SS: Oracle

Theme this week at Sunday Scribblings is "Oracle."

I gave myself an hour and 1000 words to run with it; I got it--1000 on the nose, after a smidge of editing.

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“...and the thing is,” he said, eyes wide behind bottle-glass-lensed glasses, “is that you just can't know the future until it's just, just right there, and you're experiencing it.”

She tapped a manicured fingernail against the door jamb impatiently, waiting for the rambling philosophical treatise to end. “Mm hmm. And so far, you've told me absolutely nothing I couldn't figure out on my own.” She glanced behind her into her apartment, where her laptop and approximately fifty creative writing portfolios sat, waiting to be graded. Time was ticking away; didn't take an oracle to see that much. “What are you trying to sell? Pot or salvation?”

He looked indignant. “Ma'am, I'm not trying to sell you anything but comfort,” sounding for all the world like a bad pick-up artist.

“That's it.” She started to push the door shut, but he put his foot in the way, a ragged Converse sneaker with the laces untied. She had seen the same fashion sensibility in the freshmen she taught and quickly learned to typecast. Were he in college, he would be a philosophy major, a rambling would-be poet, or some other specialization that prepared him for a lucrative career in food service or retail. Or door-to-door sales. She'd never considered that possibility.

“Ma'am, listen to me. Just listen. I've got no sales. I've got no bad intentions. I've got nothing for you but answers—if you want them. Here.” He backed up, hands in the air in the universal language that said, “See? No harm.” In his left hand was a business card, looking for all the world like a home injet-and-cardstock production. It probably was.

Suspiciously, she took it. “What's this, a psychic service?”

“No, ma'am. Look Forward to the Future Enterprises is a service, free of charge for your first visit—”

“You are trying to sell me something.”

“Not technically, ma'am.”

She snorted but was by this time curious about the spiel.

“As I was saying, Look Forward to the Future--”

“You come up with that name?”

“No, ma'am, my friend did.”

“Ah. Continue.” She studied him over her own glasses, a stare that she knew to be effective in the classroom setting, a look that said, “get to your point, and stop holding up class with your inane chatter.”

“Ahem. As I was saying, we at, well, our business, will ask you a detailed survey of questions regarding important life decisions, restaurant-ordering habits, daily routine details, and such--”

“So I give over all this important information for what?” She could just see the details being turned over to a kindly Nigerian gentleman, the same one who had offered to deposit $1000 dollars in her bank account just the other day.

“We input all of this into a computer program that I've written.”

Interesting, she thought. Not a philosopher but a programmer, or perhaps a new hybrid—the philosophical programmer.

“Once the data is in the computer, you can ask questions about future concerns—job security, relationship prospects, even financial security. This gets factored in with other data, computing your general demographic statistics and relevant details like overall regional and job market trends to predict, with approximately 90% accuracy, the probable results.”

“90%?”

“90%.”

“That's a very confident assessment.”

“Humans are creatures of habit, ma'am. Even when they seem to fly off the cuff, it's usually part of an overall pattern of thought and behavior.” He straightened up, and without the slight slouch and downward stare, he passed for a confident young man. An eccentric one, but no longer likely a pothead. “A man doesn't just wake up one morning and stab his wife for no apparent reason; he's probably a passive-aggressive person, prone to letting the small things like a nagging wife, a soul-sucking job with tenuous security, a receding hairline—all those little stresses—just build and build until it has to go somewhere. He wakes up one morning, she says it's about time he rolled out of bed, and WHAM, he snaps. It wasn't random; it was inevitable.”

“So it was his fate, then, to become a murderer? Could your computer tell you all that?” Fate or free will—that timeless question so many of her students tried to grapple with to varying degrees of sophistication in their writing.

“Not precisely as such, no,” he admitted. “However, we could have calculated a high likelihood of violent behavior based on a series of small incidents, marital habits, job market fluctuations that lead to more intensive demands of employees, and even factored in health issues like his rising blood pressure.”

“That's... intriguing.” And frankly, a little disturbing, and even a little, dare she say, futuristic—no doubt, given the remotest possibility of accuracy with such technology, law enforcement agencies would love to have access to the findings, all, of course, in the name of the public good. “Interesting,” she said, more to herself than to the persistent salesman.

He returned to the original pitch. “Yes, many people find it so. And many of them don't like our findings. But we don't intend to sugarcoat the future. In fact, you'll find that a major feature separating us from the so-called psychics and fortune-tellers is the very way we don't shy away from unpleasantries. Should someone decide to proceed with the full services, we consider it our highest duty not to mislead. What we predict isn't a fate that is wholly inevitable—in fact, by making people aware of the possibility of their future actions, we sometimes found that we could avert the more... violent possibilities. A recent client recently sought treatment for bipolar disorder after having been off meds for six months, based on our findings.”

