Outside-In

MuDJoB Guest Writes: First Anniversary

2011-04-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

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Two small people carry one large thing and an argument ensues,
It ends with the big thing left on the street when one of them blows a fuse.
A patient sues his doctor and the lawyer sports new shoes,
The doctor makes excuses, saying, “I’m always the one they accuse!”
Fans at the game are anxious to see the visitors lose,
Though the leading player rolls on the ground and rubs a swelling bruise.
Mom and Dad watch a crime in progress on the local news;
A hateful man in an interview hurts with the words he spews.
Three competing suitors are hoping the beauty will choose
Against a backdrop of music and hearts of pink in varying hues.
The tenants default on their rent with excuses by ones and by twos,
And complain of the neighbor who stinks up the hall with the garbage that he strews.
Eli propounds on Kate’s erroneous definition of clerihews;
In order to get her to see the light, he gives her a book to peruse.
The church falls short on worshippers who can’t sit in predestined pews,
And Masons turn out their membership for failing to pay their dues.
A husband abandons his wife in aborted attempts to amuse;
Her demeanor is drowned in pot luck casseroles, soups and stews.
A detective sifts through the ashes searching remains for clues;
He’s found an earring, a tooth and a nail, but he doesn’t know whose.
Teenagers wooing, say they aren’t smoking. They are. It’s only a ruse.
They’re thinking of eloping because her father is turning the screws.
Workers waiting for jobs are standing outside in queues,
While the hardnosed factory owner seeks alternatives to use.
Someone is at the zoo with a child his ex-wife would abuse,
And an old man who’s lost a fortune regains it by singing the Blues.

Our One-Year Anniversary Together

2011-04-01T00:00:00.000-06:00

MuDJoB 03 at Issuu: Micro-Fiction Comics

2010-11-25T18:31:00.000-06:00

Open publication

Grey Johnson has a new Issuu

2010-11-20T11:27:00.000-06:00

Open publication

I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip.

2010-11-16T15:47:00.000-06:00

Open publication - More young adult

Bob Thurber's first novel coming Spring 2011

2010-11-15T15:17:00.000-06:00

This is one I'm finding it difficult to wait for.

Caitlin & Mathias

2010-10-25T17:55:00.000-05:00

Caitlin & Mathias by Nicole E. Hirschi & Michael D. Brown

HoWs of the Rising Sun

2010-10-25T01:17:00.000-05:00

Open publication

Static

2010-10-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

I first heard it when I woke at six, a hollow moaning rising from the dry patch beyond the yard. Figured I’d make a move to investigate when Annie rose at half-past, but then was deeply involved in cooking eggs for her.

“It’s been a long time since you made breakfast for me,” she said. She seemed reluctant to throw off the comforter. “Did you leave the kettle whistling on the stove?”

I said I hadn’t but I’d check to make sure, and went back out to the kitchen. I sat and rolled myself a cigarette.

I had only smoked half when she hollered, “What’s that?”

“Nothing, love.”

A couple minutes later she came out, tying the cloth belt of her terry robe. “It’s coming from outside,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Won’t you see about it?”

For a moment or two I thought I might, but when Annie turned on the radio and all it produced was sputtering static, my resolve faltered.

“Why don’t you get dressed?” I said instead. And where’s your breakfast plate?”

“Coward,” she said. She turned off the useless radio and headed back toward the bedroom.

“It doesn’t sound like a human in pain,” I said to the closed door.

“All the same,” she said, “I thought you were my protection.”

“What if it’s carrying something?”

“Well, if it dies, it could be just as dangerous later as now.”

We had already desexed whoever or whatever was making that awful noise.

I sat at the table thinking, but concentrating was difficult. When we’d first bought the farm, I sat that way for hours on end, marveling at the quiet. We were so glad to leave the city behind us. Annie would play solitaire in the parlor, and I’d sit and smoke and think.

Around noon she came out with the dish. It still had most of the eggs on it and she hadn’t touched the toast, either.

When evening fell and we discovered there was no light by which to read, we decided to go to sleep early.

Annie lay far off on her side of the bed and there was more than the usual space between us.

I awoke around 11:30 to see a beam of light coming through the closed window, then I realized it had grown silent. I rose and walked quietly to the window and pulled down the top pane to let in a little air. There was no sound at all. Not even the owl, nor the crickets. The beam flickered and faded. I couldn’t see the stars. The only thing visible then was the hard white moon against an empty black sky.

Welcome to the Information Age - Eric Bosse

2010-09-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

Equation: A Collection of Six-Sixes

2010-09-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

Open this MuDJoB publication - See other MuDJoB publications

HoW 2010: New Orleans

2010-09-03T17:00:00.000-05:00

House of Writers meets in New Orleans, Labor Day Weekend 2010

l. to r.: Dwight, Julia, Jared, Mike, Sandra, Gita, Teresa

not pictured: Shauna, Michael

Bill Lapham has a new Issuu

2010-08-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

Open publication

Grey Johnson's Your Pajamas on Issuu

2010-08-26T22:29:00.000-05:00

Open publication

Read this beautiful publication and make her famous. It's delicious. Be sure to click "Open publication" just above and read it on Issuu so Grey gets the view count. If you like her work, and I know you will, please leave a comment for her there on the site rather than here. That will encourage her to produce more of these gorgeous little numbers. --MDJB

Performance

2010-08-17T19:30:00.000-05:00

He drove up in a rented car, half the size of the one he had back home, and his wife got in. Then he headed toward the bank. He’d had several tacos with a very picante salsa and a couple of beers for lunch while she had insisted on eating steak and potatoes in the hotel dining room. They were on vacation, for chrissakes! Now, she was wearing too much make-up and an orange blouse with sunflowers on it. Obviously, she’d wanted to stay behind so she could change her outfit yet again. Visiting places with her got up that way made him feel so much like some stupid tourist. Thank god she had no itinerary planned for today. At the corner he had to stop for a light.

“Can I have a cigarette?” George asked.

Brenda pulled out two, lit them and handed him one. “You know, we really should cut down,” she said.

In the intersection, a bare-chested young man in dirty pants laid down a cloth-wrapped bundle and opened it. He quickly arranged his props.

“Oh no,” she said, “Please don’t.”

“He’s going to do it.”

“I just ate my lunch.”

The young man spread several pieces of broken glass on the cloth and, for just a few seconds, lay face-downward, his ribs on top of the shards. Then he stood up again. The shiny brown skin of his chest was unmarked in any way.

Next, he picked up two rods each about half a meter in length. At first, George thought he was going to light them and perform the fire-breathing stunt. Brenda had translated an article from the local newspaper about the Mexican government trying to get the fire-breathers off the street and into rehabilitation centers. The kerosene they held in their mouths to do the trick burned the insides of the mouth and throat, affected their brains, and their career-expectancies were nine months to a year at most. But this kid surprised him.

As he inserted one rod for what seemed half its length up into his right nostril, Brenda looked up the street in another direction. She tossed her cigarette out the window.

“God, that’s gross,” George said, “He looks like some kind of surreal walrus.”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” she said, “I don’t want to know.”

“Have you got a peso?” George asked.

“You want to pay him for doing that?” As she turned around to see if she had any coins in her pocket, she must have caught sight of the youth removing the second rod because she flinched. She asked how it was possible to put something that far up one’s nose. He thought she was about to upchuck that expensive steak. Looking away again, she handed him some money and said, “People should pay him not to do it.”

“I think that’s the point,” George said. He handed a coin to the performer. The light changed and he drove on.

“Why couldn’t he just dress up like one of the clowns and juggle or do somersaults?” Brenda asked.

“Maybe he’d find that too demeaning,” George said, “At least he’s doing something for the money. Not like most of the homeless people back home in New York, who just sit in the street and beg.”

“What about the window-wipers on the Bowery?”

“I always give them something. They do me a service.”

“Yes, they smear your windshield with a dirty rag. And you know they’re only going to buy wine with the money,” Brenda said. “These boys are more likely doing this for food for their families.” She patted her permed hair in that way he found irritating.

“Hey, what a man does with the money he earns makes no never mind to me,” George said, “So long as he does something to earn it. Here’s the bank. Stay in the car and I’ll run in and make a withdrawal.”

“Take out enough so I can stop at the artisan’s place later. I promised my brother and Alison I’d bring them some souvenirs.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” George said, closing the rental-car door with extra force. Did she even listen to him anymore when he spoke, he wondered.

“Oh, I understand you, George. You have your priorities and I have mine,” she said, “Besides, I need something to keep me occupied while you spend all afternoon and evening on the toilet.”

Critters at Six Sentences

2010-08-06T00:01:00.000-05:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More six sentences

The Versatile Blogger Award

2010-08-01T16:46:00.000-05:00

MuDJoB has won a Versatile Blogger Award!

What a treat!
If you Google the Versatile Blogger Award, you get approximately half a million results as of 1 Aug 2010!

The 4 "rules" (with my responses) that accompany the award are:

1. Thank the person who loved you enough to bestow this gift.

I thank Salvatore Buttaci for adding MuDJoB to his award list. You can find Sal's terrific poetry and fiction at various places online, and in print.
Check out his Amazon.com page.

2. Share seven things about yourself.

I was born and grew up in NYC, and now reside South of the Border.
To the best of my ability, I teach ESL to young people.
I write all the time, and have been doing so for over thirty years.
Although, I have been affiliated with several writing sites over the years, I recently discovered dream sites on which to express myself, including Rob McEvily's Six Sentences and Blake Cooper's Thinking Ten among others.
I've used online resources such as Issuu to "publish" work of mine and that of students, and am tickled pink to find we're being read all over the world.
I try my best to be forthright, honest, and sincere with others, and try to write daily.
I am very grateful to my many peers, and the people I've met in my travels who have extended a hand of friendship. This world is nothing without friendship.

3. Bestow this honor onto 10 newly discovered or followed bloggers–in no particular order–who are fantastic in some way.
Here are a dozen bloggers (among many) that I think deserve this award:

There are several equally fantastic bloggers I would like to include. For starters, I would like to include all the writers who have participated here at MuDJoB, but have limited myself to a dozen, and considering the names previously mentioned by Sal (who also bent the "rules" a bit), and that each of the above should be gifting at least 10 bloggers, I'm fairly certain if I've not included you here, you will shortly be recognized. So many great writers, so few awards to bestow! What's an admiring blogger to do? Ha. Spread the wealth, won't you?

4. Drop by and let your fellow bloggers know you admire them.

The Versatile Blogger award is peer-driven and such recognition does a great deal to connect and support our on-line community of writers. It has been my pleasure to be a recepient and now a bestower. All my best wishes to those I was granted space to name, to the many that are great, but just couldn't fit this time, and to those whose writing I have yet to encounter.

The Day Before the Incident

2010-07-20T06:15:00.000-05:00

She was sweet-faced, silver-haired, virtually imperturbable as plump fingers turned the pages of her mystery novel every afternoon on the bus going downtown. The roughnecks would laugh a little too loud and their chicks would howl at most of what they said as if they were dating the world’s top comedians. Occasionally, they disturbed other passengers, but the old doll never seemed to notice.

Leonard silently fumed. He had never been like that as a youth. Sure, he had done some bad things, but never in an ostentatious way. He wondered why the bus driver didn’t stop the bus and throw them off when they got like that. He had to know what to expect. They were daily passengers – a little too old for school, but more than likely not working yet – piking off the parents, no doubt – and Leonard had seen a couple of them boarding through the back door when the bus was crowded, fare-beaters and acting haughty because it was too easy.

One morning, he was sitting beside the woman. He glanced down at her book, and took in the words, “…and then you stole into her room and took advantage of the situation, didn’t you, Mr. Dodd?” before looking away. A Christie or some such, it suited her. She looked the type.

“Do they bother you?” she asked.

“Excuse me.”

“I only ask because you look as if you’re ready to boil over.”

“They’re punks. For two cents, I’d…”

“They’re just kids. We were kids. Could anybody tell you anything when you were that age?”

“I never provoked people just for the sake of trying to amuse my friends.”

“I see.” She went back to reading and didn’t say anything more until the bus had reached her stop. Then, she excused herself to pass Leonard. As she did, she said, “By the way, my name is Martha. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She got off the front and walked westward. She was not too far from the bus when one of the roughnecks stuck his head out the window and called out, “See you tomorrow Martha.”

When Leonard glared at him, the kid said, “Oh sorry, man, I don’t want to step on your toes. She’s a little old for me anyway.”

Leonard said, “Don’t you have any respect for your elders?”

But the kid pointed to his chest where his tee shirt said in capital letters QUESTION AUTHORITY.

“Smart ass,” Leonard said.

The kid laughed. His friends laughed. Their girlfriends laughed.

Leonard had never enjoyed being the butt of a joke. In days gone by that kind of thing would have been enough for him to take some action. He promised himself if he ever came up against this punk while he was alone, he’d make him sorry for laughing.

The kid sealed his fate when Leonard got off the bus on 34th Street and the kid wolf-whistled through the window at him. He did not turn around as the bus continued on its way toward the Village, but he could hear the sounds of laughter drifting away.

The incident did not phase him so much out in the free air. He guessed he should be thankful to the kids for one thing. His response to their activity had caused the old doll to break the ice and start talking to him. He thought she must have been a stunner at one time, and not so very long ago. He was reminded how he himself used to be quite the ladies man and never found it difficult to make small talk. What was it about this dame that unsettled him? He had watched her reading every day for the last month without ever screwing up enough courage to start a conversation. He was losing his touch, no doubt, and he was only fifty-nine.

