Got my first real rejection today. Here it is in all of its glory. One down and many hundreds to go!
"Dear Mr. Moya,
Thank you for your submission. Although this particular piece does
not meet our current needs, we wish you the best in your work and hope
you will continue to enjoy 971 MENU.
Sincerely,
Gregory Napp"
Went to the Lance Olsen reading last night @ ND with 401 class. I was interested in what he had to say about experimental fiction and I found his writing to be strong and completely accessible. In other words, I was expecting some kind of crazy free form jazz thing but instead found a nice little Miles Davis Kinda of Blue vibe instead. Of course I really did know better, for class we had to read an excerpt (dig around until you find the excerpts link) of his work from nietzsche's kisses, and i was surprised by how easy it was to comprehend even if he did play with POV.
Lance was very approachable and was very easy to talk to. After the reading a small group of us including Neil and Kelcey headed over to Steve Tomasula's house to hang out. Steve and his wife Maria were excellent hosts and even though most of the crowd was composed of Domers it was a great experience and I'm glad I didn't pass it up.
Below is the assignment from class to imitate the excerpt we read for class, no title yet, but the more I read it the more it grows on me.
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You stand there and try to register politeness and interest on your face as you mask your disdain and try to ignore the pain in your lower back. The Patron talks down to you like a child. You smile and nod and repeat:
“Sir, I’m not sure I understand-“
But he cuts you off. Be nice you remind yourself. Keep smiling. The pain in your cheeks and back equal a 5% raise. You need this money. Your future self needs all of the money you can make now. It’s evaluation time and the boss is watching this transaction from his office. Your eyes begin to wander and you notice just how flammable this Patron is. His breathe is stinging vodka, his hair is matted grease, his skin is white flakes. The heat from the LCD screen that now stares blankly at you would be enough for this Patron to immolate himself. You hope that he will step closer; he would make an interesting sacrifice to the Library Gods.
“Sir, I believe you’ve been misinformed. What you are looking for is on the 3rd floor. Ask the information desk.”
You can’t help but notice he is now wavering. He is now falling. He is now bleeding from the head and peeing in his pants. The liquids run in opposite directions from one another. The security guard rushes over to the Patron while other Patrons gather. Some Juvenile Patrons point and laugh. You stand there with that smile on your face. It is now genuine. You marvel at how wonderful it feels to be honest.
It was a boys day out and we had a ton of fun. Above you'll find some pics of a couple of concept cars that really caught my eye. There were a ton of cars and spent nearly 3 hours wandering around the place. Jeep had this great setup where people could get a ride in a new Jeep on their indoor track- but the wait was over an hour so we didn't do it. Didn't get to see all of the cars, but there is alway next year.
I don't want to get too deep into the story, but on Tuesday morning I was involved in a harmless fender bender, in fact the guy that hit me didn't even knock the snow off of my bumper (he did smash up his hood though), but my ANGER was stirred up. Apparently, the young IUSB student driving ahead of me decided she needed to pull over, in the middle of the street, to get out of her car and yell at me. "Stop tailgating me, you're tailgating!" I was dumbfounded, how the hell could I be tailgating her if we had just left the light! We were in the middle of the intersection! We drove no more than 30 feet in bad weather! TAILGATING!
Having been in one other fender bender before, I knew that the guy behind me was financially responsible, however, I was so pissed off I told her that if she left the scene I would accuse her of leaving the scene of an accident. As we waited for the police, she approached my window with her cell phone and said "He wants to talk to you." I asked who. She said "my dad". MY DAD. Are you friggin kidding me! Your DAD!
So anyway, what has me the most pissed off is that she can pull crap like this all day and never be held responsible. Just because we don't have a law against stupidity doesn't mean people can act as they wish. Whatever happened to accountability, responsibility, maturity?? Just because the law says that the person who hit me is at fault doesn't mean that young lady is completely w/o fault . She, and her ridiculous, dangerous behavior are directly at fault.
Working where I do, I notice the public (which means all of us) more and more everyday is doing what it can to shirk responsibility for its actions.
Pitiful, pitiful, pitiful!