“Fascinating. I will consider it.”

“Thank you, ma'am. That's all we ask.”

With a nod, he turned and left.

She returned to the empty apartment, discarding the flimsy “business card.”

A minute later, she uncrumpled it, tucking it in her purse. Maybe.

SS: Poetry

The theme at Sunday Scribblings this week is Poetry. Incidentally, Sunday Scribblings prompts tend to yield bits of silly verse from me. Here's what I got this time with an explicit assignment to write a poem:

There once was a blogger named Twit
Who fancied herself quite the wit.
When told to write a poem,
She let her mind roam,
And the result was this verse of shit.

Limericks are fun :).

SS: Coffee

Though I am sporadic in following Sunday Scribblings prompts, I knew I simply could not pass up this week's prompt... for reasons which should be made amply clear momentarily.

I present a bit of whimsy, delivered in verse form.

I dearly need my coffee,
that potent morning brew--
it wakes me up and helps me
get done what I need to do.

It empowers me with its aroma;
its taste is rich and full.
Without it, I am exanimate,
and the world seems dank and dull.

It's a truth I will own up to,
and I won't hesitate to admit--
I may be fond of caffeine,
but I am every inch coffee's bitch.

Tentative titles included "Don't call it an addiction" or the more 19th-century-sounding "Reflections upon a weeklong separation from my dearest beverage."

...On second thought, perhaps "Coffee's Bitch" could do the trick.

SS: Do I have to?

Winter is my favorite season, 9 months out of the year, and especially in the months of July and August. This summer weather (upper 90s and 100 degree weather with a higher heat index and high humidity) is making my list of "Do I have to"s much longer than it otherwise would have been.

It reads something like this:

• Do I have to go out of the house? It's hot, and my car's A/C is, um, less than cool right now, unless I'm on the highway, or you know, if Saturn is in Venus's orbit during the waning moon or some such luck.
  
• Do I have to get up in the morning? The humidity gives me a headache.
• Do I have to deal with other people? The above two factors make this one cranky twit.
• Oh god... my syllabus needs to be tweaked. Do I have to use my mental faculties to do this?
• But really, do I need to do anything outside, anyway?
• Sanity--fraying indoors. I apparently do need to go outside. But do I truly have to? (See first two bullet points.)
  
• Do I really have to think about everything that needs to be done before the semester starts in two weeks?
• Screw this all. I'm going to go take a catnap on the couch.
  

The air is oppressive, I swear. It settles heavy and thick around you, fogs up glasses if you step outside, and is not the least bit cool when a breeze stirs. It's turning my brains to mush, and I think it's that above everything else that bothers me.

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Now playing: Bayside - A Synonym for Acquiesce
via FoxyTunes

Sunday Scribblings: Ghosts

For two days, I pondered this week's prompt. I toyed with the idea of re-visiting an old character of mine and turning him into a ghost. It went nowhere, and then BAM! the idea for a story hit me. I've never written so productively as this--2700 words in about three and a half hours. This is a first draft, so it's not perfect, but by golly, I'm pretty pleased with it.

Constructive criticism is always welcome.

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“Of all the ways to die! Jesus Christ, there's nothing heroic about getting electrocuted. Nothing whatsoever, no lesson to convey, no meaning. Don't you get it? All my life, I tried to do stuff with meaning, but it figures I had to die a senseless death. And insult to injury—all that work, and there's not even some feel-good-grant-all-your-wishes heaven. Not that I ever believed in that concept, of course, but Jesus. No bright light, even, just a bunch of mist and vague details. This sucks!”

Joe (only his grandparents called him Joseph) went to kick at a rock to vent his frustration, but his black Converse sneakered foot merely went through the rock as though it weren't there. “And the special effects are shitty, by the way,” he added, shaking his fist at the sky.

“Are you through complaining yet?” Joe turned to see who was talking. Some Wall Street Capitalist stiff, he decided—the suit and tie were impeccable, and the shoes were glossed to a high shine, or so he conjectured even though he couldn't see them through the low-lying mist. Even in the afterlife, The Man was trying to maintain the status quo—as long as people were satisfied with what little they'd been given, they'd never agitate for better conditions.

“No, I'm not through. The moment we cease to struggle is the moment we give up and die.” The line had worked brilliantly for the youth action group, and it worked even better on idealistic young women.

The Man seemed unimpressed. “Well, you must've given up at some point, or else you wouldn't be here. Dead, I might add, though I suspect you had something a little more metaphorical in mind.”

