Deceased

For the first time in a long while, it's sunny outside. No rain. Today is a clear, crisp mid-winter day with deep blue skies. Dry pavement, warmed by sun.

You hurry on your way, dodging people and gapping sidewalk cracks as you huff up a busy pedestrian street.

When you reach your destination (the post office), you continue dodging people inside the dim building. Sliding quickly across the grayish once-white tiles, you fumble with the keys to open your PO Box. You bend down and begin to awkwardly pull out a catalog and what looks like two cards. The big card is from your mother's friend, who still sends you holiday cards for every major and not-so-major holiday. You have no doubt in your mind that she sent you a Valentine's Day card, and you feel a twang of guilt for not sending her one.

After sliding the catalog this way and that, you finally retrieve your mail, though the second card falls to the ground face-down. You pick it up and turn it over. The brightly colored Christmas stamp is the first thing you see. Your eyes sweep across the card, stopping at the recipient name and address neatly printed in blue handwriting. That blue handwriting is yours. It was a card addressed to your Great-Aunt Barbara—the one you call "Aunt Barbara", even though she was your mother's "Aunt Barbara". Angled over the blue ink characters of her last name are the neatly printed letters that read "DECEASED".

You pick apart each of those letters, confused. Confused at the letters. Confused at how your own relative is dead and you didn't know.

Breeding Like Fervent Rabbits

It’s a mystery I have yet to solve. At first, I thought the solution was simple, like in a movie; “Duh, the murderer is dude with the shiny black shoes and hair-piece!” But as week followed week, I realized a malevolence beyond my comprehension was the cause.

Every morning, they’re waiting as I unsuspectingly weave through the maze towards my cubicle. When I pass through the doorway, they greet me in their open and inviting way, expertly feigning innocence. They’re the masters of deception. They lull me into their siren song, convincing me to pluck one of them from the box and take a bite.

And how can I resist? Each one has the slight silken sheen of quality chocolate. Each one is formed into an irregularly perfect square that promises hand-made mastery. Under the color-stripping florescent lights, they gleam together in dark brown beauty. They sing promises of delectable sweetness.

But as soon as I take a bite, the spell shatters.

They’ve betrayed me. Instead of the wonderful See’s Candy-like succulence promised to me, they taste of plastic and staleness. As the rest of the day passes, I glare at the box accusingly each time I walk by. With every glare, I notice another chocolate has disappeared. By the end of the day, just as the accountants clear out in a mad dash for freedom, the now empty box of lying chocolates disappears into the garbage can.

Good riddance, I happily think to myself.

And yet, just as they inevitably deceive me into eating one of their tainted kind, the chocolates always reappear the next morning. There they are again, lined up in the white box that was thrown out the night before. Each one with the slight silken sheen of quality chocolate. Each one formed into an irregularly perfect square, gleaming in their dark brown beauty.

My only solution to this mysterious and sinister force is that the chocolates contain magical properties that allow their crumbs to breed together and create new, full-sized chocolates every night. Those full-sized chocolates then work together in moving the box from the trash to the conference table so they can continue their reign of terror the next morning.

The Rusted Wheelbarrow

Dear Mr. Williams:

Ever since I first heard your poem, I was always struck with how un-useful your dependable wheelbarrow was. Although your poem isn't very long and it's rather hard to tell exactly what image you had in your mind, due to the stark contrast of the red against the white chickens, I've come to the conclusion that your wheelbarrow has an untarnished coat of paint. If you had ever chanced upon an encounter with a wheelbarrow that's been used, you would know that the brilliant red of newness quickly dims to a more muted and earth-tone red.

Because of your oversight, I took the liberty of rewriting your poem so it conforms to my standards. I hope you're not offended. If you are, however, please roll over in your grave three times and hit your head against the coffin wall three times more.

The Rusted Wheelbarrow
A Response and Parody by Mindy Messenger

nothing depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

rusted from rain
water

beside the black
roadside

Two Minutes

I wrote the following in two minutes at a writing seminar a couple of weeks ago. I made no edits or changes whatsoever. I had originally signed up for the seminar because I believed it to be about something else than it was about. Granted, it was titled �Writing the More-Than-Human: Fact, Perception, and the Natural World�, but the blurb also mentioned Nabokov. I love Nabokov and had no idea that the focus of the workshop was nature writing. I also had no idea that the leader of the workshop, Robert Michael Pyle, was what I now understand to be a renowned nature writer. Fortunately, the seminar wasn�t so bad. There was even a quirky old woman who wore a wide-brimmed hat that enveloped her entire upper body; she really like squirrels and wanted to write about them. I also learned from a perspective outside of what I normally wallow in, so I guess it was well spent money.

Thick clouds hung low in a cottony blanket the enveloped the earth. Pushing past mossy gnarled trees and over grass, nettles, and clover, the wind wrapped a chill grip around me. It wove through the fabric of my woolen sweater, teasing and taunting.