Hey guys! Here's my newest story. It started out one way and ended another. This is the first draft so please feel free to tear it up. There are places a I want to go back and add detail and solidify the story arc ( now that I know in my head what I want from this story), but I want to hear from you. Thanks!
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juice and kookies
Junior curls the orange power cord around his hand and elbow, his sleepy gaze following it up and down over his sweaty dark skin. The smell of work is overpowering, it’s the same smell on his father every evening, and it makes him feel useful. Junior’s thoughts also turn round and round; thoughts of Mexico, of the hedges to be cut, of his new school which starts in a week, of his mother who’ll have dinner waiting on the table in a couple of hours. Mostly though, his thoughts swirl around the bouncing images of the blonde gringas two doors down, step-sisters both 15 years old like him, trapped, like him.
Junior, would you like some juice and cookies?
Uh, no thank you Mrs. Dukes.
Juice and kookies, that’s how your mother says it kookies. Her accent is so sweet. Kookies. She’s a delight, just a delight! Ok then, they’ll be here for you. Juice and kookies, oh my!
Junior would like to respond and tell her that the only kookies in that house are the two kooks who live there. But even that simple thought makes him feel shameful.
Mrs. Dukes moves back into the house like a balsam wood boat upon a stormy sea. Junior had started practicing CPR when he began working for the Dukes, considering their fragile existence, but then stopped when he also considered he might have to actually do it. Instead he ran a phone line down into the basement and one next to the back door of the house, the two places where he was most that didn’t have a phone.
He finished wrapping up the power cord and began pushing the electric mower back towards the garage. The sky was turning purple and plump, and when he walked by the juice and kookies (he’d have to practice his mother’s pronunciation with her) the cookies were dry and crumbly and about 5 years old. Their texture reminded him of the basement walls in the Duke’s home. The Dukes home was on the same plane as the nearby river and whenever the rain fell, the basement walls cried. The basement, where he would have to spend the rest of the day waterproofing the deteriorating cinder blocks that smelled of mold and moisture.
Hey Junior!
Hey Dr. Dukes!
Come on up here son, I’ve got a new tune for you.
Sure thing Mr. Dukes, be up in a minute.
He wanted to add and don’t call me son, I already have a father, but Dr. Dukes was going senile and there would be no point. Junior could talk to him in Spanish y no me llames hijo, ya tengo papa, and Dr. Dukes would probably just smile and laugh and pat him on the head and say you don’t say son, you don’t say. Just like the time Dr. Dukes was in the garage, practicing with his fly fishing rod, wrapping the line around a bag of fertilizer and crying out I got one, I got one! It broke Junior’s heart to see the excitement on that simple face. Junior remarked sadly that it was only a fertilizer bag, and not a fish. Dr. Dukes looked child like and had replied you don’t say son, you don’t say.
The screen door slammed behind him as fat raindrops began splatting against the driveway. It’s going to be a work in the basement kind of day for sure he thought. Junior moved through house, making his way past stacks of newspapers and dodging piles of clothes. Most of the surfaces he saw had opened packages of cookies, candy, and chips. His mother had been sick for a month with severe migraines and hadn’t been able to clean house for the Dukes. Mrs. Dukes had told Junior to tell his mom to not worry, that she and Dr. Dukes would chip in and keep the place clean until she was healthy enough to do her job. This meant herding trash or anything else that needed cleaning into piles so that Loopey could clean it up quickly when she finally got back.
Junior, come in son come in, said Dr. Dukes
Don’t get up Dr. Dukes, pleaded Junior, but Dr. Dukes did and revealed himself to be wearing faded pinstriped boxers with his dress shirt, tie, black socks and leather shoes. It could have been worse; Dr. Dukes could have simply revealed himself.
It’s no worry son, I just have to get my clarinet. Now, have you ever heard of the great musician, Satchmo?
Uh, sure, Louis Armstrong.
Right right, you’re so smart. Now, he had this little song not too many people know about called What a Wonderful World, and I’ve been practicing this sheet music all week. Tell me what you think. One, two, one, two, three, four SQUEEK, SQUAWK, BLEET BLEET. . .