Joe was taken aback at the display of humor. It didn't mesh with the solemnity of death. “Who are you—Death himself? I always thought you'd have a black hood or something.”

A wry smile. “No, I'm not Death. Death, in your case, was a bolt of lightning. For someone who claimed to be such a cynic, you're certainly quick to jump to superstitious conclusions.”

“Who are you, then, and what comes next?” No use beating around the bush, Joe figured, even if he had an eternity to figure things out.

“And I suppose you're wondering where to register your complaints, hmm? Patience, Joseph.”

Joe impatiently shoved his hipster hair out of his eyes and folded his arms across his chest, waiting for Mr. Man to continue.

“I'm your guide. Somebody thought it'd be a great joke to pair us up. I'm not in a position to argue, so here we are. Listen up, because I'm not going to repeat anything. I haven't met my quota of Drifters yet, so the sooner I send you on your way, the sooner I can continue on my own way.”

“So eternity functions on the capitalist model? Out-fucking-rageous.” The possibility threatened to render all his work moot. It figured that some patriarchal-capitalo-fascist godhead would have the last laugh, wouldn't it? Ha. Ha. Good one, old man.

“Well, it's a human construct, this tangible afterlife thing. It can't be extracted from the conditions that created it. Alter the earthly conditions, maybe, then you might, might see something different in this dimension.” For a minute, Joe could see a glimpse of a younger idealist, one who hadn't sold his soul to the almighty dollar. That moment passed quickly. “Anyway, back to business. You and me, we're Drifters. We're still caught between the dimension we lived in, and whatever comes next. Some people move straight on, lucky bastards. You know the type—satisfied with their lives, never did anything wrong against their fellow man--”

“Or woman!”

“Goddamned political correctness. Yes, or women, or innocent puppy dogs or poor helpless cows. You get the point. Those people, they move straight on. To what, I don't know, but I haven't heard any screaming or even rumors of torment, and you know how bad news travels. The rest of us—most of us, actually—have something that needs to be settled, maybe some so-called sins to work off. We can't do much in the realm of the living, except your typical ghostly rattling the window shutters and Ouija board antics. So it's easier to help in this realm. Takes longer, but it's easier, and hey, I've got eternity.”

Joe sat down on the ground, disconcertingly close to his own remains. His butt sank slightly into the pavement, and when he tried to brace himself with his hands, they too sank. “I thought... I tried. I tried to make the world better. Doesn't that count?”

“I dunno. Anyway, that's the sum of what I know. You're sharp, though—you might figure out more. Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a drunk driving accident across town. Three fatalities, I think. Good luck, kid.”

“Fuck you.” He stood up. “Fuck you,” he repeated, though this time he didn't even know who the intended recipient was.

Joe passed the rest of the night in the abandoned parking lot where he'd met his untimely end on his way home from the homeless shelter where he was volunteering. He scrupulously kept his back to the direction where his body lay. As dawn broke, the fog didn't lift, confirming his suspicion that it was intended as a manifestation of the separation between him and the world of the living. It worked, too—he'd never felt so alone, even when he'd championed unpopular causes, like fighting the vending machines in high school.

A shriek finally alerted him to the fact that his body had been discovered. It had to be Jean, one of the regulars. Oh god, not her. She's just shy of insane already. This'll tip her over the edge. Like that will help my karmic balance.

“Whoa, there,” Joe said aloud, needing to hear his own voice. He looked over. She didn't seem to have heard him, and the mist was thicker in front of her. “I don't think she can hear me. RIGHT?” No visible reaction. He approached her, waved a hand in front of her face. Nothing. “Okay, so I'm invisible. I wonder if I could walk through—Jesus, Joe, that's freaky. Quit that. Think, think. You've got to do something here, not just sit around on your lazy ass. Gotta think betterment of humankind. Settling old debts. Debts? Like student loans? No, that doesn't make sense. People. Who do I owe? I did right by my parents. Sure, they thought I was weird, and I think they were convinced I was gay when I started volunteering with the Gay-Lesbian Alliance, but I think I avoided disappointing them, for the most part.”

Silence was the only response. As the coroner's van pulled up, Joe decided to walk around, or float, at least. No need to watch the show. He knew how it would end, on a cold slab, with his parents being called to identify the body. His feet and legs instinctively moved in unison to walk, but if he didn't concentrate on the ground, he walked an inch or two below the cement, or alternately, above it, his feet making a morbid parody of walking.