He figured she might have a couple of years on him, but she kept herself in good shape – the stylish hairdo was silver-white in a way that doesn’t occur naturally, and the way she just let the noise and bother flow past her – he guessed he envied her calm, so lacking in his own character.

The next morning, when he got on the bus, she was sitting in a seat by a window, but someone was already seated next to her. He tipped his hat when she looked up and she smiled.

A few of the kids got on two stops later, but not the wiseguy. He and his girlfriend came onboard three stops further down. It was not intentional, not really, but Leonard’s foot was a little too far out in the aisle, and the big kid tripped over it. His friends laughed as he almost fell. Righting himself, he did look a little foolish. When he screwed up his mouth in annoyance, his friends stopped laughing immediately.

Leonard said, “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

Intentional, or not, Leonard had set up the situation. They were now enemies. Rather than taking one of the empty seats in back, the tough stood over him. In any case, the bus was soon crowded and there were no available seats. The tough crooked his leg slightly and pressed his thick knee into Leonard’s bony thigh, who couldn’t move away because the man sitting in the window seat was so huge he was taking up a seat and a half.

When his thigh started to throb, Leonard said, “Do you mind?”

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” said the kid imitating Leonard, “But if you weren’t sitting next to Fatso, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Hey,” said the other man.

“Watch it, kid,” Leonard said, “You’re going a little too far.”

“I’m going to the Village. Where are you going?” the kid said. “Shouldn’t you be in a nursing home?”

“The hell you say. I’m old enough to be your father.”

“My point exactly,” said the kid, “We put the old man in a home as soon as he started getting feeble like you.”

“Feeble? Why you punk,” Leonard said. He raised himself with some difficulty and backhanded the kid across his jaw, forgetting that he was wearing a signet ring, and regretting his action immediately. The kid’s face was knocked sideways. He lost his grip on the overhead bar and fell into the people behind him. Through the gap, Leonard saw Martha looking at him. She was not smiling. Before the kid was on his feet again, the bruise was already in evidence.

The driver called out, “What the hell, is going on back there?”

“You’re dead,” the kid said to Leonard. “You’re dead, old man.”

The driver pulled the bus to a stop, and coming back through the passengers, he soon discovered the source of the ruckus. He was a big man and said, “Kid, you’d better get off here and take another bus.”

The kid didn’t argue with him, but as he exited, he said with a smirk, “You should’ve warned your boyfriend not to mess with us, Martha.”

That was too much and Leonard started towards the exit also, but he felt a tugging on his jacket. It was Martha and she was shaking her head. He looked at the kids getting off and he looked back at her. Several options were crossing his mind. The other passengers were staring at him. He was not even thinking of the next day.

These Shoes (I Dare You Challenge)

2010-07-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

This week Jo Prescott’s I Dare You challenge at her site JM Prescott - A Reader's World came in the form of clothing..."Clothing can set the scene as certainly as a wedding dress, predict plot like a ski mask and laytex gloves, or reveal character like chaps and spurs."
Herewith, my response to the challenge:

These Shoes

These shoes have walked all over London. They have traversed Bermuda and the Bahamas. They have climbed to the caldera in the Azores and stood atop Gibraltar. They have walked all through the worst parts of Lisbon until they made my feet ache, and some of the best parts of Hamburg, where again my feet were hurting at day’s end. In Barcelona, they walked a good part of las Ramblas. They have stood on the tarmac at the little airport a short distance from the edge of the Pyrenees and taken me through olive groves and parks where flamingoes danced and balanced on one leg. They, these shoes, not the flamingoes, helped me walk all around Las Vegas to take in everything there was to see and do for free, and because my feet were sore, I credit them with keeping me from losing more than $40.US in those oh-so prevalent slots. I did pick up another pair in Denver, but they’re really the same shoes, and at the end of the month they will take me back to Costa Rica.

These shoes have walked the decks of many ships and the aisles of dozens of airplanes. They have gotten me to airports early and to church late. They have guided me through shopping malls and into cinemas and across the streets of New York City against the light. They have walked me from the Battery to Harlem, from Sutton Place to the Chelsea Piers, from somewhere to no place. These shoes have walked me from childhood to my maturity.

These shoes are my guide. They are brogues. They are sandals, boots and loafers. I have walked a mile in another man’s moccasins and returned home in these shoes. They wait under my bed to greet me in the morning and take me to new places and the same old places. They can get there without a map. They have marked the mileage and taken into account my weariness. These shoes will never fail me. They are ruby slippers and if I click the heels together three times and wish solemnly for something, well, you know where that will get me. I have not yet been to Kansas, but I understand we all wind up there one day.

I have never drunk champagne from a woman’s shoe nor has any drunk from mine but the possibility is not ruled out.

Every so often, I remove these shoes and flex my toes on a sandy beach or swim in a pool or bathe, but for more hours of the day than I have them off, I have them on. The natural condition of my feet, it would seem, is to be inside these shoes. Sometimes I wonder why we have made the earth so hard and dangerous a place to walk barefoot that these shoes are more a necessity than a whim.

I am attached to these shoes, and have contributed to the fortunes amassed by men like Thom McAn and Mr. Florsheim, if there was such a person, and if there was, he must have been very attached to his shoes. Why else dedicate his life to providing them for so many others. He had not much work convincing people they needed their shoes. Everybody takes this for granted here in the first and second worlds. We are working on those in the third world, getting them to see the necessity of shoes.

Someday, everybody in the world will admit how much they are attached to shoes. Then, we will work on hats.

52 Pick-Up

2010-06-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

Evelyn's Club

2010-06-05T18:06:00.000-05:00

I asked Evelyn if I could go for the Property and Casualty Insurance broker's license and she said yes. She said, "I'm always happy when someone wants to try to move themselves along. Look at Solmari."

I was looking at people like Solmari. I was hired as a wordprocessor in the Personal Lines department at a time when the the only person they had typing documents was 62-year-old Betty. Betty had been a typist and recently learned how to use a computer to get wordprocessing done. She wasn't interested in learning much more than that and she knew she would be retired shortly after the transition. I came on board with more experience in electronic document processing and at 26 years younger than Betty, I was only thinking about advancing from the position to something with more prestige. Betty was a nice woman. She would say to me, "You know kiddo, with your abilities, you're gonna go places."

Now five and a half years into the job, with Betty long retired, I was still pushing paper around and typing letters. True, I had formulated macros and found other ways to make the job move faster but in response the company felt free to take on more and more clients and to increase the volume of business they handled for the existing clients without taking on more staff to handle the associated chores and grunt work.

Solmari and a couple of others were hired early on, around the time Betty was forced into her retirement. Her chemotherapy and doctor visits required too much off-time. Solmari came on as an Account Assistant, but was pleasant to look at, never argued with anyone and took the broker's course. Within a year she was given 100 accounts of her own to handle. Admittedly, they were not the big money clients, but it was a short trip up the ladder to a titled position. For her, that is, she fit into the club. The others came and went.

Now me, it's just possible I was too good at my job. I don't think there was ever any chance for me to step onto that ladder. I wasn't exactly argumentative, but I did question Evelyn a few times about the workload. When I asked about taking the course, and she answered in the affirmative, I thought at last, we were putting our differences behind us.

I discovered sometimes when people say yes, what they really mean is, "I'll agree to anything within reason to keep you from rocking the boat. It doesn't mean I'll even consider letting you get near the steering compartment." A year after I had my license, and let me tell you, that stuff was difficult to learn, I was still a glorified typist.

It was only when some of the staff, disgruntled and feeling underpaid, left, and Evelyn needed to come up with a solution in a hurry that she begrudgingly allowed me to assist one of the overworked Account Executives with her clients. She still wanted me to act as head word processor while I tried to handle a second duty which actually required more than the eight hours in a working day to complete.

I tried to juggle the two positions for a year and then gave notice. It was too much. The thing was, I had a fair amount of prestige as the wordprocessor. Quite a few people depended on me. When I left and checked back after a couple months, I learned five different people had drifted in and out of the two jobs I was trying to handle at the end.

This was one of those times when someone saying yes proved not to be a positive thing. I was reaching beyond my capabilities and if Evelyn had been a good manager she would have let me know right off the bat, in a subtle way, of course, that I would never be allowed to join her club when my prior affiliations were so set in place. She could have pointed out my lack of enthusiasm. She could have told me I was good at some things, but probably would not be able to handle the volume of another position. Or she could have just said, "No." I'd probably still be working there today. Grumbling, complaining about the unfairness of it all and producing all those beautiful documents.

God Is in the Details

2010-05-19T12:19:00.000-05:00

The sign says the next ferry will leave Staten Island at 6:20.
Matt says, “There’s so much to do when we get home.”
“Hey, we don’t have to worry about that until Thursday,” Alejandro says.
“I was talking about my apartment, not Mexico. Since we’ve been up here, it’s a mess.”
“Ay, you worry too much. There’s time enough to straighten up everything.”
A shabbily dressed woman, hair unkempt, standing at a phone kiosk about ten feet away suddenly, repeatedly slams the receiver against the phone. Bang, bang, bang. She tosses the receiver and leaves it dangling.
Somewhere a child is calling “Mama, mama,” or could that be a voice coming from the telephone?
A man is holding a black book from which he’s reading aloud, "At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another."
The woman retrieves her two shopping bags from where she’d left them at the end of the bench on which Matt and Alejandro are sitting.
“You know it’s true,” she says, looking at Matt.
“Don’t start with me, lady,” he says.
“Matt, she’s obviously upset about something,” Alejandro says. “What’s the matter, señora?”
“Fuck you,” she says, “Why don’t you go back to Puerto Rico where you came from?” She walks away from them but keeps looking over her shoulder as if she is afraid they might follow.
“Hey, I’m Mexican,” Alejandro calls out.
Matt says, “When you’ve been here enough times and seen enough things, you’ll know better than to try to help one of these crazies.”
The man with the book continues reading aloud, "For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth..."
The woman drops her bags and pulls out newspaper sheets. She crumples them and throws them at the man with the book.
Unfazed, he continues preaching salvation, "...there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgement and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries."
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” she shouts at him, “Shut up and go to hell.”
Matt says, “You know you left a sinkful of dishes last night and your clothes are all over my apartment. I’m thinking we should have stayed at a hotel.”
“Ay, ay, ay. I’ll wash the dishes and pick my things up. What’s up with you?”
The woman, still shouting and accosting the preacher, has drawn the attention of a policeman.
“C’mon, lady, knock it off,” he says. “Let’s go and leave the nice man alone.”
“But he keeps talking that Jesus shit,” she protests.
The policeman reaches for her elbow.
“Don’t touch me,” she wails, “Don’t fuckin’ touch me.”
“All right then, move it along. You too,” he says to the preacher. “Take it somewhere else.”
The man starts walking. Without looking in his book, he continues “For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away..."
The big doors slide open. Before everyone has come off the ferry, the waiting people start rushing through the exiting crowd, to board.
"It has happened to them according to the true proverb, ‘A dog returns to its own vomit,’ and, ‘A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.’"
“Time to go,” Matt says.
As they pass the phone kiosk, Alejandro takes the dangling receiver and puts it to his ear. “Hello,” he says, “Hello?” He shakes his head then puts the receiver back in the cradle.

The MuDJoB Story

2010-04-01T00:00:00.000-06:00

A Look Backward: TecIngles (pre-MuDJoB)

2010-03-17T15:17:00.000-06:00

We Can Still Be Friends

2010-03-16T21:17:00.000-06:00

-So it has come to this, Elaine said. To think we only began dating four months ago.
-All good things have to end, Turner said.
But this stopped being a good thing weeks ago. She was filing her nails and looked up from under hooded eyes.
-Do you want your key back now or can you wait until next week? In any case, you'll have to wait. I left it in my desk drawer at the office.
-Why's that? He looked at her hand. Short choppy nails. He couldn't see the evidence of all her attentions. She smelled nice though. He thought it was lilacs. Real lilacs; not a chemical mix.
-When I was coming over, I would come straight from the gym after work. I just never brought the key home after that last time I went straight to work from your place.
-Why do you think we soured on each other, Turner asked, I mean in that way? Do you think we can still be friends?
-Sure, we can be friends. Hand me that little bottle will you?
How he hated the color she was applying to her nails. It made them look as if she had clawed him with them and the cuticles had filled with blood. He could feel heat and welts along his arms. He rubbed his right arm with his left hand.
A smile played on her lips. -Cold, she asked. -You can turn off the air conditioning. I just turn it on when it feels stuffy in here. Her apartment was crowded with furniture. Much more than a single woman needed. On the radio, Roger Miller sang, -Trailers for sale or rent. Rooms to let, fifty cents. No phone, no food , no pets...
-Do you mind if I smoke, Turner asked.
-I'd rather you didn't, if you're going to turn off the air conditioning, Elaine said.
-I'll leave it on, he said, -I'm not cold anyway. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply then turned his head to one side so as not to exhale the smoke all over her. After that he turned to her to smile and to see if she had appreciated his gesture, but she was preoccupied with painting her pinkie nail.
-So it's come to this, she said, and held out one finished hand.
He thought she was admiring how the light bounced off her red, red nails. They were very shiny.