Dr. Dukes choked the song from his beat up clarinet, much as he did the many other songs he played for Junior. In his time, Dr. Dukes had been a man of prestige in South Bend. The walls in his office were covered with certificates, awards, and photographs with other powerful and influential members of the community to prove it. Dr. Dukes had opened clinics for the poor, had served on several boards for art and education, and had served on a panel in Washington D.C. testifying to the health hazards of lead paint. Dr. Dukes even had a Purple Heart and Bronze Star awarded to him after serving proudly in World War II. Dr. He’d been a man of distinction and integrity. If only the certificates and photographs could talk, what would they say? Would they chastise him for answering the front door with no pants on, or for wandering into the basement at night and picking up an old shoe and calling in for reinforcements?
The Dukes had disappeared from community life some time ago, when Dr. Dukes’ episodes became too much to explain away. Mrs. Dukes had always been the strong woman behind the man, and now was content with just being a woman who could still thread her own needles and who could still drive her own car, albeit slowly, to the weekly sewing cirlce. Mrs. Dukes also enjoyed visits from the grandkids, who didn’t come often enough, chats with her neigbors. She was so neighborly in fact that she was more than happy to loan out her Loopey and Junior whenever someone else in the neighborhood needed a job well done. In fact, she enjoyed the celebrity like status her neighbors granted her for having the best help. She showed off her landscaped yard, or organized kitchen whenever she could. Oh, they’re wonderful people, she’d say, just wonderful.
Junior moved over to Dr. Dukes’ office window because over the sound of a dying goose that Dr. Dukes was imitating, he heard what was truly music to his ears. He heard the high pitched squeals of Amanda and Sarah. Dr. Dukes had closed his eyes and was playing away and didn’t notice what Junior had noticed. The girls were jumping on their trampoline, and from Dr. Duke’s office window he had a bird’s eye view of their frolicking. They were dressed in bathing suits and jumping in the rain. Their breasts moved in delayed reaction and the girls laughed into the sky, full throated laughing, pushing that glorious sound into the heavens.
Junior had first spotted the girls a month ago at orientation. The freshman class had gathered in the gym to pray for a great start and a great school year. Most of the kids held hands and had bowed their heads as instructed by the priest, Father Marques. He looked down at the pale white hands that held his own and he was amazed at the softness of them. He’d never touched a gringo for this long before, he could feel their pulses thudding away in their fingertips and it was disconcerting.
He was quick to pull away at amen and began looking for the exit but was forced to look around when one of the football players called out his name.
This is Junior guys, he’s from the Westside, he’s been holding his own out there.
Junior had been practicing two a days for two weeks and recognized some of the faces now approaching him.
Did you think you were trying out for futbol? asked a strawberry blonde haired girl.
Junior gave her a deadly stare as the group laughed.
Come on, lighten up, she said, it was only a joke.
This is as light as I get he replied and continued staring at her.
What an asshole, she said and as she walked away the brunette girl who had been standing next to her called out for her to wait up.
Junior turned around and walked out of the gymnasium.
Those two girls were now doing somersaults in the rain. In two piece bikinis. The whiteness of their skin in sharp contrast to the dark of the trampoline made Junior think of the sun. Indeed, they reminded him of shooting stars. He wanted to reach out to them, to touch them, to hold their hands in his. The closest he’d gotten was when they discovered he was working only two doors down. They waited for him in the alleyway most days at the end of the evening as brought out garbage, or yard waste, or just to getaway for a moment in the cool dark provided by the trees hanging over the back of the garage. At first they would just peek around their fence and giggle and duck back into their yard. Soon they would just stand and stare, sometimes drinking beers and sometimes smoking cigarettes and sometimes doing both.