He didn't register the distance covered, and from time to time, he had the disconcerting feeling of walking through people. As his vision and perception adjusted to his newly disembodied state, he began to realize that while the guy in the suit—whose name he'd never actually gotten, he realized–had seemed substantial enough, the others, the people walking around, doing things, living, were fuzzy and ill-defined. The fog seemed to eat them away at the edges. So, solid is dead, wispy is alive. Must be inverted, because I'm wispy to them. OK, I'll buy that.

As he wandered, though, he began seeing flashes of color—a red T-shirt, a fake bleach blond dye job, no doubt the type sold by the gurus of marketing who were out to convince otherwise beautiful young women that they'd never be pretty unless they conformed to an unrealistic Hollywood ideal. Were they dead, too?

Curious, he approached one girl. Red-head, kind of cute, he realized. Her expression was unreadable, but he could make out the logo on her handbag, a company well-known in his circle of acquaintances for charging top dollar for their product while shortchanging the workers who made them. Joe's blood boiled at the thought, but he had a mission, and being dead and therefore having little to lose, he approached her. “Hey.”

No visible response.

“Hey, this is going to sound really awkward, and I swear it isn't a twisted pick-up line, but are you dead?”

Still no response. He'd been ignored by girls before, of course, but then, small tics betrayed that he'd been noticed and deemed unworthy of response; this time, there was no indication of recognition. As if to confirm his hypothesis, she walked through him.

“So, not dead. But we have color. Color's good, I think. Maybe.” He looked to see where the seemingly solid people were heading. His favorite big box store. “Jesus Christ. Wal-Mart's even infiltrated the fucking afterlife.”

In spite of himself, he followed them, wondering why there was a convergence of colorful people gathering at this place. Why here? And what were they, if they weren't dead?

Joe approached a tired looking housewife who was trying to manage a shopping cart and a two-year old. Well, it was a small child, anyway, though he wouldn't want to have to swear to its age. The mother appeared clearly enough, right down to her bright red flip-flops. The child, on the other hand, was indistinct. Joe decided to follow them throughout the store, studying them, trying to figure out what made the difference.

She loaded up the cart with lots of pre-packaged food, Joe noticed. Pasta meals and lunch meat. Nothing remarkable there. The cereals were full of sugar and preservatives and unnatural colors, but he couldn't see how that made her choice in purchases too different from many Americans'. After she finished with the grocery section, she wandered over to clothing, and then to home appliances, where she bought an automated coffee machine. As she reached for the box, another shopper passed by. The woman in red flip-flops pulled her cart closer to her side of the aisle.

The new shopper passed through him, and Joe realized that the shopper and her child were almost an inverse of the pair he'd been following—the mom was insubstantial, but the child—probably preschool aged—appeared in technicolor splendor. Since the first duo hadn't gotten him closer to answers, Joe decided to follow the newcomers. They finished in home appliances, and headed, it appeared, toward the home and garden department. As they passed by the toy section, the otherwise docile child came to life.

“Can I get a new doll, please Mommy?”

“Not today, sweetie.”

“Please? Pretty please? Karen just got a new one, and you can fix its hair and everything.”

“I said no.” The woman had more to say, but Joe was transfixed by the child. She was glowing with, well, something. Before he'd died, Joe would've associated the bright eyes and flushed cheeks with life and vitality. But this world worked backwards. The brighter the light, the deader the person. It had to be. The mother was older, but given that he couldn't make out her features, she must be more alive. Is the child sick, then?

Even though there was no one to converse with, Joe needed to voice his thoughts. The words tumbled over each other in their rush to get out. “No, that'd be an awful lot of sick kids. Unless there's a nuclear generator somewhere, and they're all dying of some sort of cancer and I'm supposed to find some way to call it to people's attention so we can bust those fat cats who let it happen. And then that could be my penance and I can move on. No, no. That's not it. Too simple. So these people are half-dead. They're like ghosts, kind of. Living ghosts. Walking dead. Zombies? Oh, that'd be rich. Jeff would love that. But no. Zombies kind of make sense, metaphorically, maybe...” He trailed off.

Another child was getting ready to pitch a tantrum at the endcap of another aisle. A boy, this time, wanting a Transformer toy. “But I want it!” He listed off the features that made the toy so covet-worthy. It sounded like-- “He's reciting the commercial! The little twerp memorized the commercial!” As the pint-sized sales pitch continued, the same animation took place. The greens of his camouflage pants intensified to a rich forest green, his blue striped T-shirt took on shades of indigo, and his blond hair seemed to acquire a halo.

It was all leading to something, Joe knew it. He could feel the answer lurking on the edge of his consciousness, but it eluded him. He needed to see the effect on a real person (someone taller than 3 feet), maybe. He wandered off in search of understanding. He knew now to look for the almost-radioactive glow. There would be his most glaring examples of what was wrong—and perhaps the answer to how to fix it. Fixing wrongs, now he was back on familiar territory.