Published at CJT's wordvamp

2010-03-12T17:59:00.000-06:00

My story Intimations: Black Velvet versus Ebony was published as a guest writer at CJT's wordvamp.
CJT (Nicole Hirschi) is a fine writer herself, and a good friend. We are currently (for months now) partnering on a novelette in six-sentence episodes, tentatively titled Caitlin and Mathias. She has recently begun featuring work by other writers on her blog, including Jeffrey S. Callico, Salvatore Buttaci, Edward Dean, Michael J. Solender, Richard Godwin, and Lee Hughes, and I am pleased to be among their company.

A Union Contract

2010-03-05T09:05:00.000-06:00

Who stole the money and from whom was it taken?
After Mr. Canaan was dead his widow and her lawyer opened his safety deposit boxes and inside discovered over two million dollars and a few Tai Chi videotapes.
The lawyer claimed Mr. Canaan was a gambler and had won the money at Atlantic City over a period of years and had stowed it away. He said one of the bundles was bound by a tape with the insignia from one of the casinos. Mrs. Canaan said she was unaware that her husband had been such a heavy gambler, but it must have been so because on finding the money she saw several casino binders. She mentioned the names of several.
Sherri Palatnik, a chronic junior executive, said she was not surprised. She had always thought something was amiss but she wouldn't elaborate. Later under oath in front of a grand jury, she denied having any knowledge whatsoever. In fact she denied having implied that rumors had reached her ears.
None of the partners of the law firm would give the goods on any other. Even those who had retired and were granted immunity refused to implicate any former coworkers. Each who came to testify fidgeted and appeared uncomfortable when the employee expense accounts were read out once again.
The Union had changed leaders a couple of times since Mr. Canaan's tenure. So none of the officers who came to speak could say much with any conviction.
The only thing that was a certainty, was that after the election in which Mr. Canaan lost his position, the law firm handling the Union's legal requirements was dropped in favor of another, not entirely different, firm. Many of the lawyers moved to the new firm. They were familiar with the Union members' needs.
In the end, the district attorney's assistant failed to make his case so it was a moot point as to how the money arrived in the safety deposit boxes. Mrs. Canaan was two million dollars richer, minus her attorney's fees of course.
And the old law firm which was paying a pension to the retired partner who had been a long-time friend of the deceased? They walked away quietly licking their wounds and hoped to rebuild their good name. They really did not need the bad publicity a trial would have brought on them.
These are rough times. Everyone says the stock market is due for a correction, in which case even privately held companies will suffer. Buying Union contracts could prove prohibitive under the new economy.

When I Was Young

2010-02-25T18:51:00.000-06:00

Once, when I was young and immortal, I was cruel and immoral. I walked an endless highway. I was infatuated with what I was capable of doing. It did not bother me to see someone with tears. Well, it didn't bother me much.
When I was green, I laughed more of the time and saw humor in misfortune because I did not know enough to realize one day misfortune would visit me.
When I erred I denied it. When I succeeded, I gloated. I became bloated with my own complacency. I carried the laurel wreath long after it had dried and withered and revisited my past glory as if it were something fresh and new. I fully expected those around me awaited something from me which was fresh and new and I tried to pass off the stale remnants as such. No one ever accused me of begging for compliments, though if they had, it might have awakened me.
Once, when I was sleeping safely in the past, my tomorrows lacked the urgency I feel in them today.
When tomorrows were countless, I thought I would always have my friends and that I would have acquaintances for almost as long. Now the future feels like a finite possibility and probability lessens. There are days I walk alone.
When the days began to grow shorter, my attention was drawn to jesting matters. I played a waiting game, for there was no necessity to rush to checkmate. There were options aplenty and if none appealed there was the option to create more, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will, but self-fulfillment is a well bound to run dry. The days grew shorter and now I feel the loss of hours, not merely moments. The scales measuring the past against the future have been tipped in favor of the former.
Once, when I did not state these inevitabilities, I believed they could be staved. Now, no longer young, I walk the road I paved.

Valentine Surprise

2010-02-14T02:14:00.000-06:00

Published at disenthralled

2010-01-15T23:58:00.000-06:00

My story The Bust appears in Walter Conley's literary journal disenthralled, Issue #4. His e-zine has a noirish feel, and he did a great job in giving this issue an international flavor. I'm especially thrilled to be appearing there along with Nora Ibsen, AJ Dresser, and Michael J Solender, and some other writers who are new to me.

Before I Was Born

2010-01-09T19:10:00.000-06:00

Before I was born, the world was a vastly different place. This is not to say my being born changed it, but I was born right around the mid-point of the twentieth century and the second half of that century was more technologically advanced than any era in history up until then.

I was born into the atomic age. The era of cold war and computers, television and space exploration, teenagers as a phenomenon and rock and roll, gadgetry and equal rights and terrorism and everyone capable of having their fifteen minutes of fame; all of these exploded on the scene during that period and before I was born many of these were considered in the realm of science fiction and imagination. The if-onlies of the first half of the century became yesterday's news by the end of the second millennium.

Before I was born, people worked hard just to break even and people worked at careers and not too long before I was born an American president assured everyone that if they worked for most of their lives, when they got to their golden years they could enjoy a leisure that would make the time truly feel golden, so that the world I was born into held a promise and possibility most of my ancestors could not count on. By the end of the century that assurance was dwindling, but now people are being urged to provide the promise for themselves and being given leverage to do so.

That old world, which did not feel like an old world to the people around when I was born, is now historical in tone. Before I was born, for the most part, the recording of the times was done on film of black and white. Two great wars that involved most of the world were fought in the first half of the twentieth century. All the memories of the first are in black and white and much of the second is also.

We landed on the moon in 1969 and sent machinery much further into space later on, but it must be remembered man only learned how to fly heavier than air machinery in the beginning of the century. Automobiles which are a ubiquitous sight only came about in the 1900s. The Twentieth Century probably witnessed about a third of the inventions and achievements we take for granted in our daily lives. I was born at the mid-point and the acceleration of progress since that point is almost incredible. Things that became part of the human landscape in the first half of the century were phenomenal and many past great minds foresaw their coming, but if seers were able to describe in exact detail what has come about since my birth, they might have been burned as witches. Who could have predicted something like a pocket computer to wirelessly transmit messages, in a past century, or could even offer a reason for the need to invent such an object?

Before I was born, a millionaire was a rare bird and by dint of his achievement became a historical personage. Today they are "a dime a dozen."

When I sit and daydream, I think I would have liked to be living in the world that existed before I was born. Since that time we have come closer to the possibility of actually going back there. We have cloned animals and may soon clone humans, now if we can conquer the time travel problem that would be the neatest trick of all.

MDJB's Picos

2010-01-07T02:10:00.000-06:00

mdjb's picos

In his native tongue he could toss off bon mots con los mejores, yet he sounded windy and dull in anything outside of English. Por eso.
by mdjb on 8:08am, 7 Jan 2010

Beau couldn't make a move without Dolly until the day he pulled the plug and she went brr-rapping around the room like a balloon losing air
by mdjb on 9:54am, 16 Dec 2009

And Who died and left you in charge? Jesus asked Peter on one of those latter days. He was attempting irony, but The Rock missed the call.
by mdjb on 9:33am, 29 Nov 2009

He was always taking others to task for doing things He would never do not realizing they could not do everything His way without being Him.
by mdjb on 9:31am, 29 Nov 2009

Although he angrily demanded she return only the expensive engagement ring, she sent him the cheapest postcard from Niagara Falls instead.
by mdjb on 1:41pm, 5 Nov 2009

All the stories in the world are here in my pen. I only hope I don't run out of ink too soon after I start writing them.
by mdjb on 9:38am, 3 Nov 2009

When I felt a spurt of writer's block coming on, I recalled my own approaching senility, and couldn't figure out how I was supposed to...
by mdjb on 1:59pm, 13 Oct 2009

Marred by past relationships, he took her on. She left him when he pointed out her only fault, but not before telling him his.
by mdjb on 7:06pm, 11 Oct 2009

Published in Gloom Cupboard

2010-01-04T23:49:00.000-06:00

Gloom Cupboard, Prose # 113

Miss Morningside; Learning Linen; Impossible Things Before Breakfast; Each Day I Die; Lydia

My Comment:

Rizzy Rodham: Brief, but packed with warm feeling. I finished feeling this was a person I’d like to know, and the ghost seems like the nicest one I’ve ever read about. The way she quickly says, No, but then proves the reverse is just perfect. I want to read more of Rizzy’s work.

Leigha Butler: As I have personally felt the presence, or the lack of same, but a deep need for it to be otherwise, of missing loved ones, this tale touched me deeply. There is that period where we just seem to give up taking care of ourselves. It’s almost sadder when we accept the reality of the situation than suffering through our longing, and this story captures those moments well.

As to my own piece: I quote Alice (from Through the Looking Glass) “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”

Lonnie James: Enjoyed the way the author made it clear something was out of the ordinary right near the beginning of the tale, and then took some time to develop the patient’s “personality” so that we could see, yes, he had one, programmed in or otherwise. Original take on a familiar theme in modern science that gave it freshness, and made it thought-provoking.

Jeanette Cheezum: This tale neatly expresses the dichotomy between the right and wrong ways to relieve stress. And who deserves punishment for choosing the “wrong” ways. Jeanette, as always, surprises with her awareness and observatory powers.

I am proud to be in the company of this fine group of writers. Gloom Cupboard is tops!

MuDJoB 66: Students' Writing

2010-01-01T00:00:00.000-06:00

6:52 (short fiction from Six Sentences)

2009-12-31T00:00:00.000-06:00

2009 Story Roundup

2009-12-30T00:00:00.002-06:00

The Last Time
Screenplay
Cosmic Rays
Flash Heart
Puppet
The Sequel
Wicked
Empty
Untied
The Setting Sun
Performance
Wife and Spouse Read NY Times

I, Splotchy: Story Virus v5

2009-12-16T19:23:00.000-06:00

I, Splotchy: Story Virus v5
Lost in the Bozone: Another Meme
Cormac Writes: Splotchy Story Virus v5

Story Virus v5

2009-12-13T12:58:00.000-06:00

This is basically a series of flash stories. I was tagged by my good friend the writer CJT on her wordvamp blog to help continue a project with some great writers, and given the list of previous posts so I could bring it forward. I will add to the story, then tag more people for them to keep it moving. It has gotten interesting, and I hope my taggees can find some time to help it along.
The chain begins here:
I, Spotchy
Then continues at:
Cormac Writes
Then:
Lost in the BoZone
Then:
David Barber’s Fiction World
Then:
Writing The Hard Way
Then:
Not From Here, Are You
Then:
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better!
And finally:
CJT's wordvamp, before coming to me.

Here is my addition to the story:

The Team, comprising Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder, and Blitzen, or Rudolph's Boys for short, were sitting, red-nosed and bleary-eyed, round a flattened tree stump that served as a card table. There were empty booze bottles lying all over the place, and bowls that might have once held snacks, but now were overflowing with upchuck sat uninvitingly to the side.
"Kris ain't here," said Donder. "Who's asking for him? Oh, it's you Blanco. What the hell, happened to you? You look like you ate some bad fish."
"Where's Kringle? He said he'd get you guys ready to go on a mission to save the world, starting with the Universe Mall."
"Who does he think he is, Doc Savage? We got but one job a year, and we don't feel like donning those frigging reindeer outfits to go saving the world without time and a half for overtime."
"Listen, Donner," said Gary, "Can't you guys...?"
"That's Donder, dicktard. Why does everybody get that wrong?"
"Sorry, I heard it in a song or something," the detective said. "Can't you guys get into the spirit of the season just a coupla days early, and help us out?"
"What's up?" asked Blitzen, and the others gave him a look that said, Don't involve us in anything too taxing.
"Is this all you lamefaces do all the time, sitting around throwing back the hootch?" Blanco asked. As his color was deepening he felt the whole season was falling away to the dogs.
"How do you think we fuel up for the big night?" Dasher said, and that raised laughter from the rest of the team.
At that, Rudolph came out of the back of the barn, wiping his hands like he'd just come from a restroom. "What's up, fellas?" he asked. "Who're these guys?"
"Ummn, you'd better go wake up the Fat Man," said Blitzen, "Looks like we got another job this year. These guys want us to help 'em save the world."
"Scrotum," shouted Rudolph, who suffered from intermittent Tourette's syndrome, "Balls! Ass! Titties," and his nose began glowing redder than a stop sign at a school crossing. "Waddaya want us to do?"
"Don't you think we should wake up Kris..." Blitzen started to ask.
"Nah, shit! Blueballs! Jack-off! We can handle this, and be back in time for the big giveaway. Damn!" He kept rubbing his hands, but now he looked as if he anticipated big adventure.
"I'm not so sure you understand the nature of..." Gary began.
"Just lay out the plan," Rudolph interrupted, "Christ! Mess! We're more than ready for some action and mayhem. Motherfu..." he stopped, as everyone turned to see Kris Kringle, himself, waddling out from the back while zipping up his fly.
"You guys know who's in charge here. Didn't I tell y'all to wake me when these two arrived? Christ, where would this season be without me?"

