read in the Economist that on Typepad/Moveable Type blogs the company splits $$ with Amazon for every referral.

Ok this was the longest post I’ve ever written. No one will read it, but hey.. Nance says it’s important to just gurgitate (if that’s a word), chew and spit.. like dip (chewing tobacky), and maybe one day, one far off wonderful day, I’ll actually write something worth reading.

your pal,
luminescence

Writing

I just read something on Nancy’s blog about the need of writers to write, and then lose their writing when it’s sometimes subconsciously appropriate. I started to skim the entry (sorry nance) after a while because i started thinking fast and wanted to get some ideas out. Now, I wouldn’t claim to be a “writer” although I write professionally. But to me a writer is some kind of magical being, kind of like a unicorn. I guess the pointy horn is the pen. Anyway, I’m off track, I think writing is something that’s magical. For me, I don’t do it enough. But when I do, I feel decent about myself, which is better than how I feel most of the time when I just feel bad.

And so, for a writer, there’s a lot of the action of writing that happens, that no one ever sees. That’s why it’s sort of disgusting when the sons and daughters of authors, rifling through their desks post-mortem publish a half-completed novel, journals, etc. It feels like a violation.

[Someone just called me so I lost my train of thought. But I guess I'll publish what I have so far.]

The Egg Chair

In a way I knew I had stumbled upon something fabulous the first time I saw it. It was in one of those antique shops on Lincoln Avenue, near Grace or whatever, one of those high-end used furniture shops with modern pieces. It was an egg chair, one like the super-villain in James Bond would sit in, where you’d only see legs and a hand stroking a Persian cat. Or maybe not, maybe he was in some other kind of chair. But, if I were going to sit and spend lots of time stroking a cat it would be in this guy, the egg chair.

This particular egg chair was white on the outside, on the shell part, inside it was a bright red velvet. When I sat in the chair, I just wanted to stay there forever and never leave. I sank back into it. I was in love.

There was no price tag on it, so I asked the older man with the fine taste in chairs how much it was.

“Oh that one?” he said with a smile. “It’s not for sale.”

“Why not?” I asked. “It’s in the store, you sell everything here.”

“Well, I mean, it’s on sale but I don’t think you’re the right person for it.”

“What does that mean?” I asked offended. “I love that chair, I’ll be a great owner and it will look fabulous in my apartment. I can already imagine spending hours in that chair, petting the cat, the whole thing!”

“Well, we’ll have to do a background check. I’ll give you some forms to fill out. We’ll do some interviews with your family, friends, that kind of thing. We’ll call you.”

I couldn’t believe it, what kind of furniture store was this? But since I did love that chair, and doubted that any other store would sell it, I filled out the forms and went home.

After a few days, then a week, I didn’t hear anything from the furniture guy. I would ask my friends, I called my parents, but they were demure about whether they got a call. Wanting to see the chair but not ruin my chances, I’d go to the store after hours and stare at the chair in the window. I’d imagine sitting in it, petting the Persian cat, and perhaps laughing monomaniacally, or not, I wasn’t sure yet how I would act in the chair.

After another week I was going to the store about every free afternoon after work and on weekend evenings. Soon after hours weren’t enough. I started hiding out in my car, across the street, looking at the chair through binoculars. I’d occasionally get glimpses of other men sitting in the egg chair, caressing the red velvet, grabbing the cushions, and kneading the fabric. I was jealous.

One day when I returned, at this point it had been several weeks and I hadn’t heard a word, I looked through my binoculars and the chair was gone. Storming out of my car, I forgot to leave the binoculars and walked in the store, glasses in hand. The man was there, looking slightly tense when he saw me.

“Where’s the chair!” I demanded. “And why haven’t you called me?”

“Well, we’ve sold the chair to someone else,” he said with a smile.

“But why?” I asked. “I would have loved it. I would have provided a great home for it!”

“We actually scouted out your apartment when you were at work,” he explained. “We even put the chair in your home, where we thought it would look best, and to be honest, it just wasn’t really the right setting we had in mind for the egg chair. Try a Barcelona chair, that might be a better fit.”