Things began to make sense at the check-out line. Two teen-aged girls flipping through a young woman's magazine were glowing Chernobyl-bright. Joe edged closer to listen for perhaps the clue that would make things clear. “So, I guess green is the color this year. Gosh, just look at her.” An intake of breath. “She's perfect,” her companion agreed. “And the guy she's with--” They sighed in unison. “Hey, think they have that lip gloss here?”

Impulsively, Joe reached to swipe the magazine out of their hands. His hand went through. He concentrated. Think rattling window sills, Ouija boards—I need movement here! He tried again. Nothing. Again. The taller of the two girls reached to put the magazine back. “Damnit, that's all a load of lies, don't you realize?” Joe exclaimed in frustration. “Buying that lipgloss won't get you the guy—and he's not worth getting, by the way!” The magazine went skittering to the floor facedown just as it touched the shelf.

“That's weird,” the girl said, picking it up. Once again, and how, he didn't know, Joe managed to knock it down.

“Maybe the spirits think it's the wrong shade,” the shorter girl joked.

“Maybe,” her companion agreed, with a nervous chuckle. The glow dimmed, flared slightly as they headed toward cosmetics, then dimmed again as they changed their minds and headed for the exit.

Something in Joe shifted, for lack of a better word, and he realized that somehow, he'd just accomplished something good. As a feeling akin to satisfaction settled over him, another thought occurred to him: he couldn't lurk at check-out lane endcaps waiting to do poltergeist things. Not every person who glowed with the unhealthy death wish of consumerism read the magazines. Not many people read, actually. People didn't read. Something clicked. They didn't read because... they were watching TV.

His mind jumped back to the boy and the Transformer, and the commercial the boy had practically recited. Joe raced back to the toy section, where the battle was still commencing. Mom was wearing down quickly, though, and he wasn't surprised to see the toy in the shopping cart moments later. It would take more than he was capable of to remove the action figure from the cart, but he had an idea.

At first the idea of following complete strangers home seemed appalling. It's for a greater good, though, he told himself, mentally apologizing for trespassing. The mother was unloading groceries on the kitchen counter when Joe heard the telltale click of the TV and the sound of squeaky cartoon voices.

He took a deep breath, and half expecting to be electrocuted all over again, reached into the back of the TV set, yanking on the first wires his fingers touched. There was a small popping sound, and then silence.

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And, there are more takes on the concept of "ghosts" over at Sunday Scribblings.

Sunday Scribblings: Ending

In 10th grade, I had the good fortune to make a few good friends in the midst of the painful social experience that is being a shy new kid in a private school where the other kids pretty much grew up together. My friends and I more or less did our own thing. Once you accept it, there's liberation in realizing you'll never be cool.

One of our hobbies was writing round robin stories. If you've never done one (you don't know what you're missing!), it's when one person writes a sentence or two, passes it on to the next person to add to, and so on. It can be a collaboration between two people or amongst several; most of ours were 2- or 3-way collaborations. There was no set story arc, and characters tended to appear very much at random. Video game characters mingled with manga characters and rubbed elbows with historical figures, pop culture figures, fictional characters from stories we'd both read and written, a few of our classmates, and idealized representations of ourselves. I don't know if they ever appeared in the same stories, but Hwoarang, Michael Jackson, Rufus Shinra, Kyouya Iida, Hideki Tojo, the Backstreet Boys, Richard Simmons, and Sephiroth all had cameo or starring roles in the stories at some point.

I mentioned the "no set arc" aspect of the stories very deliberately. With no set direction, a practically unending cast of characters to choose from, and only rarely a unifying theme, the stories could go on ad finitum. I think one epic spans 18 wide-ruled notebook pages. We usually found a way to finish them off in more timely ways, though. One convention became an oft-used favorite: "And then they all died. The End." This did the trick for a while, until someone decided she hadn't finished with a particular subplot. So magical resurrections entered the picture, beginning with something like, "But then, suddenly, __________ appeared and..." It was drama at its finest, and soap opera writers could've learned a thing or two from us about improbable and contrived resurrections.

We scattered a bit after that year, one friend to public high school, another to home school, and me to part-time classes at the community college. We scribbled a few more stories here and there, but they eventually began to lose the spontaneity that the originals had. We can go back and re-read them, finding humor in the inside jokes and drama that pervade the stories, but something's just not the same. The humor now stems from the memories conjured by the stories, not the stories themselves. There's no going back to that time, to that carelessness, to that complete assurance that--in spite of our peers and poor teachers--our friendships could alleviate and withstand the most trying of circumstances.