Now I tag the following:
mkooch
Green Monkey Tales
Bukowki's Basement
Notes from the Überground
The Way It Is

Memoirist

2009-11-04T03:34:00.000-06:00

October '95, I think it was Friday the 13th, we had a cocktail party. Wanted to get both families together. Figured it would be a lark to invite Malachy, who was a personality. If he would come. Nora asked him to bring his brother Frank, a darker light, because she wanted the balance right.

They came and the party was a success. All evening long, Malachy regaled us with personal achievements. Frank quietly impressed with tales of overcoming hardships. He never mentioned he was writing a memoir, only that he was about to retire after many years of teaching.

At one point there was a toast to Nora's mother, who had been hospitable when first Frank the lad, then later Malachy, had returned to America.

I joined in, though this was only a story to me, and I felt inadequate under Malachy's gleam.

The next year, on publication of Frank's book, saw a shift in their status. Suddenly, the quiet one was the star.

Nora and I went to every booksigning and reading within our range.

One evening, I'm sure it was before the Pulitzer, I had to work late. Nora went to Barnes & Noble and saved me a place. When I arrived, they had already closed off the public access. When Frank arrived, I was allowed with a couple of other latecomers to ride down in the elevator with him and his agent. I nodded but there was no sign of recognition. As we exited, someone led him to a table and handed him a glass of wine. I joined Nora and her young cousin Stephen in the seated crowd.

After a sparkling reading, he signed many copies of his book. We straggled until there were only a few people left.

Nora placed a book in front of Frank and asked him to address it to Stephen. The agent spoke up. "Please, no personal requests. Only autographs at this time." I looked around the room. There were only nine people still in attendance.

Nora said, "That was a wonderful reading, Frank. I wish you much success."

He looked up and for a moment it seemed he had trouble connecting the words he had heard with their source.

Then he said, "Nora? Is it little Nora? Jaysus, don't do that to me. You scared me half to death. A voice out of my past."

"I'm sorry," she said. I was holding her elbow and I could feel her tensing.

"How many years has it been?" Frank asked.

It was then that I realized he had crossed over. Twenty minutes earlier the room had been filled with close to two hundred people, and Frank had treated them to bits and pieces of his dark history, opening his soul as it were, and he hadn't seen, I mean really seen, any of the faces in front of him.

Published at Out of Ruins

2009-10-13T05:15:00.000-05:00

My story Mack's Kids appears at Michael John Grist's site Out of Ruins, a mixed 'zine of dark fiction stories and Haikyo photography.
I consider this my first published piece because unlike the work at Six Sentences, it is on a site to which I am in no way affiliated. M.J. Grist, thank you for helping me climb out of the dark ages.

Men and Women at Six Sentences

2009-10-01T18:06:00.000-05:00

Introducing Ethics

2009-09-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

Introducing Descartes

2009-09-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Jango Jukebox

2009-09-26T16:06:00.001-05:00

Graffiti

2009-09-26T09:50:00.000-05:00

This story has been taken down for an overhaul.

Thanks to all who read and commented. Your kind words and advice have inspired me to rewrite parts, and this piece has been published on Out of Ruins where it fits in nicely.

Thanks again.

World Peace Day

2009-09-20T19:36:00.000-05:00

Wouldn't it be great if there were no news items posted anywhere or reported on television about any sort of discrepancy, disagreement, fighting, arguing, or criminal activity? What a boring news program, and what a treat to our overtaxed psyches. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, well, not at the moment while I'm typing, that everyone everywhere takes the theme of the day to heart and tries to help someone somewhere who may need it.

I am a Hoarder

2009-09-05T13:55:00.000-05:00

In going through my mail today, I found a notice from A&E Insider News about a show they have called Hoarders. I haven't watched it, and after realizing my own situation, I'm kind of afraid to see myself in one of the episodes.

Reading Wikipedia's take on the situation was enough for me to see and say, yes, I am a bibliomaniac and a digital hoarder, and yes, I am the child of a traditional hoarder.

There is help all over the place including YouTube, but it is hard to admit to oneself that something needs to be done, and the only way to do it, is to get off your duff and take action.

Starting out on the right foot

2009-09-03T02:18:00.002-05:00

Sondra Harris, who has been maintaining an online diary called The Ministry of Silly Walks since November 2001, and whom I found out about through Rob McEvily's searching through the archives at his Six Sentences, began the whole thing in exactly the right frame of mind for an unknown blogger. I wish I had approached this with the same sense of deliberation.

Chimera

2009-08-31T12:03:00.000-05:00

Volumes where the golden insect crawled fetch glory by the yard, but there is no communication between the ink and the eye, for try as they might, libraries cannot express the depth of what they lack in emotion. Sharp-toothed keys assist the explorer in gaining entry to a world renowned for its emptiness, but there is never any action in the quotidian balance. Read, read, read, they said. However, he was left alone to ponder the fruitlessness of his desperation. Sadly, Hugo observed the declination of reason as three virgins giggled and proceeded to retain their innocence, which, by the way, was neither innocent nor retainable. They must have known what was on offer without the experience, he calculated, for there was guile in their laughter. One of them, she of the radiant halo, dipped and scooped up the golden spider leaving only its latest unreadable tome in a web of silky verbosity. Virgin or muse, he could not tell. Still, he was news once again without the slightest perception of validation. Everything he touched glowed and shimmered in an ephemeral way. Yet, he never doubted all was at their behest.

Popping, he shriveled almost immediately and shortly thereafter he noticed he was losing hair again and there were liver spots.

…those who can’t, teach.

2009-08-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

IT'S ALWAYS US VERSUS THEM. I used to be in the Us camp. You used to be also. We all were. And when we were crossing the bridge to the other side, to this side, we all looked for confirmation that we were making the right decisions; as if decision making had anything to do with the ineluctable crossing.

When it comes to observation, I’d guess about ninety percent of the literature takes place on the bridge, and they call them Coming of Age or Rite of Passage stories.

We spend a good number of years complaining how They don’t understand Us and our needs, and dealing with peer pressure. Then there’s a short interval, though for some the experience lasts longer, where all the road signs seem to have been removed. Afterwards, we spend the rest of our lives as Them trying to convince Us, because we still feel like Us inside, that things are not as bad as predicated.

Stories that show children or older minors acting in sinister, or comedic, adult fashion are always popular, while tales of adults doing what is expected of children are just sad or melancholic. When a male author, like Joyce, writes understandingly from the point of view of a female, he is lauded for artistic achievement; conversely, when a woman writes as a man, it is observed that women have always had that capability. It’s a similar situation between youth and adulthood. A very young author who writes well about adult concerns will be applauded for his or her insight whereas blurbs on the books about childhood written by adults frequently begin with the words, “Never before has a story…” blah, blah, blah. Successes in this area seem to come rarely. They are so few and far between that a Catcher in the Rye or A High Wind in Jamaica can last forever, although again, Catcher takes place on the bridge.

I’m venting because I wrote what I thought was a sharp little six-sentence “story” that described a teenager’s blasé attitude toward her pregnancy (from the point of view of her teacher) and someone in my peer group reviewed thusly, “I think the flash would evoke more feeling if [it] was from the POV of another student, rather than the teacher. Kids have a much more startled/jaded/sneering take on this stuff than adults.” And I’m thinking, “Ah, but if it was told from the point of view of one of the kids, then it wouldn’t be the story I intended to write.” I was attempting to note observation of one of Us prematurely acting out as one of Them through the eyes of one in Their camp. How and why would I observe one of Us from Our side? My peer also made mention of a so-called run-on sentence, which definably wasn’t – due to grammatical punctuation, but here I am at fault because I did not announce the pre-established conventions of the format. It could be I’m too thin-skinned, or perhaps I was attempting to evoke too much in a limited space, but damn me, I was trying.

Here is the point of my rant, I spend too much time every day with young people, observing their foibles, failures, and successes; I don’t share enough in the lives of my peers. As a writer, I observe, analyze, and reconstruct what I see. I see the young, who are not writing their own stories, and use this as grist for my fiction, when more than likely, and speaking from an ethical point of view, I should be getting inspiration from a level on par with my current experience. Although, I still stand behind the excuse, that I was once a kid too, you know, I guess it’s not passable. These thoughts, this self-recrimination, can lead to writer’s block, which further leads to the posing of the deadly question, “Hey, why write at all?” I keep falling back on my motto, “It’s a dirty business, but someone has to do it.” I can, to a degree, therefore I do.

Puppet

2009-08-15T03:15:00.000-05:00

Susana owns a pesto green Volkswagen. I don’t drive. I didn’t when we lived in New York. She always has. Although I take a bus home from work every day, in the evenings, she says she doesn’t want me taking the bus in the morning too because the school is on the other side of town and I would have to leave an hour earlier to get there on time. So I keep the car in gas and she drives me there every day. We argue every morning because I’m responsible for disturbing her sleep. She’s currently between jobs. Twice when I left early and let her sleep in, she was in a grouchy mood all afternoon, so though I suffer guilt and exchange words in the car, I’d rather continue the ritual. The evenings are better that way. This morning after I said I hoped she’d find work soon, she glared at me. When she dropped me off she drove away in silence.

Here in Chiapas the fifteenth and end of the month are quinceanas, paydays. This autumn semester is the toughest of the six I’ve taught at the Tec. I teach four Advanced English classes five times a week. It’s not the hours performing in front of exuberant teenagers that I find so wearing. It’s all the prep work at night and on the weekends, and the bitacoras and other paperwork. Susy and I don’t get much quality time together, but when I get paid we have a nice dinner out, maybe go to a movie, see some friends for drinks and usually have a more intimate night.

Of course I enjoy those nights but I’m not keen on the social evenings beforehand. All of the friends we spend time with speak Spanish and Susy’s so much better at making conversation than I; being half Mexican she would be. She especially likes getting together with Valentina and Raul. Valentina’s a doll, really pleasant, always smiling. Raul’s a snob. He was educated in Texas and can speak English as well as I can, but he never does anymore. He says I need the practice. The three of them talk while I listen, nodding at appropriate moments and occasionally saying, “Gracias,” to waiters.

Today was a quinceana and I was looking forward to a night of heat and passion, such as I can muster these days. Susy’s also better at that. Not working, she would be, but that’s beside the point. I took the bus to Plaza Crystal, figuring I’d pick something up for her at the mall to make things right. At one of the gift shops I found a harlequin puppet in a costume of black and white diamond shapes, with one black tear painted below his left eye. I know she loves that sort of thing.

When I arrived at the house she wasn’t home and the VW wasn’t parked in front. Once inside, I turned on the fan and propped Pierrot against the fruitbowl on the table, made a cup of coffee and smoked a couple of cigarettes. And waited. I reread the next units in my texts and graded thirty-four exams. Three hours later, there was still no word from her. It was unlike her to leave me wondering where she was.

At eight-thirty, Valentina called and asked if we were meeting them at Es-tres. I said I didn’t know yet but didn’t mention that I was alone. “Well, if you decide, give me a ring,” she said, “Raul asked me to call him on his cellphone, if we were going to get together tonight.”

“Oh, he’s not there?” I asked.

“No, he went to San Cristobal today but he’s due back in a while. He said he’d try and get back earlier if something was on.”

After finishing with Val, I noticed I’d smoked my last cigarette, so I headed up to the tienda for another pack. Before I left, I stuffed Peirrot behind some empty luggage in the bedroom closet upstairs. In case, Susy came in while I was out, I didn’t want the puppet to speak for me and say the wrong thing.

I was gone much longer than I’d expected as the store’s security guard, who likes to practice his English on me, caught my ear and then I met a neighbor who tried to convince me that I should contribute more than fifty pesos to the fund she was collecting for her sick tia.

As I entered the house, I saw the harlequin right away. He was back on the table. He was propped against the fruitbowl again, but this time with his head drooping in a sad looking way. Between his legs was a small piece of paper. I read the note.

She’d written, “No llores. It’s been fun. I finally found something. –S”

Six Verses Before the Chorus at Six Sentences

2009-08-05T18:06:00.000-05:00

The What-If Factor

2009-07-31T20:16:00.000-05:00

Ineradicable cobwebs fill the corners of my life.
The ghosts of things that might have been haunt me though they haven't.

In my dream, we said some terrible things -
No, I take that back,
I said some awful things to you -
Hate-filled words, untake-backable words,
And left you in confusion
Wondering what you'd done.

Then I walked through fire -
Returning to a past which had not, could not happen.

I took the consolation you deserved for myself,
In the arms of someone who no longer was there.
After thinking how good it felt, I realized it could not last.
It was a chimera.

I saw clearly I'd given away the present for a past I could not reclaim
And thus, my future was obliterated.

When you woke me and you were still real,
For a brief moment there was relief,
But then I noticed cobwebs
Constructed of motes of sadness
And felt the heat of the coming fire.

Somewhere in this there's a formula for figuring probability.
Somewhere there's a path to get to the average mean.
There's the murk of the future and the bottleneck of the recent past
And glorious worlds at either end,
But I'm stuck in between.

Some books from my library

2009-07-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

The Sequel

2009-07-15T02:15:00.000-05:00

Russell Crowe, walking on deck, meets a woman dressed in the flouncy skirts of Colonial times. He too is dressed in a costume of the past, the outfit he wore in Master and Commander which took place during the Napoleonic Wars and had nothing to do with Colonial America. It suddenly dawns on him he must be in a sequel to that film, or Hollywood’s version of a sequel, which doesn’t always adhere to the conceits of the original story.