Fixing a Hole Where the Rain Gets In

A month ago, I said my goodbyes to Twyla outside the Thaiger Room and crossed to the other side of the Ave. While walking north to my apartment, I saw a small elderly man with a brownish green duffle bag larger than his brittle torso stumble under its weight. He fell to the ground, a mass of pamphlets and postcards scattering about the sidewalk in a swirl of hysteria. The man huddled into the duffle bag strapped across his back for a moment, hiding his thinly round face deep in the crook of an arm. All around him, college students and middle-aged adults passed in a hurry, agitated with how he was in the middle of the sidewalk and thus in their way. I was soon in front of the man and crouched down to the cool sidewalk and gathered up his pamphlets. Wondering why he collected so many different advertisements and stuffed them in his duffle bag, I asked him whether or not he was hurt. He answered my question in a quiet and sharply squeaky voice that I couldn�t understand. I handed him a stack of his pamphlets which he then hurriedly stuffed in the top of his brownish green duffel bag. Standing up, I offered him my hand. His was rough and weathered when he clasped mine, but the movements his body made in order to stand were delicate and feeble. Squeaking something I understood to be a �thank you�, he clutched his duffle bag close to the front of his body and scuttled off. I watched him rush down the street, realizing that his entire life was in that duffle bag- a life of pamphlets and postcard advertisements.

This afternoon, I said my goodbyes to Twyla outside the Thaiger Room and crossed the Ave. When walking north to my apartment, my eyes squinted against the onslaught of rain, I saw the same squeaky voiced man. He was standing with his back against a wall near the Russian bakery with it�s sandwich board sign jutting into the sidewalk, boasting the best piroshki. The man held out his hand to me. I did not take it, nor place anything in it, but nodded at him with a smile. Did he remember me?

Up The Ave

You. I know you. I know your walk, your clothes, your face. I know that you lived a floor below and some thought you were the most perfect person possible. You had a four-point-oh in every class because you studied all day- sometimes you studied too much. You hated your roommate, and so did we all because he lacked social skills and he was Mormon and would walk in peoples' rooms when they were having sex- or were close to sex. But you weren't there that year when he invaded three different moments of utmost privacy, moments when his neighbors were twisted into and around their loved ones with faces even more twisted in the blue-tinged darkness of ecstasy. He would stand in the doorway, dumbstruck, awkward as both his Mormon eyes, and those of the lovers, would explode from uncomfortable silences and mutterings stifled only by the darkness of the room. But you weren't there. Now you are here, smoking your cigarette and walking towards me. You look through my translucently white Seattle skin and take a long drag at the death between your lips as you continue to saunter closer in your khaki pants and button-down shirt. You can't smoke because some say you're the most perfect person possible and you were accepted into a school better than ours after one year because you never had a grade under the highest possible. Looking through you in return, I know you're not you because you would be in Oregon with your family right now, during the summer months, and not here in Washington. Looking through you, I know you don't smoke. As you walk closer to me, and closer to death, your face transforms slowly, and you are less you and more someone else. I was mistaken, you are not you.

But, you I know. Yes you, in your brightly yellow shirt with the words "Jews for Jesus" stamped across them like some Hitlerian banner. I do know you, because you went to my work one still summer day and harassed me and my manager. You harassed us even though we're not Jews and she's for Jesus and I'm for something else that's not Jesus, but is spiritual like Jesus and Buddha and Zeus. You harassed us because we work for an organization for Jewish college students. All of the Jews were gone so you annoyed us instead. You wouldn't leave, so we threatened to call the police. Then you left. Instead of through you, I look at you, with the hatred I try to reserve for bad cookie recipes and other not-important-in-the-grand-scheme-of-life things. You do not deserve to be looked through, but at. Sadly, you don't notice because you're too intent on the old Christian woman who believes what you do is good. I know you, and you are not a Jew for Jesus because such a thing can't be.

You I don't know- but I want to. You're crazy and funny and you don't like Bush. I am your kindred spirit, flying in a sea of muck and media. But you wave your sign on a college street- a street where fat white men with boats don't spit on you and yell that you are a rapist because you don't want innocent people being killed. Maybe you went to the big protests downtown where so many people filling the streets- filling the streets like a custard donut- made it safe for you. But you weren't there with the small and brave assemblage of aging Hippies rolling a black coffin through the media-inspired hatred and hostility. You weren't there when they rolled along without anger. I was with those Hippies, but I was not one of them because I yelled back at that man who forced his angry opinions on us like that of a rapist forcing his angry body on a victim. I was so enraged because I knew what being close to rape is like, and he only knew what raping was like. I give you one thumb up. But I do not look through you, or at you, but past you. I have decided I don't want to know you any longer.

But I'm not sure about you. It's unnerving having you walk so close behind me while I'm carrying my newly printed copy of The Stranger which protects my two preciously new David Sedaris books from the fresh droplets of gray. It's even more unnerving having you mutter "Have a happy Friday" with a voice that sounds as nervous as you walk over and over again. How can nervousness spread from every inch of you to me? How can it make you convulse and contract in the manner of a caterpillar? You suddenly walk jarringly quick past me with twitches and jerks and yell to the man getting in his car about a "'68 for sale". The college boy walking towards us is confused. The man getting in his car is confused. I am concerned. But I'm also not concerned. I'm something else as I secretly watch you, intrigued by how much your body and your voice twitch to the same rhythm. Then you dash across the street towards the beautiful shining Frat bar with its antique brown mirror windows and I think I want to know you.