Once they spoke to him, just once, in soft girl voices. They wanted to know if he remembered them and he said he did. They wanted to know if he had a girlfriend and he lied and said he did. They wanted to know if he had ever kissed a white girl and he lied again and said he did. They stepped closer to him and the butterflies in his stomach were as heavy as stones and he couldn’t move. The girls told him a story of being home alone and trapped like prisoners, but he didn’t listen to much of it. Instead he watched their eyes and mouths. He liked the way they moved. He stared at the angles of their lips and eyelids and was mesmerized by the way their skin pulled and relaxed. The blonde, Sarah, had freckles and her skin was lighter than Amanda’s. Amanda had darker skin, olive colored. The girls smelled like a sunny day. They were stepsisters but they loved each other they said. And they kissed each other to prove it.
The stiffness in Junior’s underwear was proof enough that he believed them. They pointed at his pants and started giggling. Junior became shameful and angry. He moved back into the Duke’s yard and slapped the gate shut. They begged and pleaded for him to come back out into the coolness of the alley, but he moved into the garage instead. He found a couple of two by fours and some nails and set them aside for later.
Well, look at those ripe melons, wouldja said Dr. Dukes. He was now standing next to Junior and was looking out the window also. Nothing compared to these though, said Dr. Dukes as Junior backed away in panic.
Take a look at these Junior said Dr. Dukes. He had opened an envelope that had appeared in his hand and pulled out a photo. Come on, take a look, he said.
Junior reached out and held the photo in a shaking hand. It was the image of a nude black woman in a banana skirt. It was signed, love Josephine.
That’s a dancer I met in France, before I came back from the war. That was a time I don’t wish on anyone. I was young and full of vinegar Junior, just full of it. I was just a medic then, but I could shoot just as straight as the rest of them, and I was out to keep those good for nothing jerrys away from America.
Junior was taken aback by the doctor’s sudden lucidity. His eyes twinkled and his brow was furrowed deep in thought. He no longer had the blank look of lumpy dough. This was the Dr. Dukes of the medals and certificates, not the Dr. Dukes of food stained t-shirts and bad body odor.
This woman, she was a dancer, he said. And when she danced she made me forget where I was. I was back in New York City where I shipped out from. Hell! I was back in Chicago where I grew up. I met her briefly, once, she said hi and smiled back at her. She asked me how she should sign the photo and I said sign it anyway you like. She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and was on to the next joe standing in line. The next day I was shipped home, the war had ended, I was no longer a man, I was a college student. That time over there, those dead boys, bits of them are still stranded over there with bits of me.
Dr. Dukes moved to a leather sofa in a dark corner of the office. The sky thundered and the rain fell as if thrown. Junior looked out the window again and noticed that the girls were no longer there. The trampoline was empty except for the water that now created a heavy belly on it.
Gerald?
He’s sleeping Mrs. Dukes.
Dr. Dukes was indeed asleep, a balsam wood plane, a WWII replica of a Grumman Bearcat, resting on his chest, moving up and down. Dr. Dukes slobbered on himself.
Oh, that man. That’s all he does. Well, what do you think of my new painting?
Junior reviewed the image and was immediately taken in by the bright colors of the painted sunset. Two people in a tiny sailboat in the bottom corner of the frame, sailing into a vast pink and orange and purple ocean. The boat was so small and there was no land in sight. It made Junior wonder if they would make it to wherever they were headed. Would anyone make it?
So I'm scrolling down to the bottom of the blog cuz it's fun to do when you're bored and I notice that one of my posts has additional comments and I log and to find. . .BLOG SPAM! How great is that? NO really, just when I thought that despret bastards had found all nooks and crannies to bother the shit out of us, they have gone and found the blogs. Can dream spammers be far behind. Ooh, that's mine and you can't have it- the title of my next, first sci fi short story: The Legend of the Dream Spammer.
Well, not really. This quote is attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural speech, however it was really written by Marianne Williamson. I took my favorite parts, the parts that really resonate deep inside me and posted them here. If you want to read the complete poem go here.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deep fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us...
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to be the same.
As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.
Here's the poem I wrote based on Charmi's exercise from David's poetry class:
Lightly, under sprinting clouds
We find each other translucent.
Heavily: blades and blades crush and stab
Underneath us. We find ourselves
Hiding in our angles, in the shadows
Of our pleasure. The collar chokes,
Pinches, ebbs, flows, tighter, tighter-
Wooden smells, pine and oak, cherry.