Sometimes things just come to an end. And there's no miraculous resurrection for an epoch that has run its course.

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More takes on this prompt can be found at Sunday Scribblings.

Sunday Scribblings: Guide

If I could write just the right guide, I think I could make a ton of money. Since it would belong to that delightful genre known as "self-help," I could probably market it as something like The Guide for the Socially Inept: Your One-Stop Anti-Foot-in-Mouth Disorder Resource.

It would cover every nuance of social interaction, from what odd gestures mean to how to read tone. It would cover what to say and more importantly what not to say and more important still how to recognize the red flags when one has run afoul of both and even better yet how to recover one's poise once one has recognized said red flags.

It would cover every conceivable interpersonal dynamic (colleague; former colleague--not very friendly; former colleague, great history; colleague whose name you can never remember; student; former student; former student who flunked your class; subordinate at work; person you harbor a secret crush on; person who may or may not have a crush on you; mother of high school classmate, who's trying to play matchmaker; friend's dysfunctional parent; ex-lover, parted on nasty terms; ex-lover, parted on less hostile terms; the casual acquaintance whom you know is a transvestite on weekends; the post office worker; one's dentist; for the ladies, one's gynecologist... ) and circumstance (office party, wedding, club, doctor's office, grocery check-out line, restaurant...). It'll have a great cross-reference index with straightforward keywords for navigational ease.

It'll be so comprehensive, I'm not quite sure how it'll fit in one volume. I've got bigger fish to fry, though--I need to find a ghost writer first. Lord knows I lack the skills to write authoritatively on the subject.

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More takes on this prompt can be found at Sunday Scribblings.

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Now playing: Chuck Ragan - Don't Cry
via FoxyTunes

Sunday Scribblings: Telephone

I've been remiss about posting Sunday Scribblings the last few weeks. So this week's prompt, "telephone" compels me to write something.

When I was a graduate teaching assistant, my second semester, I had a really good class. They were enthusiastic and willing to debate anything at the drop of a hat, and I often found the 50 minute classes flying by. They were, obviously, very communicative--some more so than others. Much more so.

At the beginning of the semester, I took time to go over ways to contact me, stressing the importance of communicating with their instructor. Missing an assignment due to a family emergency was a whole lot different from ditching Friday classes because of Thirsty Thursday, but without communication, I couldn't know the difference.

One student was very diligent about informing me of his whereabouts and progress. Five minutes before class, I'd get a call, informing me he was in the writing center, making last minute changes or else he had had an appointment in another city and would be late. Late is late, and unless it was a school-sponsored absence or tardiness, it still went down in the record book, but bless his heart, he kept me informed of what seemed like his every move.

Here's the point where I mention one other relevant detail: I shared a phone line with three other GAs, and whoever was quickest on the draw would catch it. I, erm, often was not swift to pick up the phone. Willingly so.

After several such calls, a fellow GA finally asked if it was the same student who kept asking for Ms. Twit. I answered in the affirmative. She was, I think, somewhat in awe and definitely amused. I told her that the student must've had my office number programmed into his speed dial.

One afternoon, I was holding tutorials. Inevitably, the students who sign up for 8:00 a.m. tutorial slots show up at 7:45, and the last few afternoon appointments run 10 minutes late. My communicative student was, I believe, the last one for the afternoon, and I wanted to go and grab a late lunch.

He called, running late. I grudgingly agreed to wait, as it was the last day of tutorials, it wasn't exactly like he was a complete no-show, and I was/am a bit of a softie. Five minutes passed. A call. Something came up, he was so sorry, but he was back on track, again, so sorry, Ms. Twit, but he's on the way with the building in sight.

I decided to run down the hall and snag a couple Starbursts from the English department to tide me over until I ate (Starbursts, coffee, and Mountain Dew were about 50% of my grad school nutritional intake). When I got back, my fellow GA was trying to hold back a grin.

You just missed a call from your student, she told me. He wanted to let you know he's on the stairs now.

Yep, I'm pretty sure my office number must've been on speed dial.

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Now playing: Tori Amos - Marys of the Sea
via FoxyTunes

Sunday Scribblings: Photograph

I don't have much in common with the cousins on my father's side. Distance and culture are powerful forces, and it's hard to stay in touch with people you didn't grow up with and only see for a couple weeks every few years, if that.

However, we do have one commonality that seems to have skipped directly from my grandfather to each of us grandchildren: a love of photography.