A consummate actor up to any challenge, he steps into character and asks the woman, whom he does not recognize, but nonetheless admires for her lack of artifice, if he may help her in any way. She responds in the negative, thanks him for the uneventful crossing, and says she did not experience the mal de mer customary on long voyages. Russell tips his tricorner, says, “At your service, ma’am,” and walks aft. A moment later he recalls there were no women on board in the first film, but figures it will make a nice piece of acting if he turns to quietly survey this attractive female. However, when he pivots, she is nowhere to be seen. There is only the empty deck.

Perhaps she was a mirage, the scriptwriter’s way of letting the audience know although the ship is filled with solitary males, at least the captain still has manly desires. If that’s what it was, Russell applauds the unobtrusive effect.

His reverie is disturbed by the voice of a deckhand coming from one of the portals. It is Chris Rock who says without humor, “Captain, New York is in sight. Shall we prepare to dock and go ashore?”

“Eh?” he responds, thinking that like several comedians before him, Rock must have taken a serious role like this to get his shot at a supporting Oscar. “Why certainly.”

Chris makes a gesture at tipping his hat while saying, “Yes sir,” but bareheaded, his action only parallels Russell’s of a few minutes earlier.

Nice comic touch, he thinks. Everything cyclical but subtle.

Soon all the men are on deck but the focus is on Russell behind the man steering. Through his eyes we see the low skyline of Olde New York coming into view. Though impressively reconstructed, he’s thinking, this is not how the story goes. He cannot remember how the script develops, and doesn’t recall this scene from the O’Brian books, but not wanting to appear difficult or incompetent, he remains in character and displays a look he hopes expresses longing, or better – knowing anticipation.

Blunt cut to the men disembarking. Many are meandering off to discover the place, but a carriage is waiting for Russell and his firstmate, who has no lines. Maturin is not around, must have gone to research the flora and fauna. Chris Rock puts the captain’s things on top of the carriage along with a little bundle which is his own then climbs up to sit next to the driver. He glances back to see the leather bags and his little red kerchief-tied bundle. These things make their own statement through juxtaposition.

Our attention is soon diverted by the authenticity of the town, appearing more real than Scorcese’s Gangs of New York but oddly, though not disconcertingly, anachronistic for the time period we thought we were in. This is New York of perhaps 1870. Playing fast and loose with history, the designers have gone through great pains to make everything look authentic albeit for another story.

The carriage approaches a square. Chris notices a statue he assumes to be a pilgrim and remembers in the present day a statue of George Washington stands there. “Oh my, will you look at that,” he says aloud. However, as the carriage rounds the statue it disappears so only the plinth remains visible, as if the carriage’s movement has brought everyone a little further back in time before there was a monument to either.

The streets of the town are festooned for a coming or recent celebration. There are garlands of flowers strung from building to building. But people in top hats and tails are going about their work as if festivity were the furthest thing from their minds. In a window of one of the wooden buildings we see the face of the woman Russell had met on the ship. She looks sad. The hint of a smile as she eyes the passing carriage tells us she is hoping for release from a desperate situation. These men from elsewhere may be her salvation.

Inside the carriage we see Russell, the face of stoicism. He’s hoping someone will arrive to cue him on his next lines. It is strange indeed no one has called, “Cut,” in a long time, but grown weary of being known as difficult he will not be the one to break the mood.

Cut to the interior of an old building. Chris and a friend, whom we hadn’t seen before, are waiting outside an office where the captain has gone to speak to someone. On the door is a placard with the name B. Luhrman.

Chris says to his friend, “I think this other door leads to the roof. I’m going to see how the place looks from above.”

The other man says, “Better be careful not to change anything. You know how altering the past can affect the future.”

Chris looks at him as if to ask, “What are you talking about?” then shrugs and proceeds through the door.

Alone in the hallway, the man fidgets and paces. Now is when the viewer begins to question the sanity of everyone involved in this piece. We, like him, feel on the outside of knowing. If things are to proceed any further, an explanation has to come from someone, before the fourth wall fully materializes

At that moment, Russell comes out of the office. “Where is he?” he asks.

“Sir,” the man sputters, “Captain, sir, he went through that door to have a look from the roof.”

“Oh my god! He shouldn’t have..”

“I told him, sir, to be careful. I told him he could affect history. I said…”

“Stop gibbering, man. That’s not the problem,” Russell says, “We haven’t gone back in time.”

“Sir?”

“It’s just been made clear to me we’re in a sequel occurring in an alternate universe. I don’t think there’s any way out.”

Suddenly, Luhrman announces from behind his door, “That’s right captain and remember my advice regarding sunscreen,” followed by the voice of a castrato singing something unfathomable offstage.

TecIngles Issue No. 13

2009-07-08T09:45:00.000-05:00

TecInglés Issue Number 13.

featuring the work of teachers and students for whom English is a second language.

The Hunger of History

2009-06-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

The world you see so much before you
Did not dare exist in the Golden Age
For History had no dearth of tales of courage then
With which to fill its page.

Admittingly, its appetite for observation was capped
With the jottings of nefarious doings
But only for variety,
For the heart of its meal was valor.
Now with grimy bib exposed and ravenously rapt,
Its diet consists of ruings.
The joint’s picked clean of heroics
And the scraps can’t improve its pallor.

Emaciated and untrustworthy,
As those short on sustenance are,
It yet provides the grim fascination
Of a once-full gleaming jar –
To wonder what it might be fed
And mourn for its lacking – that is our fate today
As it sits, banging forks on the table
Now the Heroes have all gone away.

Wicked

2009-06-15T01:15:00.000-05:00

Axel Fenn had positioned his bony posterior on the last stool in the corner of The Queen’s Ear over three hours earlier and only now heard Perfidia emanating from the jukebox. It must be someone’s favorite song, he thought, as he realized it must have played at least six times. The repetitious melody had been the backdrop to Jacqueline’s accusation which looped itself over and over like lyrics to the tune in his mind.

“You wicked toe rag,” she had taunted. “If not for me, you would still be in your shell—living in that dingy little flat. How could you have done this to me?”

She had a right to ask the question. He would still have to see Felicity every day at the office, but he felt neither wicked, nor lately shy, and had forgotten how unforthcoming he used to be. Was it only eighteen months since he and Jackie had met at the Bromptons and shared a taxi, originally headed toward two destinations, but ineluctably winding up at her place? Throughout the ride he had stared at her slender fingers. The one bugaboo he had developed during those months was the proximity of her toothbrush and the occasional sight of a reddened tampon in the waste bin of her loo. He’d never been a swinger. He usually arrived home early though they rarely did anything more than watch the telly in the evenings. Over time she had put on a little weight and he had lost a stone. And though certain situations might have left him mortified in another life, he could now suffer a canard with the best of them. Perhaps it was true that Jacqueline had prompted his flowering. In that way, she was partly responsible for his susceptibility to Felicity’s charm.

He thought he had been discreet, but it was a bitter pill to discover his transparency.

When her nagging started to wear away the veneer of his docility, he prepared to leave. Really he just wanted to get some air, to think things over, accept his guilt, prepare a proper apology, et cetera, et cetera. As he stood looking sheepish at the door, she said, “Your fly is open.”

He wouldn’t deign to look until he was out in the hall. She had been right.

He walked aimlessly for half an hour. Then, feeling dry, he stopped into The Queen’s Ear. Ale after ale convinced him he could not go back to her place. She would never accept whatever apology he could come up with. His seventh would be the last. He would go back to his own flat for the weekend.

Helen Forrest sang once again, “Your eyes are echoing Perfidia. Forgetful of our promise of love…”

Axel, tipsy, quaffed the last ale and left the pub. He was thinking of possible reasons for Felicity’s dismissal as he walked toward Victoria Station. But she was an excellent accountant and more than likely old Brompton wouldn’t hear of it.

He was on Jacqueline’s street before he realized he had headed away from the direction of his flat. He felt so tired now. He recalled the tomblike shelter of it, but it was so far away.

As he lifted the brass knocker, he wondered if she’d still be awake.

Empty

2009-05-15T00:15:00.000-05:00

Kathia sat at the dining room table. Just sat, looking at the morning paper on the floor and the empty chair across from her. She would have to make a move soon. The hospital had called over an hour ago to tell her David had passed away. On the one hand, she was relieved it was over. She would not have to face a future filled with betrayal and doubt, but on the other, she already missed him.

Phone calls had been made already. His sister in Phoenix knew. His brother would be told as soon as they could locate him. Freddy was next door with Sally. She would take care of him for the afternoon. He had already asked Kathia more than once if Daddy wouldn’t be coming home. Sometimes seven-year-olds couldn’t articulate their feelings but they could perceive when things were not right. David had been in the hospital for six weeks.

Six long weeks, during which Kathia had gone through torment wondering what came next in a situation like this. She knew there was no going back, but it didn’t seem there was any going forward either.

The day he had had the heart attack she’d been out of her mind. When she’d found the pictures on his computer, at first, she was afraid. She was looking into the mind of someone she’d lived with for so long but had never really known. It seemed like hundreds of files – all without descriptive names but numbered sequentially. All of young boys engaged in sex acts.

David had done a paper on Internet pornography for the school, but that was two years ago! He couldn’t explain it as research material – not the way the files were so carefully disguised with numbers and stored in a misleadingly named folder. She was scared.

Then she was angry when she thought of Freddy upstairs.

In the murk of her reactions, she recalled how David had asked her to cut her hair very short in a boyish way and how their sex life had improved a bit. He was taking Viagra – he claimed. But it didn’t last very long.

Then he came home unexpectedly early and found her in the den.

“What’s up?” he asked, all innocence.

She glared into his eyes and said nothing.

The screen saver was playing the melody of the theme from Friends. He glanced at the computer and then looked back at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“How could you?” she asked, “What is wrong with you? You have a child of your own. What if someone had pictures of Freddy like that?”

“That will never happen. I don’t know why, I…” but before he could finish, she picked up a paperweight and threw it at him. It missed and shattered against the wall.

She ran past him, shoving him as she did, and he fell in front of a chair. She was all anger and confusion as she raced into the kitchen. Once there, she quickly surveyed her options and then took a large knife from the drainboard.

When he followed her and with outstretched arms, tried to say something, his words were more excuse than explanation.

She held the knife threateningly and said through her tears, “If you ever touch Freddy, in any way…”

It was then that David clutched his chest and fell to the floor.

She’d only visited him once a week. The difference in their ages had never seemed so vast until the fourth week when she realized he wasn’t going to recover. At fifty-six, he looked like a man of seventy. The enormity of her anger had dissipated on seeing him like that and confusion had filled the space. She knew only that she could never sleep next to him again. She would never kiss him again while he was conscious, and what she felt most acutely was that there would be no vindication. He was escaping retribution. She never told him that she had formatted the hard drive, blindly wiping out all his work, and hers, everything.

At the table, she realized she had probably sentenced him to self-annihilation with the hatred in her eyes that day in the kitchen. A thought crossed her mind. She couldn’t remember now what she’d been searching for when she discovered the pictures.

Something I Heard Before

2009-04-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

I listened to the stirring of leaves in the wind
Awaiting the rest to which they'd come,
But didn't.
In a season of wandering I was aware there'd be but one
Movement and it was all movement, mostly for show.
Stillness would reveal weakness
I wanted nobody to see.

Some said, There's no time limit to your grief.
Some said, This will pass, but never really pass,
You will learn to accept the reality of it.
Some said, You are so strong.
I wasn't.

I listened to the wind and knew or thought or hoped
When it calmed, my heart would beat a little faster
And I would smile again,
Not to belie my emotions, not
To stop friends from saying the right thing,
Not because I am supposed to
Develop and change and continue solo,

But because something I heard in another time
Took its hold in memory until movement
Dispelled it. I felt hairs stand; a chill
– not icy death – but refreshing awareness.
I heard peals of laughter.
Sadness became someone else's burden
– and I no longer heard the wind,
Only something I had heard before.