Heavily, under melting clouds
I find myself obsidian.
Lightly: verdant stains burn impressions
On my skin. Pulsing muscle, steady drops
Race the rabbit to its hole.
If so you should consider signing up with the St. Joseph County Humane Society Dogpark. It's only $60 a year (I have two dogs, it may be cheaper for solo dogs), you fill out some paper work, and get your vet to verify the health of your dog and you're set. So far we've taken our dogs to the dog park twice. From what we could tell our dogs loved it. They ran and played until they couldn't anymore. The weather was bad and kept other owners away, but we can't wait until our dogs have other dogs to play with.
This is Ella (german shep mix) and Marley (afgan/irish setter mix) come on out an meet us at the dogpark sometime.
Well, let's see. . .
Today at work I saw a kid I hadn't seen in over 3 years. He was part of a troubled group of kids at a public school that I had worked at several years ago. They were dissaffected white youth, too poor and too aware of their situation. These were the kinds of kids that felt the sting of words such as "the world is yours go out and take it." Anyway "Stan" recognized me immediatly and started telling me about how well he was doing. It took him hitting rock bottom about three times before realizing he had his whole life ahead of him. He's turned a new leaf he says. He's happy to report there's a brain in his head after all. He's going for a GED- too many burned bridges and bad experiences in school. He's not sorry to miss out on high school life- he's lived more teenage experiences to satisfy at least three teenagers. No, he's looking for a trade, he's looking to distance himself from his stupidity and anger. He remembers me though not like he remembers the other adults at the school. They made him feel like a fool, inadequate, and worthless, and he was more than happy to live up to their expectations. He remembers me taking the time to listen to his bullshit and then calling him on it, giving him space and taking control when he couldn't. Mostly though, he respected me for never coming down to his level, never treating him like a jerk.
Given "Stan's" track record, his future isn't as bright as it could be, and I expect his life to be filled with trouble. However, I have hope him.
This is a poet my wife introduced me too when we still lived in Texas. I love the way she writes- so revealing, honest, unflinching- just so damned good! Here is her website: http://www.sherylstgermain.com/
Here is one of her poems that I really like.
Addiction
The truth is I loved it,
the whole ritual of it,the way he would fist up his arm, then
hold it out so trusting and bare,
the vein pushed up all blue and throbbing
and wanting to be pierced,
his opposite hand gripped tight as death
around the upper arm,
the way I would try to enter the vein,
almost parallel to the arm,
push lightly but firmly, not
too deep,
you don't want to go through
the vein, just in,
then pull back until you see
blood, then
hold the needle very still, slowly
shoot him with it.
Like that I would enter him,
slowly, slowly, very still,
don't move,
then he would let the fist out,
loosen his grip on the upper arm--
and oh, the movement of his lips
when he asked that I open my arms.How careful,
how good he was, sliding the needle silver and slender
so easily into me, as though
my skin and veins were made for it,
and when he had finished, pulled
it out, I would be coming
in my fingers, hands, my ear lobes
were coming, heart, thighs,
tongue, eyes and brain were coming,
thick and brilliant as the last thin match
against a homeless bitter cold.
I even loved the pin-sized bruises,
I would finger them alone in my room
like marks of passion;
by the time they turned yellow,
my dreams were full of needles.
We both took lovers who loved
this entering and being entered,
but when he brought over the
pale-faced girl so full of needle hole
she had to lay her on her back
like a corpse and stick the needle
over and over in her ankle veins
to find one that wasn't weary
of all that joy, I became sick
with it, but
you know, it still stalks my dreams,
and deaths make no difference:
there is only the body's huge wanting.
When I think of my brother
all spilled out on the floorI say nothing to anyone.I know what it's like to want joy
at any cost.
The recent spate of school shootings has got me pissed off. The last two weren't even students killing students but adults killing students. Unfortunately school shootings aren't new and we haven't heard the last of them. However, what's most disturbing is that the perps of the last two school shootings were men with sex issues.