My grandfather was quite the photographer in his day; an accountant by trade, he took pictures in his spare time. They're good pictures, too, and I believe some won prizes in their day. Last I saw, they were tucked below his desk, faded and dust covered--the one with the view of the boats on the river in the early morning light, the one with the impressive lion statue at one end of the bridge.

"What's missing from this?" he asked a few visits ago, before the Alzheimer's took away his faculties.

I stared and stared at the picture, couldn't figure it out.

He pointed to the lion's face. It had no whiskers.

We like taking pictures of different things, the cousins and I. One is virtually the family historian. While my grandmother has the boxes of old photographs of her children, grandchildren, and cousins of cousins of cousins' acquaintances, my cousin has folders and folders of family portraits on his laptop.

Whenever we all go out, he's there with the camera. Out to see a tourist site? Group photo. On the beach? Group photo. Nice restaurant? Group photo. It's tricky to get us all in the shot, but he's patient and persistent, always on the prowl for pieces of family heritage. When my younger sister leans in close to my father, his arm around her shoulder, my cousin shoots. When my grandfather is having a lucid evening and he and my grandmother walk in front of us, idly holding hands, he shoots.

I take some pictures of family. Some. Like the shot I took of my other cousin lounging in a not-so-flattering position. Or the time I was trying to take a picture of the ocean panorama and my uncle thought I was trying to get a shot of him and his family; he'd beckoned everybody over before I could find a polite way to say, "but I wasn't trying to take your picture." I have a picture of my great-aunt and my maternal grandmother, their arms around each other for the last time (my great aunt died last summer). I have one of my younger cousins when they decided to stuff teddy bears in their pajama pants so it looked like they had clown pants on (don't ask; it was a slumber party gag).

Even the youngest cousin has the photography bug. Nearly ten years separate him from the next youngest cousin, so he's a bit spoiled and managed to get hold of the camera from his sisters. He shoves the camera in one's face and shoots, the flash making her recoil and let out a strangled "yaargh" sound. Her brother waits for the image to appear on the screen, then laughs delightedly; it's one of those photos you hope your family doesn't pull out for blackmail material. When it vanishes, he asks her to help him find the picture--"the one where you said 'yaargh,'" he explains, replicating her expression.

I wonder what will happen to all the photos. Will the next generation peer at them in confusion, wanting to know who each relative is and what convoluted twist of the family tree connects them? In what medium will they view the shots? Will it be just like pawing through grandma's box of photos or somehow different? Will the shots that survive be more spontaneous, thanks to the liberating aspect of digitized photography, or will the posed group photos prevail?

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Now playing: Mindless Self Indulgence - You'll Rebel to Anything (As Long As It's Not Challenging)
via FoxyTunes

Sunday Scribblings: Out of this world

This week's Sunday Scribblings theme is "Out of this World."

Here's what I've got: a bit of verse for a change.

Can pollen survive in zero gravity?
I'm kinda thinking not.
And so, to escape my allergies,
I'm going to be an astronaut.

No more pollen, no more spores--
no more uncontrollable sneezes.
I'm hitching a ride on a rocket
until the onslaught eases.

Of course I'll miss the flowers,
and seeing the verdure of spring,
but, oh, to have one day of peace,
I'd give up 'most ev'rything.

So good-bye earth, and mom, and dad,
good-bye warm sunny days.
I'm not sure when I'll be back,
but for now, I'm off and away.

It doesn't have the smoothest meter ever, but give me a break--my sinuses are killing me this weekend.

Sunday Scribblings: I just don't get it.

This week's Sunday Scribblings theme is "I just don't get it." It's been up since Thursday, and I've been puzzling over how to write that in a post for about as long.

So after much puzzling and mentally composing and deleting and re-composing, I came up with it: sports. I really don't get sports. It's not because I never did well in gym class. It's not that I'm averse to what looks like brutality sometimes.

I don't get the energy with which people support their teams, no matter how poorly they play. One of the neighbors goes so far as to lower to half-mast the flag with our football team's logo when they lose a game (which happens frequently). I've seen otherwise-mature professors leave taunting messages on each other's chalkboards during college football season.

I don't get the draw of huge extravaganzas like that Really Big Football game in January (you know, the one where a few years ago, an entertainer lost her shirt and sent the FCC into a puritanical frenzy). At least that event is only one day; then you have events like the Current Ongoing Basketball Frenzy that lead to outright sniping between people rooting for different teams (and many nasty, antagonistic Facebook wall posts and status updates). The vast majority of people invested in those games are mere spectators; most will only watch the games on TV (which, by the way, interferes with regular programming for some of us less sports-inclined types...). I would be willing to concede that actually attending a game could exciting, with a lot of energy in the stands, but to passively watch on a square box in your living room?