Untied

2009-04-19T23:20:00.000-05:00

Roy told me on the one day that we were alone and shopping in New Jersey malls for luggage to replace my tattered bag for my return trip and to fit all the books and movies I’m taking back with me, “Artie has no reason to make a move now. He’s got a good deal paying only nine hundred dollars for the use of the whole house.” So back at my apartment when Adrienne is talking loudly on the phone with her sister Felicia, and trying to calm Felicia, who is apparently ranting again about how her ex-husband Charlie is such a shit because he won’t come up with his quarter of the mortgage, I don’t feel her distress.
Roy says to me in a low voice, “Never, ever get involved financially with family.”
Tears are welling in Adrienne’s eyes and I’d like to sympathize, but either my brother or she has already explained to me that Felicia was having her mental problems when the four of them went in together on the house. It was a bad deal from the outset. Charlie soon grew tired of Felicia’s seemingly convenient seizures and walked away from her and the two kids. When she left the house, she rented her half to tenants at a profit which she shared with nobody, but since they have left her extra income has evaporated. Adrienne separated from Artie when she took up again with Roy after twenty-four years apart. She moved in with Roy who has been living in my apartment while I teach in Mexico. Artie is the only person still living in the house in Staten Island.
Now, trying to sell the house is presenting difficulty. And I had to pick this week for a visit home while Adrienne is going through PMS.
They have adopted an affectionate pitbull called Babette, who licks my face every morning at six-thirty. I always had a cat for a pet. I’ve never been a dog person. Babette’s wake-up call doesn’t bother me too much because I don’t enjoy sleeping on my couch. I get up earlier than I have to when I’m going to school, and the arguing begins early each day.
She doesn’t trust him because he has always flirted with other women. She makes innuendos that he has more free time at work than he lets on. She says he is never available when she calls. He says it is a park ranger’s duty to be out in the field a lot.
He doesn’t like her having three hour liquid lunches with her boss and clients. She says it’s one of the things an insurance broker has to do.
Each of them makes twice as much as I have ever earned in a year – teaching or working in an office when I lived in Manhattan. I only maintain the apartment in my name as a storage place for all my stuff. I pay a small portion of the rent to keep all my books and belongings behind all the things they have moved in.
As Roy leaves earlier for work than Adrienne does everyday, I have gotten to spend some time alone with her and she tells me how she can’t take the pressure anymore. She keeps a bag packed so that at any moment she might decide to leave. Roy’s three marriages ended when he left each wife. Adrienne says, “I’m not going to be Number Four. If anyone leaves this time, it will be me, and I can take care of myself. I wouldn’t suck Roy dry for alimony like the last one.”
When I point out that that she is not Number Four but actually Number One, she says, “You know, I never really thought of it that way.”
“Well, you should,” I point out, “Why do you think all those marriages failed? Who do you think he always talked to me about when they started to sour?”
On my next to last day in New York, I have the apartment to myself. They are both at work and Babette is in Doggie Daycare. I watch old videotapes of my vacations with Jason and I’m well aware of the urn containing his ashes on the bookcase filled with the volumes of his stamp collection, but I can’t feel his presence in the place anymore. My new luggage is already packed and ready to go. The old black bag with the broken zipper stands empty in a corner. Lying on top of it is the blouse that Adrienne decided not to wear to work. I think of how many places that black bag has been and how it helped me begin the second half of my life.

Graduation Day

2009-04-04T07:34:00.000-06:00

After seven months, we finally completed our course in Teacher Training. Looking forward to sleeping a little later next Saturday.

And now we begin Semana Santa;
almost a whole week of no work, no
studying. Well, I'm pretty sure I will
be sitting in front of a computer
screen for part of this week.

Next project: working on my Spanish
and getting my naturalization papers.

Semester

2009-03-31T12:00:00.000-06:00

Days and days of endless days –
Nobody breathes. Nobody sways.
In one ear and out the door –
They’ve had so much. They want no more.

The driest lessons die in rehearsal,
Without dynamics for dispersal.

Teacher, teacher, how do you say…?
As if in the end there were only one way.

Those who’ve traveled play on the edge;
Those who haven’t cadge and hedge.
Please, please, por favor, they beg.
You could spit wooden nickels and stand on one leg.

Often I wonder just what I would give
To come out on top but it’s all relative.

At the end of term, when work is done,
It’s the end of time. The course is run.

Actividades released with a sigh;
Reglas observed with the wink of an eye.
It’s cyclical, circular, goes round and round.
It ends and begins without a clear sound.

There’s a point at mid-term, however, that’s fine
When for one afternoon I know this is mine.

All that comes later and what went before
Just grind the key which opens that door.

The Setting Sun

2009-03-14T21:15:00.000-06:00

Tom Cruise is visiting his parents who have recently embarked on a stay at an exclusive Upper East Side town house type nursing home. They are showing him its features and vast layout. It’s almost time for dinner.

They introduce him to some of their kooky new friends, moneyed people who dress oddly and behave a bit bizarre.

He starts to wonder if he could feel secure with himself leaving his parents here. Although the place appears sumptuous, Tom doesn’t think his parents are near as ‘gone’ as he sees the other ‘inmates’.

Taking a cigarette break outside, he meets Jennifer Jason Leigh, who has come to visit her parents. They are attracted to each other but she makes a snide remark about his jacket, says her father has one just like it. She enters the house and he soon follows, only to be waylaid by the snooty director, who says she hopes he is not planning to wear his jeans into the dining room. Tom flashes back on an ancient gentleman he saw wearing jeans and a woman who was wearing a denim skirt, but the director explains that that was Mr and Mrs Dennehy and says they have a special dispensation. She hints that dressing that way has improved their sex life. Sex life, Tom thinks, why they were likely in their eighties!

Afterward, Tom is in a pair of brown pants and is being shown a medallion by one of the inmates, who drops it and it rolls under a buffet table. The old man immediately drops to his knees and crawls under the table to look for it. As Tom gets down to help him, fearing the old codger might hurt himself, he notices the man is wearing green socks, one lighter than the other. Someone has dropped a dollop of mousse, which the old guy somehow avoids, but Tom, forging ahead, gets it all over his pants. However, he does retrieve the medallion.

Seeing his clothes soiled, Tom is upset and sees it as the fault of the establishment. After all, in such a ritzy place, why didn’t someone clean up the mousse?

The tailor/valet, Charlton Heston, steps forward and offers to take care of Tom’s pants. He says he has a pair that will look better. They just need a nip and a tuck. He also suggests lending a jacket which is not quite so out of fashion.

In fitting Tom for the pants, it becomes obvious by the tailor’s movements and touches that he is an old queen, albeit a nice person with wisdom, who explains obliquely why the place works – how it fulfills the needs of its inmates, who have arrived at a place in their lives, where, to stay in an average standard nursing home would seem like defeat. This place is voluntary and basically designed by the inmates themselves. “They’re happy here,” he says in a sad sort of way.

Later, Tom and Charlton are taking a cigarette break together and Jennifer passes again. This time she is all sweetness, having visited her parents and seen that they were comfortable and happy.

“I like your jacket,” she says.

“My father lent me the other,” he says, “And he told me he bought it from a friend. You know, I think it might have been your father’s originally.”

“They try so hard,” they both say at the same time.

A woman about to come up the steps of the brownstone, and seeing old Charlton with the two younger people, asks if there are any vacancies in the place. She seems like the wrong type of client, the type that would abandon an ailing parent.

“You’ll have to check later. They’re all sun-bathing at the moment,” Charlton says.

The woman glances up at the setting sun, steals a look at her watch, and in a huff, walks away.

Relax and revisit a favorite book

2009-03-12T21:20:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you don't have the time to revisit favorite books in which you found refuge from the workaday world, and a nicely worded summary/review helps take you back there for a few moments.

Found a wonderful blog called Book Addicts that does just that. This blogger has read many of my favorites including Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor, David Lodge, and Muriel Spark, and the blog provides brief insight into many of their novels and the works of others, British, American, and from elsewhere.

I love this blog and recommend it highly.

Love Misplaced

2009-02-28T00:00:00.000-06:00

Auburn hair, casually tossed, playing with fire
She doesn't know how dangerous she is
Or perhaps she does.
Long, but not too long, red fingernails
Tattoo her intentions on the side of her glass
The amber colored liquid might be all that's left
Of her previous victims
Or it might just be sweet courage.

Wasn't I in love when I walked in here?
Was I not just out to get some cooling air?
Did I not intend to set things right this evening?
Could I not defend myself 'gainst curly auburn hair?

She says her name is Tess
I think of Thomas Hardy
Who gave up writing prose when things got rough
I also think of someone waiting for me
To return although she said she'd had enough
Is what I'm feeling now misplaced desire?
Enchantment, lust, or could I be in love?

For her, it seems inconsequential as she tosses back
Those tresses once more and catches
A glimpse of herself in the mirror behind the bar.
Yes, she knows she has the power
Yes, she'd like to claim another conquest
Yes, I'd like to...
No, I can't. There's someone waiting for me,
But I copy down her number just in case.

I walk home alone with firm resolve
And find her sleeping on the couch
This is not the first time this has happened
We always have been able to move on
But not tonight.
There was something in the air this evening
That blew away the options of repairing
Something that was always here
Is gone.

In a Broken Mirror

2009-01-31T00:00:00.000-06:00

In shards I see other days,
And then a time of trenchant smiles.
You backed away with graceful gestures
Leaving only these milestones,
Like puzzle pieces.

I will not replace, cannot replace
The shattered mirror
Containing reflections of the past
I cannot, will not otherwise
See, nor touch, nor hear or
Hold.

All lines leading to the point of impact
Just as the currents derive from a single source
Pressing on
Belying the undertow.
Yet, I enter the water.
I cannot deny, will not deny myself
The pleasure of wading
Through our history together.

The glass is broken.
The frame is solid
A very good wood,
It's a matter of containment.
This is unfinished business.

I stand very close to be able to see
Between the lines
The texture of my cheek while shaving and
Behind me it seems something shadowy moves
I turn to catch sight of it before it is gone
But it was never there.

In the broken mirror my many eyes reprimand me
I would apologize
Admit you were right and I not
If I thought it would unbreak the glass.

Wife and Spouse Read NY Times

2009-01-14T19:15:00.000-06:00

"When I ask you why you don't try to be more sociable, you ask me, 'Why bother? Everyone out there is the same. It's like a city of clones. Nobody is more interesting than anyone else.' But then you say you really would like to make new friends and no one ever seems responsive. Well, don't you think if everyone is equal there must be others out there who feel as you do? Someone may be hoping you would respond to an overture, but they also may be reluctant to make it."
"That's the real crux, I guess, fear of rejection, more than anything else. If I could do it over again..."
"For the want of a predetermined answer a friendship may be lost?"
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
"How do you go about making friends?"
"I don't know. They seem to come to me."
"Hey, where does this fit in? 'The difference between Van Gogh and you and me is, that while we may look at the sky and think it is beautiful, we don't go so far as to show someone else how it looks. One reason may be that we do not care enough about the sky or for other people. But most often I think it is because we have been discouraged into thinking what we think about the sky is not important.' "
"What was that?"
"It comes a little later in the article."
"I thought he was speaking about how children in the third world haven't enough to eat."
"Shall I tell you about my childhood? Did I ever tell you the story of the broken macaroni for twelve cents a pound?"
"Shall I tell you again about cooking spaghetti in an electric coffeepot when I lived in my little room on the upper-Westside?"
"If I could do it over again..."
"Please, don't start with that old alternative reasoning."
"You wouldn't like to take a second shot? Maybe not have to survive lean days?"
"I would then have even less understanding for those without than I do at this point and believe me when I tell you I am not big-hearted. I laughed as loudly as you did when that comedian shouted, 'Move to where the food is!' "
"It was a stock response. All his other material was funny."
"I think experiences like cooking spaghetti in a an electric coffeepot are bizarre enough to put one metaphorically into another man's moccasins."
"Still, if I could do it over again..."
"You'd just fuck up something else further down the line."
"How can you say that?"
"There's always irony involved in those time travel stories."
"Oh, I was thinking of it more in terms of a done deal."
"What's the point? If you could do it all over, you would have to live through it again wouldn’t you? You can't do it over without doing it."
"Oh, I see what you mean. In that case, I guess I'll just take what fate has dealt me."
"Now about those children in the third world who haven't had the beauty of the sky pointed out to them. You know, if you were to offer your services, you could make a lot of friends."
"But you know what they say about friends in need."
"Right. Let me see that TV guide. Are there any good movies on?"
"There’s a good World War Two flick on at two-thirty. How about some Eggs Benedict for a late breakfast?"
"You prepare the hollandaise? I had in mind a romance or a comedy. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon."

2008 Story Roundup

2008-12-31T00:00:00.002-06:00

God Is in the Details
Vibration
The Canyon
Rome Wasn't Built in a Day
One Out of Thousands
Independence Day
Doubtful
The Open Window
The Last Lesson
Sally Graham
One Wish Left
Commuters' Rage

In the mood to scribble?

2008-12-25T00:00:00.000-06:00

Views

2008-11-30T19:58:00.000-06:00

Two people carry one thing and an argument ensues,
It ends with the big thing left on the street when one of them blows a fuse.
A patient sues his doctor and the lawyer sports new shoes,
The doctor makes excuses, saying, "I'm always the one they accuse!"
Fans at the game are anxious to see the visitors lose,
Though the leading player rolls on the ground and rubs a swelling bruise.
Mom and Dad watch a crime in progress on the local news;
A hateful man in an interview hurts with the words he spews.
Three competing suitors are hoping the beauty will choose
Against a backdrop of music and hearts of pink in varying hues.
The tenants default on their rent with excuses by ones and by twos,
And complain of the neighbor who stinks up the hall with the garbage that he strews.
Robert propounds on Kate's erroneous definition of clerihews;
In order to get her to see the light, he gives her a book to peruse.
The church falls short on worshippers who can't sit in predestined pews,
And Masons turn out their membership for failing to pay their dues.
A husband abandons his wife in aborted attempts to amuse;
Her demeanor is drowned in pot luck casseroles, soups and stews.
A detective sifts through the ashes searching remains for clues;
He's found an earring, a tooth and a nail, but he doesn't know whose.
Teenagers wooing, say they aren't smoking. They are. It's only a ruse.
They're thinking of eloping because her father is turning the screws.
Workers waiting for jobs are standing outside in queues,
While the hardnosed factory owner seeks alternatives to use.
Someone is at the zoo with a child his girlfriend won't let him abuse,
And an old man who's lost a fortune regains it by singing the Blues.

Check out student writing at TEC Inglés.

Learning

2008-11-22T21:12:00.002-06:00

Random thoughts on learning:

Learning

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: knowledge training)

Vibration

2008-11-15T05:15:00.000-06:00

“Teacher, did you feel the earthquake,” one of them asks as they enter the room.