This doesn't speak well for our society. We have televison programs setting up sting operations to capture men who want to have sex with children, every couple of months we hear of female teachers having sex with a students, hell, just recently there was a politician (Foley) who was busted for sending inappropriate emails to teenage pages.
We need to "out" sex. We can't keep it locked up in the bedroom any longer. We can't keep it a taboo subject. It's all over tv, radio, and books; it seems like everyone is laughing about, joking about it, writing about it, singing about, everything except TALKING about it.
Sex is fun and it's great. It isn't some dirty thing to be ashamed off. Sure this great country was founded on WASP values, but those values just don't apply anymore. We can't keep suppressing, ignoring, evading our feelings about sex. Does this mean that men should rape little girls and boys, that women should be allowed to prey on kids? NO NO NO! What I am saying is that we have members of our society that have problems with sex and they feel too ashamed to get help and to talk about their problems. Our society doesn't want to hear it. Our society thinks that by not talking about sex, it isn't happening.
Well, the consequences of that line of thinking is quite evident.
With eyes closed- Octavio Paz
With eyes closed
You light up within
You are blind stone
Night after night I carve you
With eyes closed
You are frank stone
We have become enormous
Just knowing each other
With eyes closed
This is something new, I'll be posting this as I write it. Tell me what you think, be brutally honest. Thanks!
Otis Blue
Confused and sitting straight up in bed, Otis was mesmerized by the nighttime orange sun humming soothingly outside of his window. What the hell is goin on here? Otis looks over his shoulder, behind him, pushing aside the paisley window curtain and reaches back into the deep corner of the window sill. Both grape juice cartons are still there.
Still cookin. That fat Mexican Junior aint found these. Son of bitch aint gonna get these neitha, he says.
Turning back around, Otis sees himself in the window and doesn’t recognize the man staring back. He’s gaunt, cotton topped, and thin.
That cancer ain’t gonna leave nuthin, he says.
His overlarge blue and white striped pajamas fall away from his body, nearly standing on their own.
Too much damned starch. I tell them wimen, but they ain’t listen.
He looks like a sail boat. He reminds himself of the ship in the painting in Hubert’s room. The painting Hubert made with a brush in his mouth after his stroke. It’s a small sail boat, with a blue sail, the sky is dark and there’s nothing on the horizon.
Just driftin man, he’d told his roommate Lovitz after he’d seen it, Ain’t nowhere to go, ain’t nuthin ta see. Just a yellow boat with a blue sail, looks like a storm comin to.
Otis checks behind the curtain one last time, satisfied that his contraband is safe, he lays back down and closes his eyes and says a prayer.
Lord, just give me back 5 years, that’s all I ask, just 5 and I’ll whup Juniors ass up and down these halls with his own mopstick. Thas all Lord, I ain’t askin for mercy or salvation, just strenth enough to get that fat bastard for stealin my hooch. I know he ain’t turned me in Lord cuz there ain’t been no warnins from the nurses. Junior just be stealin it. Just 5 years lord, only 5. That’s enough. Amen.
At around the 3rd or 4th grade I read White Fang by Jack London and it blew all of that Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Hardy Boys shit out of my ass that was force fed me in elementary school. I still indulge in fantasy and comic books, but not like I used to. Mostly they help me to remember to not take life so seriously.
I have to agree with Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories. I was about 14 and I let those two books consume my waking life until girls came along a year or two later and took that coveted spot. That Bananfish story invaded the space in between my cells and colored my view of things for a long time. Almost 15 years later I can still see the images of that story, they sneak up on me. I have to read that story soon, but maybe I won't.
I didn't enjoy Blood Meridian like I did No Country for Old Men. But Child of God still haunts me however, like those Bananfish. That guy is somewhere inside me, plundering the mountains and valleys of my soul, looking for dead meat. That book reminds of the Pleco fish in aquariums. They have a dirty job to do, but when they it, the tank sparkles. It's unfair to think of a book in those terms, one so beautifully written. That book just won't quit, it's eating up all of the rotten pieces of me in me that need to go. I need to free up some space it seems.