Nightmare Inducing Fiction

Sorry, there's nothing creative for you today. I'm working on finishing up the Hellspeare story which has a link (but no page) on my Other Writings section. I hope to get that link up tonight or tomorrow morning, so check back tomorrow to read it.

Two days ago, I mentioned my Beginning Short Story class and how my TA, Ian, made us read some really messed up stories. Some of these stories were so messed up that the majority of the class had nightmares. Here's my list of these strange pieces of creative short fiction- the end of the scale closest to number one being the strangest/most disturbing of them all for me. If you decide to pursue these stories and read them, have fun and email me your thoughts about them when you're done.

7. "Initiation" by Viktor Pelevin
6. "Arthur Bond" by William Goyen
5. "House Taken Over" by Julio Cortàzar
4. "Letter to a Young Lady in Paris" by Julio Cortàzar
3. "Blood" by Shelley Jackson
2. "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" by Denis Johnson
1. "A Distant Episode" by Paul Bowles

The best thing of all, is that I accidentally signed up for another class with Ian this fall. I absolutely adored him as an instructor, but I also have this philosophy where I want only one instructor once so I can pick up a variety of ideas about writing. Hopefully, he didn't tone down his reading selection for this next class- I'm looking forward to reading even stranger works in two months!

P.S. Message Machine is playing a gig near my pad tomorrow. Here's the details:

Saturday August 23rd 7PM
Earth River Records
4744 University Way, Seattle, WA
FREE, All Ages

Sundrenched Elsewhere

Sunlight. Blinding sunlight. Sunlight so vivid, I cannot distinguish the stop light colors. Is it the red of immobility or the green of motion? So brilliant is this sunlight, that there are no colors, only washed out forms which necessitate squinting in order to understand. The sheen of windshield dirt awakens and dances in a vibrant blaze of white so white it's black with blindness. The red interior of the car glows with warmth. It grows warmer and warmer, suffocating us- the driver and the passenger.

The sunlight blinds us. It forces us to rely not on our eyes, but our memories. We must recall at exactly where what obstacle falls on our path homeward. A mistake in memory, and we risk smashing to a halt. A correct memory and we continue into the sundrenched path.

I can smell you sunlight. You smell of a hot car, of brown dill, of fresh basil, of Nature's Gate Shampoo. Underneath, you smell of exhaust, of fast food, of yuppie flowerbeds. Your smells are those of everyday life, but heightened by your heat. You diminish sight, and leave smell times two in its place.

You blind us, but we find our way. You attempt to trick us, but memories tell us you lie about your sundrenched elsewhere.

Bug Winged Animals

This morning I had a dream where my dog and I were kidnapped and two young, rich guys tried to trick me into giving her blue pills. They gave her the first one and it made her really sick. I didn't want her to swallow the pills, so I instead shoved them down her throat, knowing that the second no one was looking at her, she'd spit them out. The rich guys fell for the act and left us alone until they wanted me to give her another pill. Eventually, I was able to find the bottle where the pills came from which had all natural ingredients labeled on it, the most present being acorn. This relieved me a little bit. However, I still didn't want my dog taking pills that made her sick, so I continued the façade. Then, a skunk with huge bug-like wings sticking out of its back appeared in the dream and tried to bite me. I soon discovered that the rich guys were doing experiments on animals to get useless bug wings to stick out of their backs. Thankfully, my dog hadn't swallowed any of the pills so she remained normal. But that still won't keep me from never wanting to eat another acorn as long as I remember this dream.

Most of my dreams are stranger, and often more frightening, than this one. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I rarely seem to have what I call "normal dreams." Perhaps there isn't such a thing, but it sure seems like it to me when I hear others talk about what they dreamed.

One observation that Neil Gaiman made on his website is that it's hard to take a dream and turn it into a good story because the logic differs from the logic of everyday life- which I also think of as "dream incoherency". I tend to agree with him in this aspect, especially since you can see that the above dream paragraph didn't flow as well as it should have. I also have troubles transcribing my dreams because of my habit of "rewriting" them. Often, I'll start over somewhere in the dream and have a completely different sequence happen afterwards. Once that happens enough times, I'll easily lose track of what events happened by the time I wake up. Yet, despite the troubles of forming a dream into a coherent piece of writing, I think it would be an interesting experiment for a writer. To be able to take an incoherent story from when your mind was in a lucid state and then turn it into a readable work of fiction would help with fleshing out descriptions and the plot setup, as well as with putting fragmented ideas into story format. Besides, after the Beginning Short Story class I had a year ago, I've come to the opinion that many writers do turn dreams- or drug-induced hallucinations- into stories. I'd be scared if the writers my TA had us read wrote their stories while wide awake and sober.