Yes, I think, that would be your first question. Yes, I felt my house and my bed trembling at 4:59 this morning as I was making love to my wife and something terrible happened. I felt it as I was having my cutomary breakfast of chicken broth, lemonade and a banana. No, I slept through it. I have a hangover and I thought it was happening inside my head. Five or six different scenarios race through my mind, but they all sound like excuses. This particular tremor is one that will stay with me forever.

“No, I didn’t feel it,” I say, “When was it?”

David, the one who had asked, says, “Huh?” He’s told me that sometimes I speak too rapidly in English. Three or four in the back who have heard my response start speaking.

“This morning at about five o’clock.”

“It was a strong one. Probably about four point five.”

“It was in Oaxaca, but we could feel it here in Chiapas.”

“I was sleeping,” I say, “I didn’t feel this one.” This was the third tremor I’ve experienced since I began my stay here in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. The first was on an afternoon while I was drinking with some friends in Chiapa de Corso. It was momentary and mild. We laughed about it and blamed it on the beer and bad botanas. The second occurred while I was at home alone sitting in front of my laptop and preparing exams for the second parcial. Aura was at the Secondaria teaching her history class. She called me on my cellphone while I was standing outside the house and smoking a cigarette. She said she tried calling me on the regular phone but I didn’t hear it ringing. I remembered she had told me the first thing to do when you feel the vibrations is to get out of the building and wait until it passes. But this morning’s tremor was the strongest.

“Oh, teacher,” David says, “You must have felt it in a dream.”

In my dream I was being entertained by my Three Fates. Tania, Ileana and Nathalie. They were not seventeen year old prepa students in this English class. They were women and they knew how to accommodate the ugly American so he didn’t feel like an interloper. The three of them always did everything together and so their actions fed off each other, but Nathalie was the one with the eyes, deep, penetrating soulful brown eyes.

The students are looking at me as if I am lost. They seem eager to help me find my way back to reality.

They notice I have the laptop with me. “Are we going to see a movie today, teacher?”

“No, not today,” I say, “We have to finish Unit Twelve.”

“Oh, teacher, no.” Groans.

It’s the end of the semester. Nobody wants to work.

Nathalie is filing her nails and she looks at me without moving her head so that those eyes are looking upward in a way that says she knows. She knows.

What am I going to do?

“Open your books to page one oh two.”

“Is that one or two?” somebody asks.

“One hundred and two,” I say.

“Teacher, you didn’t take the asistence.”

“I’m here,” David says, as he always does. “Presente.”

I’m losing them again.

Tania whispers something to Ileana. Nathalie still filing nails, nods agreement. She knows.

“Come on,” I say, “We’ve got a lot of things to do today. There’s more material to cover before the final exam.”

“We can study the last unit at home,” someone says and two of the students start mock-fighting.

“Hey, come on,” I say, but it’s hopeless. They’re on their own time now.

“Teacher,” Ileana asks, “Do they have earthquakes in New York? Did you ever feel the ground shaking?”

“There may have been,” I say, “But I never felt one.”

I think of still mornings in bed back home. Before coming to all this. Before Mexico. Before teaching. Before Aura. I lived alone but I was bored. It was noisy in the streets but tranquil inside my overpriced, underfurnished apartment. At times too tranquil. I longed for change. And now my situation is about as different as it could be.

I think about this morning when I woke, stiff from my dream, feeling guilty with Aura lying beside me. I kissed her and she responded. I entered her and she was ready. She almost pushed the Three Fates out of my mind as I made love to her, trying to see it as only to her and no other. I felt giddy with accomplishment and on the edge of satisfaction when the room and everything in it started to tremble just a little. Aura was about to cry out something and I put my hand over her mouth. I came into her and couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. I was trembling, eyes closed, in a torpid dream state for several moments after everything else had stopped moving. Including Aura. When I came to and rolled off her she lay motionless with a look of panic frozen on her face.

I didn’t know what to do.

I sat at our breakfast table for a half hour and smoked three cigarettes. Words like extranjero and interloper and coward and unfaithful were flashing unconnected through my mind.

Without realizing, I dressed and came to school this morning.

I am thinking about finding Aura's lifeless body still lying there when I leave the school this afternoon.

Doubtful

2008-10-31T13:32:00.000-06:00

I doubted I could write without telling the stories of my family and having everyone angry with me for giving away secrets.

I doubted that I could succeed at anything to the degree where it would provide me a state of being comfortable and being able to retire at an early age. I always felt I would be working at some hum-drum job until the day I dropped over from exhaustion and they would have to carry me away from some conveyor belt or assembly line and that would be my ignominious end.

I doubted that my mother and father respected me as an adult when I became one. I thought, 'They will always see me as their little child and that is part of the reason I am unable to function the way I think I am supposed to at the stage I have reached.'

I doubted that my wife trusted me when I left three different jobs because I needed to try something fresh. Twice I took a hiatus and did temporary work while trying to write the Great American Novel. I have reams of typewritten sheets in desk drawers and can fully understand why my ex-wife does not respect me.

I doubted my son would want to follow in his father's footsteps, but as he did not survive past the age of thirteen that will not be a topic of discussion.

I doubted my daughter would be able to quit taking drugs and stay away from them once and for all. If she is anything like me she will have difficulty completing any kind of twelve-step program. She says she has been clean for the last four years but I know she drinks a bit. No amount of my speaking to her has any effect. She gets on better with her mother, but won't listen to her either.

I doubted my doctor when he advised me to get more exercise, when he told me I was too sedentary, that my cholesterol was too high, and I doubted my eye doctor when he told me that I was in danger of developing glaucoma. I figured he was in league with the optometrist who wanted to sell me glasses. I thought it was strange how once I started wearing them just for reading I seemed to need them more and more of the time. Now I have to wear them to the movies. But I don't go to the movies too often. My doctor says I need to walk more.

I am such a doubter that lately I am having doubts about my doubting. I am trying to use reverse psychology on myself. I figure if I question something it probably is good for me, but then if I think it is good for me I am sure the doctor will tell me it isn't and most of the things I have done in the past have led me to this ornery position I am currently in.

Now I live alone and I write most of the time in the evenings. On the weekends, I see a woman I work with. We go to dinner and maybe once a month, I stay at her place or she stays at mine for a night. Once in a while, the family photo I keep on the bookcase catches my eye. It was taken thirteen years ago. If I think about it, I miss my wife and daughter living here with me. I especially miss my son and sometimes I find myself crying before I realize I've made myself sad. I miss my Mom and Dad. When I get like that and it's not the weekend, not yet time to get together with Evelyn, I sit at the keyboard and try to put my feelings into words.

I'm still trying to write that novel, but I doubt it will ever be finished. All that I've read says you should write about what you know, but nothing exciting ever seems to happen to me.

One Out of Thousands

2008-09-30T13:24:00.000-05:00

One day you'll wake, he had said, and I'll be there. I will take your hand and bring you back with me. Until then you must wait here. You must take care of yourself now and things on this end. I will prepare a place for us there.

She was upset because she thought, he has no control over this. He will go and I will never see him again. This is what she thought at first. Then the dreams came and she lived for the day he would keep his promise.

Days tumbled down and she learned to exist without his physical presence though he was always in her heart. She had a photograph of the two of them at her home in Providence. She had the sketch a woman had made of him at Nantucket. She had a locket with a hank of his hair and she had his signature on a piece of paper. These were things she could touch. These were things to fuel her dreams.

As she aged, her hair turned white. Her skin grew slack and lost its elasticity. Her favorite chair seemed to grow larger. In the photo, they never changed. She worried for some time that if he did keep his promise and she woke one morning she would see the back of him as he realized certain ambitions were unattainable and a handsome young man left a withered old woman alone in her bed.

They'd traveled together to the top of the world. They swam in wonder-filled seas. Together they had mourned the loss of an unborn child. For a dozen years they were inseparable. Then a cancer grew inside him. It possessed him before they knew it existed. She thanked her God for the mercy He bestowed in taking him rapidly before his beauty was ruined. He did not believe in God, and the funny thing was, neither had she before they'd met.

After he was gone, she lit a candle for him once a week. Her fingers brushed the marble rail and she prayed he'd keep his promise.

For many months she woke believing she'd spent dreamless nights. Something must have passed her eyes but nothing came to mind. Then one night he came and spoke to her and reminded her of his intent. She asked him if he now believed in God. He told her he had seen Him. She must not stop believing. When she woke she felt the locket in her hand and looked over at the photograph. It takes a catalyst, she thought.

He came in dreams many times after that. Not every night. No one is so blessed to see their dear departed so frequently, but when the day had made her weary, or she had worried over her finances, or she met an acquaintance who related bad news at the market or on the road, when her arthritis flared or it rained for hours and the sun seemed not to rise, on those nights he came. Mornings after a visit she woke refreshed and thanked her God.

One night many years after he had gone, more lonely years than she could remember, she sat in her enormous chair and recalled a time when the two of them ran laughing on the beach, through the dunes at Provincetown. Bohemians and artists had been their friends. They had been to a party and wine had been served. The night sky was clear and ablaze with stars. He pointed and said, Do you see that one? The one that seems to grow and shrink? She said, Yes, and truly believed she knew which one he meant out of all the thousands to be seen. That one is where we will make our eternal home. Then a friend called them and told them to come back to the party. It was getting cold. They laughed and went behind a dune where he removed her blouse and the cool air made the hairs on her shoulders stand on end. Then she lay in the sand and he on top and inside her raised a fire that delivered her from the chill and over his shoulder she saw her home star beckoning. As she now sat in her chair, she recalled that night more vividly than any that had passed in all the intervening years.

Early next morning, before the sun rose, she woke to a smoky gray sky. She put on a robe and walked to the window. She was looking for a specific star but they were quickly disappearing as the sky began to lighten. She had hoped to see it. But it didn't matter. He knew the way.

She wondered if his hair would still be brown and how she'd look to him, remembering he had told her to take care of herself.

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

2008-09-15T04:15:00.000-05:00

Len says, I don't get it.

I tell him, You don't have to get it. Just enjoy it for what it is. When I first met you there was something about your eyes that drew me in. I couldn't say for sure what it was but the longer I looked, the less I wanted to leave.

As a matter of fact, I think it was specifically because we didn't hit it off that first time that I knew it was a thing. I frequently place myself in situations like that.

You make me question my own esthetics, he says.

That's not a bad thing, I say. He nods but I think he is annoyed.

Do you think you should always trust your first reaction, I ask. Now he appears baffled.

How do you take step two, if the first one isn't on firm ground?

Interesting people continue to reveal themselves over years.

Are you trying to Gaslight me? Don't try it, he says. I'm not stupid.

I don't think you're stupid at all. At all. Charming was my thought. It's in the sincerity of your smile when you are truly amused. I didn't believe you were aware of how appealing your smile is. Of course, now that I've mentioned it...

Oh, yes, he says, I'm very charming.

A child looking at the sculpture in front of us brings his hand to his lips and giggles. He touches the cool marble as I have done many times. Then he looks at Len and me and he stops giggling but continues to smile.

How charming is this little guy, Len asks and reaches to pat his head but the child walks away and stops with his back to us in front of another sculpture, one of a nude woman.

Touch it, I suggest. It feels cold and yet sensual at the same time. He puts his hand on the nodule shape close to the plinth but his eyes are on the nude in front of the child. If he can "get it" he appreciates it. Some things just take a little time. Years ago I was the same way.

Len smiles and I feel an irresistible urge to plant my lips on his.

Let's go look at some paintings, he says.

2008-08-31T03:52:00.000-05:00

HOW BERNARD, FRESH FROM A DIVORCE AND OTHERWISE JOBLESS, REACTED WHEN TOLD BY HIS CREATIVE WRITING TEACHER THAT FLASH FICTION MUST BE AS BRIEF AS POSSIBLE, THAT EVERY WORD MUST COUNT FOR SOMETHING, AND THAT MORE OF THE BURDEN MUST BE CARRIED BY THE TITLE OF THE PIECE

"Duh."

HP has me furious

2008-08-20T00:30:00.000-05:00

All those complaints, and they do little or nothing about making things right with their customers. Compaq always had a reputation for problems with their products, but they were also known to respond very quickly with solutions or replacements.

Ever since HP took over, they've been cutting corners and offering cheaper machines. What savings occur when you run into problems and are ignored by the company you trusted.

Things change, but not always for the better.

Go make some art...

2008-07-11T23:11:00.000-05:00

...here at Artpad.