Another book that has had the same affect on me as White Fang and Child of God has to be 100 Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. I read that book about 8 years ago and I fell in love with it. I've only read it once and that seems to be just the right amount. The way that Marquez plays with reality and magic and faith. We all have to believe in something, God, Enlightenment, Capitalism- I choose to believe in the magic of people and what happens when they break through the illusions of this life and come back with a bit of wisdom like MLK, Tupac, Ghandi, Jesus, etc.
Last but not least, I must pay hommage to the Brown Buffalo. Oscar Zeta Acost also came out of nowhere during my late teens and early twenties and kept me company, along with Los Lobos, and kept me sane. Acostas books Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and Revolt of the Cockroach People remind me that it's ok to have brown skin, speak two languages, and to write about personal stuff no matter how cultural or unappealing I may think it to be to general audiences. When I think of Acosta I think about not giving a fuck and just writing!
The last 6 weeks or so have been hectic beyond belief. Driver's Ed and Cheerleading for the teenager, summer classes for me, my brother's wedding, the tomatoes that are late . . .
My brother was married on August 5 and the affair was put on by family. I am now experienced in putting up a 100 person tent and am considering starting a circus. It was a beautiful thing, however, when it finally happened, and I got all choked up when I gave the best man speech.
I have say though that family is a beautiful thing. Sure, most Mexicans are undereducated, overfed, and ILLEGAL- but damn we know how to do family. Most computers are tagged with Intel to let you know what powers them, my life is tagged with Familia in the bottom left hand corner just under my heel. Family is wealth. The value manifests itself when we come together, even when times are tough and we have our own personal demons that we're wrestling (or drinking with) and our lives are consumed with so much stuff, to lend each other a hand, the shirts off our backs, or a pot of beans.
Sometime ago the media was exploiting a study about American's growing lack of a close circle of friends. I have to admit that my close circle of friends is my family. Not that I don't have many friends, I just don't have many that I keep in contact with ( I am a horrible friend when it comes to that kind of stuff) and family is always at arm's length.
So a big toast to Familia . . . and beans.
As I sat at the breakfast table the other day, enjoying pancakes, bacon, coffee, etc. my wife and foster daughter were gabbing away at a mile a minute as most women tend to do and then I remembered . . .
The dream from the night before-
I got out of bed and walked past a mirror in the bedroom. I was shirtless and I had ABS! They were wonderful. I rubbed them and patted them and baby talked them. I marveled at the David I saw in the mirror. But instead of marble white skin I was an Aztec god. . .
I was immediatley sad as I sat at that breakfast table stuffing my face with the egg, bacon, and pancake sandwich I held with both hands. I told my wife and kid about the dream and they thought it was funny. Three bites later I wasn't sad anymore.
I still dream about my dream . . .
So. . . I made this blog back in Abril cuz a writer said I should. Then I did the thing that I always do and got lazy and never published. But now I feel that I must cuz other writers I know have started publishing theirs.
Here's my first piece of ridiculousness:
A couple of weeks ago I was surfing the net at work and came across a headline that went something like this: " 2 die as inflatable art floats away." After a couple of "what the hell's" I decided to click and read. I read the story and laughed out loud. At people dying. Death.
It isn't my fault that the story was so . . . surreal? Basically some "artist" decided to make a fancy "Moon Walk" birthday party bouncy thing. It was made to float and for the walls to change colors and best of all people could walk through it and interact with art.
And so people were walking through this floating, technicolored cube, and then a mooring breaks and the floating Moonwalk begins to float away . . . with people inside. Said people panic and the floating art begins to list and tilt and soon people pour out like animal crackers from an animal cracker box and a poor old lady dies. (How do you tell the kids that grandma died at an art exhibit?)
Yes, I laughed when I read this! I was imagining some crazy Monty Python animation thing! Come on!!! This floating art was built by an artist, not an Engineer! Why would you go in! Why do I have so many exclamation points in this poorly written paragraph!
And by the way, the only reason they were able to retrieve the floating art was because it got stuck on a pole. Jesus!
So this is my first real posting, I hope to post more stuff when I can. Maybe some fiction, some observations, some mushy feeling stuff . . .