Those at least are games with action. What about that game where the competitors walk around, hit a ball, walk some more, and hit the ball again, until it's dropped into a little cup beneath a flag? Seriously, how is that entertaining or engaging? Or as suspenseful as the high speed of car races are, doesn't it get boring to watch cars drive around in circles after a while?

Serious yawn-fest. I think I'll go back to my book. Now that's exciting stuff ;).

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Now playing: Brand New - Sowing Season
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Sunday Scribblings: Inspiration Smorgasbord

For the first time, I'm giving Sunday Scribblings a whirl. What an opportune time, too--I have my pick of topics. I'm snagging "inspiration" off the list, but also "experiment," as I'm trying something new here.

I've joked about my muse in the past, as if it's a separate, sentient entity. Sort of like the classic Greek muses, only with less class--my muse looks like a gothic Tinkerbell, sitting on top of my bookcase, mocking me and making immature faces when I can't write. Why the bookcase? Well, she's got quite the vantagepoint that way, and where does inspiration to write come from if not from reading what others have written before, to enter into a dialogue of ideas. As to her wardrobe, well, I haven't the oodles of cash or the patience for clothing and makeup to maintain the "gothic" look, but it does fascinate me.

It's just silliness on my part, the personification of my muse. Inspiration comes from odd places. A story I wrote when I was about 13 was triggered by an odd moment. I went to the basement to do something and was fumbling in the dark when I bumped into something. I almost said "excuse me," knowing full well I was alone--or hoping I was, anyway. I envisioned a scene with a character alone in a house, bumping into something, saying "excuse me" as if there were a person there--only to find someone there, which led, naturally, into a kidnapping story. I was proud of it, working on it surreptitiously in school and marveling over the pages of my own words. At the time. I later pitched my 30-page magnum opus in the trash. The main character's name? Rose. Her middle names were also flowers, I'm wanting to say Iris and Lily. Last name? Smith. Oh, hella original, for sure. The kidnapper later turned out to be an older brother she never knew about who'd been taken away into foster care on a false charge years earlier. Oh, but wait, it's better. Somewhere in the sequence of events, he got shot in the arm, see, and she had to help him out and then I think it's in his delirium that he says something that gives a hint to his identity. Even richer still, he didn't know it was his kid sister he was kidnapping. I don't remember who he was working for or why he did it, but I think he was essentially a good guy in a bad situation. I think they all lived happily ever after. High melodrama, triggered by a bump in the evening.

I'd like to think my writing is a little more improved since then, but the inspirations are still largely chance. The (currently stagnated) story about Sept. 11 was inspired by an e-mail conversation with a friend about how the events awakened my socio-political sensibilities.

Or this start to a story, which is based on a real (awkward) experience:

I should have known better, should've known that "So what's your sign say?" is the leftist protest version of the standby bar pickup line. I thought we were just striking up innocent, albeit vaguely radical, discussion of the pitfalls of U.S. foreign policy. But one thing leads to another, and from a discussion of depleted uranium and post-traumatic stress disorder, he asked me out to dinner.

If it plays out the way I want it to, it'll veer off into a philosophical musing on sin and love and religion and the negotiation of identity against a backdrop of leftist agitprop. It, ahem, hasn't gotten far yet. A bit ambitious. Still, it was a chance incident that I was able to file away for later use.

Or this, based on a childhood memory:

"Trip-trap, trip-trap, who's that trip-trapping over my bridge?"

The little girl shivered in delightful terror and clutched her mother's hand tightly, half expecting to see the glimmer of sharp teeth and cruel eyes from beneath the bridge. The wooden bridge beneath them reverbated with her and her mother's stamping as they crossed[?] to get to the playground, and her mother's growl echoed faintly in the nearby parking garage.

They didn't have to cross the bridge; there was a walking path that circled around, but it was something they always did when they walked to the park. It was a ritual. With a snarling voice, mother became monster, and with the tight clutch of small hands, she became mother again, a guardian against any of the monsters that roamed the world, ready to prey on those vulnerable.

I have no clue where it's going. I just thought of it in relation to another story I'd written, a children's story that began with a mother tickling her kid and playing monster in the morning. My creative writing classmates had identified with that scene, so I was trying to capture another childhood scene, this one based on something my mom and I used to do to re-enact my all-time favorite book. I'm kinda thinking horror's the direction for this one. Who knows. I just snagged it when it came.

I'm trying to be open to inspiration, let the stories come as they will. I can't just toss up my hands and say the muse wasn't speaking. She's always speaking. I just don't always listen so well.


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Now playing: The New Amsterdams - Worse for the Wear
via FoxyTunes