And a beginning

I was a little kid, with ear problems and a stutter. Now looking back, I’m sure it was cute to adults, the cute little kid who wore a bathing cap at the pool and stammered while speaking. But at the time it was just embarrassing.

The problems with my ears first started in Mrs. Fajardo’s class, my first grade teacher. While we were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the day, my left ear started hurting more than I’d ever felt before. It was like someone was trying to shove a rolling pin through my ear from the inside. I ran up to her, holding my ear, grimacing in pain and asked to be excused. But she wouldn’t let me go until we finished the Pledge, she said.

Mrs. Fajardo was a sadist that way. She had this sense of continual outrage at the antics of us, the first graders, forever losing her cool trying to keep us in order, in line and well behaved. I remember her eyes, glaring at me during this and other times I was making her life miserable. I went back to my position in class, standing with my right hand cupping my left ear, my left hand on my breast and tears rolling down my cheeks saying my pathetic teary version of the Pledge. From then on, I just could never disassociate the Pledge from my bursting ear and the stern look of Mrs. Fajardo.

Do they even make kids do the Pledge anymore? Anyway, once the Pledge was done and I was still jumping up and down in pain, Mrs. Fajardo let me go. I sped off, out the door and down the white cinder block hall, past finger paintings tacked to the wall and up the stairs to the administrative offices of Wampus elementary school, to where the nurse was.

I made it to her office, screaming frantically as the pain in my head continued unabated. The nurse put me in what passed for a sick ward in elementary school: a blue painted cinder block jail cell and a bed with pee-proof sheets.

Looking back, I have fantastic memories of me bouncing off the walls, literally. Screaming out in pain with a frantic nurse who didn’t know what to do for me, except call my mom.

When my mom finally arrived, I experienced that sense of deep relief only a child can feel when mom comes to save you. But I was still in pain and the car ride home was hellish. I rolled around in the right hand seat, clutching my ear and my mom tryied to get us home as quickly as possible. She had called her mother Helen, my grandmother, who met us at the house and sat next to me while I lay down on our couch, in the den part of our large 1950s-era kitchen/den. In one of the greatest memories I have of my grandmother, she sat by me and massaged my ear, the only thing that made it feel better, until I fell asleep.

When I finally woke up, the pain was gone. My eardrum had punctured, tearing a hole and relieving the pressure.

This was the beginning of my going to see Dr. Lawrence, the ear, nose and throat specialist whose office was inside a sleek black glass box of a building, and whose face and soft voice were like Wilt Chamberlain’s. I learned from him that my Eustachian tubes, the passages that connect the nose and sinuses to the ear canals had gotten blocked up with fluid (what I perceive now to be a more polite word for snot). The build up had caused the pressure that had made me desecrate the Pledge and scream all the way to the nurse’s office.

At Dr. Lawrence’s office, he showed me illustrations of the ear, pointing to where the eardrum was, the small bones inside the inner ear that allowed you to hear and the Eustachian tubes, where he explained how mine were doing an abysmal job of draining and how they were going to do surgery to implant little tubes in there to relieve the pressure.

His office was incredibly modern, with red wraparound sofas in the waiting room and magazine for adults, so different from the kid wrecked pediatrician’s office with toys and kids books that I usually went to. Within each examining room, a dentists-like chair was centered and modern art posters hung on the minimalist white walls. Whenever I would visit, I would take a hearing test in a windowed isolation closet of sorts, where I’d open the door, and step inside to sudden, miraculous silence. I put on the giant puddy plastic ear phones and then the nurse would turn knobs outside and I’d hear the alternating high and low pitched tones and lift my left or right hand depending on what side the tone was coming from to prove I wasn’t deaf.

I underwent five or six surgeries over several years, where Dr. Lawrence implanted the small tubes. They had to be replaced over and over because my ear would heal up and the tubes would fall out. Once I remember finding one on my pillow, it looked like a little piece of macaroni.

Because of the tubes, and the resulting hole in my ear I couldn’t swim without earplugs and a bathing cap or I might have lost my hearing. So I was a total dork whenever I had to swim. I didn’t get the cool Speedo caps, instead I had to wear my mom’s floppy “mermaid caught in a kelp forest” ones or cheap kids versions that looked like cut in half kickballs. It was horrible and led to a childhood of hating the water.

I remember the operations clearly, getting prepped for surgery (meaning suppositories up your bum), receiving special foam hospital slippers in a bag from the nurses, waking up after the operation and vomiting and the extra large McDonald’s cokes that my dad brought me, and which I never had at any other times, when I couldn’t eat solid foods the night before.

The worst part was the sleeping gas, which I guess was nitrous. I can still smell it, like melted Styrofoam or the smell when you bend a piece of plastic. In the operating room, having to put on that rubber mask, the feeling of not being able to breath and then the smell of the nitrous terrified me. I remember one of the last operations, trying to get it over as fast as possible and go right to sleep. I started hyperventilating and the anesthesiologist had to stop me and tell me to calm down and to breath slower.

Dreams under the gas were unusually vivid. I remember one of them still, me floating in my parent’s kitchen as if I were a ghost. I was hovering near the ceiling on the most perfect summer day imaginable. My parent’s house is a classic 1950s style ranch home, with no attic so the ceiling is angled just like the roof. I was floating at the very top point. The sun’s rays were pouring through the window in front of the sink and through the other windows. It was incredibly peaceful and felt absolutely real. I’ve had only a few other dreams in my life so vivid.

But beyond just the ears, the bathing caps and the constant fear that I’d get thrown in a pool by a bully and become deaf, I also stuttered and sometimes still do. Although at this point, most people don’t even know it.

It was especially bad when I was in elementary to middle school. I was teased and went to a therapist named Dr. Whortley for treatment. He was a kind little man who met me in his house, where he tried to make me feel less anxious, which was one of the major reasons I stuttered, in addition to the fact that I spoke so quickly that I couldn’t get it all out of my mouth and clammed up.

He helped me work through those root causes and then also tried to just slow me down, to learn to stop and breath if I had a stammer, to not let it get to me or freeze up so that I couldn’t start speaking again. He also helped me wrestle with and get rid of the array of physical ticks that I had developed to try to re-boot my brain when I hit a block. After hitting some word or sound that was difficult for me to pronounce, I often would almost unconsciously touch my nose or tap my elbow or even slap my face, whatever it took to unclench.

Many people who have a minor stutter lose it totally or greatly reduce their stammer once they grow up. I’ve learned that scientists think it may have something to do with brain development, as you get older whatever was causing the problem gets resolved. At this point my stuttering comes out only in very specific situations or with a particular phonic, such as a hard consonant after a vowel like the contraction, “can’t.”

Or for example the number 8, it’s a terror for me. I’m afraid of 8s. There’s something about that number, that 8, that’s hard to say. It’s the hard ay sound that catches in my throat and makes me want to twitch even now. My work number is 312-224-8188. So I’m constantly coming up with new ways to tell it to people to prevent stuttering. 8-1-8-8. 8-1 and eighty eight. Eight one and two eights or I’ve even tried “3-1-2-2-2-4 and forgive me I sometimes get caught up when I say 8, 8-1-8-8.

By the time I’m done I feel like some freaking autistic with a number fetish. But other numbers are no problem. Some people are arachnophobes, they can’t stand one spider crawling around the shower but have no problem with swarming house flies. I’m like that with eight. Give me a six and it’s like heaven, silky, smooth and easy to pronounce.

There are other things, such as reading a story or a script out loud that I know will cause me to stutter even today, but I couldn’t tell you why. I’ve tried to understand, but I haven’t been able to come up with much besides the idea that I fear that having a script means I’ve got to speak perfectly, without errors or stammers and that causes anxiety, which causes me to stutter.

There have been real world ramifications to my stuttering, I stopped pursuing a career in public radio due to my inability, and what I guess is a phobia, to read from a script even though I’ve been told I have a good radio voice. And yet, the hilarious thing about all this is that I love to read out loud. When I do and am speaking without pause, I feel on top of the world and liberated. It’s like I’m breathing fresh air after years of sitting in a coal mine.

Writing

So I think I’m going to use this to write up some of my writing, be free and get it to friends who I might tell I have this blog. It’s an experiment, without judgement, without worrying about who might see it or how it will be received. Not that I’m going to air my dirty laundry.. Or maybe I will.