A Thousand Things You Don't Really Have to Do

2008-07-08T13:03:00.000-05:00

     How many books and/or stories and/or articles can the well-educated person read in a lifetime? How many films and/or television shows can s/he watch? How many popular songs can one listen to, and appreciate? How many works of art can be viewed? In each case, there must be many thousands, no? But to truly appreciate each piece, to get something from it that you can take away with you, that you want to share with others; how many, really? Every year lists are produced by pundits advising us of the ten best novels or non-fiction titles of the year, the ten best films, the best songs, the best albums, and so forth. Every once in a while, especially at year's end, we get the 100 all-time best. And Dr. Robert Boxall has come up with a book listing the "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die."
     Reading 1001 books of an average of 250 pages per book at an average reading speed of 50 pages per hour would take 625 8 hour days (almost two years of reading 8 hours a day!). That's about five days per book, and many of the books on this list are much longer than 250 pages, but I suppose if it holds your interest, you could finish a four hundred plus page book in a week. I did read the highly anticipated last Harry Potter in two and a half days, but, of course, there are no titles like that on a must-read list. The book 1001 Books… would take 2.4 days to read. Seeing the same amount of films of 90 minutes would likely take a third of the time.
     So, depending on the medium chosen, it should not be impossible to set yourself a list to follow to edify your cultural cravings. So many of us enjoy looking at these lists and arguing for inclusion of our favorites. The arguing probably arises from the fact that we have all gone "off-list" and do not want to feel we have wasted time on our path towards enlightenment. However, such guilty pleasures as reading the latest popular bestseller, classified by critics as "no-brow", or getting sidetracked by working one's way through a particular author's oeuvre, or watching campy B-movies, when there are still so many must-sees on our list cannot be avoided unless we approach a project like this in robotic fashion, from which, surely, we will derive little appreciation. More than likely, we will give up or put our list aside "to be worked on during vacation," or when we have more time (?).
     Nowadays, with the Internet and its trove of (mis)information available on myriad subjects, there is even more to distract us from such an endeavor than merely fleeting time itself. Still, I buy and store, and dip into, many, many sources for entertainment and edification, and I suppose to discover more about myself. With two bookcases overflowing with unread material, an mp3 player stocked with 1500 songs, thousands more archived on CDs, and more still on my hard drive, five or six year's worth of stories from the New Yorker, and other sources stored electronically along with hundreds of novels, articles culled and categorized in my own precisely detailed filing system from all over the world, and let's not even discuss the two or more films I see every week, thereby missing out on some while consoling myself with, "I'll see it when it comes to DVD," as I look for the latest uploads to YouTube, I think what I've discovered about myself is that I'm an uncultured slob with an overreaching desire to know all. What made me this way? And why does it seem, lately, that time is mocking me?
     As a teacher, I've always professed the idea that it is not necessary to memorize everything. It's enough to know how to delve into an information source and find what you need when you need it. I suppose that is behind my collecting habit. But I admit that nothing beats that moment of epiphany when reading, actually reading, a good book, that connection that occurs between your mind and that of the author. This cannot be gleaned through scanning or skimming, nor does it reside in the perusal of a list or a summary. Those epiphanies are necessary to life and learning.
     This started out to be a calculation of how many cultural artifacts one could absorb and still have time for actual living, but I was sidetracked. I couldn't remember the name of the author of 1001 Books… and went to look it up. A search led me to Listology, where a link led me to A Vocabulary of Culture, which I discovered is no longer being maintained. So, of course, I had to check out Jahsonic's blog, but not before I looked at one of the articles on dance music and Paradise Garage, where another link led me to Disco-Disco.com, and I felt compelled to reread a comment I had left there two years ago.
     All this sidetracking had me reformulating my aim here. I think now it's just a matter of focus. Nobody can learn or know everything. It's just impossible. We can only dip into the well and come up with a handful at a time, and hope it contains a treasure that we can write home about.

Independence Day

2008-07-04T02:04:00.000-05:00

Yes, we're going up on Marco's roof later to watch the fireworks, she was shouting. We're by the marina now, waiting for the big boats to pass. Yeah, it's packed. I think they opened it to the general public just a little while ago.

When we came down this morning, oh, that's a lie, we actually got up around noon, but when we came down around two, I said to Freddy we were lucky to have these tickets. When they let us through, there were only about twenty people on the plaza. We had the place all to ourselves.

Okay, I'll bring the beer and some chips. I gotta stop off and get an anniversary gift for Anna and Bob first then I'm gonna hop on a train and we'll be up.

Wait for us and we'll all go to Marco's together, okay? 'Kay, see ya. By-ee.

She clicked off.

Okay, now that was Marco and Anna and Kieron. Who else was there?

Oh, right. My dad. Hold on Freddy, let me call my dad. I'll just be another few minutes.

I made a low vertical gesture as if to say, yeah, it's all right take your time, but also hoping she might take it as a subtle hint to lower her voice.

She dialed and started hollering to her dad.

I wanted to smack her off side the head and say to her, Why are you speaking so loudly? There aren't that many people right here near us. You've been on the phone for the last half hour. I thought we came here first because we wanted some time alone together before joining the others. I thought you agreed watching tall ships would be a romantic thing to do. I thought you would be quiet for a little while, or at least speak to me if your lips must be flapping.

I waved and indicated I was going to get a drink. I motioned Do you want something to drink? She waved as if to dismiss me. Words were directed electronically toward others. And they were all hers. We were reduced to communicating in a sort of pidgin signing.

I left her on the plaza, talking to her dad. I walked towards the restaurant with the outdoor tables, went into the restaurant, used the men's room then left through a different door. I walked about four blocks up along the river and found a place by the railing where I could stand and quietly watch the ships as they passed. I thought, let her find her own way to Marco's. Maybe I would see her there later. Or maybe I wouldn't. I hadn't made up my mind.

She was speaking so loudly on that new cell phone.

Fourth of July. I was feeling very independent. I thought now I'll do what I feel like doing, but I couldn't really make a firm decision. It was very quiet. I stood and waited for the tall ships for what seemed like hours.

Summer Eases In

2008-06-28T22:54:00.000-05:00

The teachers' course went well. It's all over except for the final exam on Monday. This time I made up a lot of Powerpoint presentations and realized how much time it saves in not having to write things out on the board. But in order not to have the slide all plain and vanilla flavored, it takes quite a bit of time to put together a little show that moves and zings.

No plans yet for my break in July. Would really like to travel, but it's currently out of the budget. In lieu of something exotic, perhaps I can get some time by a pool and finish the Bolaño book.

Have seen quite a few movies, some awful - like M. Night Shamylan's The Happening, some okay - like Get Smart, and a really enjoyable one with Audrey Tatou. Been listening to Israeli pop music, and watching Madonna age. Gathering resources for next semester. Getting bored and tired doing very little.

Missing things and people. Some people especially.

It feels the way it feels during the Christmas season, or like a constant string of Sunday nights. Where's this summer I keep hearing about?

Chain

2008-05-20T17:25:00.000-05:00

What else can go wrong? Or is this the turning point at mid-day?
Woke up a little late and soon discovered there was no water to shave or shower with. Attempting to turn on the "bomb", I learned it was not working.
Called in to the Coordinator to tell her I'd be late and she reminded me there were many last minute things to take care of before my trips this weekend to Tapachula and then to Monterrey, and this being the end of semester, these chores have an urgency to them. I said I'd try to get to work very soon, but knew I'd be somewhat late for having to look for a plumber.
Shaved and washed with a bucket of water directly from the cistern. There were gnat corpses floating in it and the bucket (the only one available) hadn't been used since housepainting, months ago, so it was a distasteful process, and not at all refreshing.
Friend Á drove us around looking for the plumber, and the third stop promised to be successful. Someone would be there in a little while. Á said he'd take me to school, and go back to take the plumber to the house, but first we'd have to stop and get money from an ATM to be able to pay for his services, and Á also needed some gas. Of course, the usually reliable cash machine in the Extra near the gas station was out of order today, so we turned round and headed back to the machine near the other Tec, which had a queue. Last option, head for the plaza and the ATMs beside the bank. At each of these stops he made, I noticed Á dutifully buckled his seatbelt.
Got the money, and back on the road toward school, now quite late.
This time the transit police were diverting traffic and pulling over the odd motorist for... not having seatbelts on, and wouldn't you know, the one time someone had forgotten to buckle up... Á got a summons for $200 (but actually for not carrying his papers which the transit guy asked for after stopping him for the seatbelt oversight).
Á laughed as if he couldn't care less, but there was an edge of something else in his laugh. He dropped me off at school and said he'd go back and take care of the plumber, who, he told me later, got angry for having to wait too long and left. Á hunted down another guy who said he'd come to the house.
Meanwhile, after arriving late and in a grouchy mood, something I said chased away a student who needed to take his final exam. The system would not accept changes necessary to a student's record in order to prevent her from missing her graduation. I couldn't locate a chart necessary to evaluate the final averages of a certain group, nor could I find the student whom I had sent running. I also had to make the arrangements about the trip. Should it be a zig-zag thing between the two destinations, or could some of the zag be cut out? I was advised I'd be flying up to my course directly after administering the exam rather than returning and flying out from here.
At about 3:30, I had resolved several of the items on my agenda, though the touchy system still required one and only one particular signature to authorize the change for the graduating student.
I called Á, who told me a plumber had fixed the bomb for a nominal charge and water was running again. However, while we were speaking, he told me water was running down the stairs. He'd overcompensated to fill the empty tank on the roof and had left the bomb running a little too long. The water overflowed and came out through the television cable vent, flooding the upstairs hallway.
I finished my cigarette (during the standard "Character's Reflective Delay") and returned to my office to get Rodrigo's signature. Servicios escolares says they will handle the rest of the changes.
So let's see... $350 for the plumber, $200 for the traffic summons, and water damage in the house. Although the school is paying a fortune for the trip, I am sure I'll be spending additional money there, but I think, with fingers crossed that the day from hell is drawing to a close. Would love to relax and do nothing this evening, but have to plan out the material for the teachers' summer Intermediate English course.

Closer

2008-05-19T16:22:00.002-05:00

Well, today was the last day of semester 13. Grades are in. Time to start thinking about the summer session.

The Open Window

2008-05-15T00:15:00.000-05:00

The boy lay bathed in sweat on his bed, awake. Water covered every inch of his body, and as he lay there in only his briefs there was nothing to absorb the flood of perspiration. His hair was matted and soaked. The sheet was sticking to his back every time he moved.
His eyes were red and swollen. In desperate need of sleep, he closed them a few times and tried to rest, but he was too uncomfortable. Something was making his brain itch. Something would not let him sleep.
He was alone in the apartment, but he had been alone many times before. Nothing so simple as being by himself should irritate him. It shouldn't. He tried to think of something else.

People were passing in the street below and adding to the din of Harbor Avenue. It was late, but quite a few were out and about, but as he heard them milling below, it reminded him of his being alone and he had to turn to something else. He picked up a paperback book and began reading a dog-earred page, but soon he remembered it was a murder mystery. That would never do. He tossed it on the bureau.

God! He was sweating buckets! He knew he should open a window or two, but it was his wont to keep every one closed and locked. The doors were locked also. He dabbed at his neck and face with a damp handkerchief. It didn't do much good so he took a clean one from one of the drawers in the bureau. Hundred and thirty-nine dollars that bureau had cost on a Labor Day sale. It looked like crap. He was sweating and the wood felt sticky.

Still searching for something to do, he picked up a comic magazine. It was light-hearted enough, but when he finished with it, he realized there were no more lying around.
He lay down again on the sweat-soaked sheet and closed his eyes, but it was useless. He could not sleep. Something would not let him. He did not, as a rule, suffer from insomnia, and could find no rationale for this perverse sleeplessness. He could say it was too hot and there was little air circulating in the room, but he had fallen asleep under these conditions many times before. He could say he was overtired, and the room was not dark enough, and there was the din in the street, but these things also he had hitherto conquered.
He sat up again and turned on the radio on the night table. Out came a song he had heard many, many times before. Listlessly, he lay there and let the words drone through his head:
Ahm gonna give ya mah love, girl,
Gonna let it fly in through yer window.
Ahm gonna make love to you...

Suddenly, it came to him. He had certainly locked the doors as soon as his folks went out, front door and back, and shut the windows, but he was not quite sure about the window in the kitchen, at the other end of the apartment. True, he could not feel any breeze blowing through the apartment, but it did not settle his mind. He was afraid to leave his room to check on it, but he knew he would not be able to fall asleep until he did. Well, then, he thought, he would just stay awake until the folks came home. When Mama and Frank got in they would open most of the windows, but that would be all right because the three of them would all be there in case anyone ever tried to break in or something.
No! He couldn't stay awake until that late. Besides, they might be tipsy. He should be asleep when they came in.
Why should he be so paranoid about an open window? That was silly, right? To prove to himself how silly he was being torturing himself in this dreadful heat, he opened his bedroom window a few inches, opened it a crack as Frank would sometimes say.
He could hear noises from the pier and sounds of people below on Harbor Avenue more clearly.

Then he thought, sure, this is fine. There's nothing outside this window but the street. There was a fire escape leading up to the one in the kitchen, and it came up from a dark back yard.
He must get up and close it or he would never fall asleep. He was afraid. Afraid enough to feel a chill, a chill which, even in this heat, was not welcome. All he had to do was go out and close it quickly, twist the lock and go back to bed. That was all. Then he could even open his bedroom window all the way. That was safe enough. There was no fire escape out there.

Slowly, he crept through his doorway to the sitting room, and from there, slowly, ever so slowly, through three more rooms to the doorway of the kitchen.
He stood there looking across the room at the window. It was wide open. The short cafe curtains were fluttering in the slight breeze, which he could now feel hitting his bare chest, making the short hairs of puberty stand on end. He felt a sickening sensation inside that adolescent chest.

Breath held fast, he strode across the room and stood before the window, ramshackle window, cheap curtains, slightly soiled and billowing carelessly.
Why had he felt so frightened? God! He felt like such a wimp!
Oh, well, might as well get it over with. It was best to play it safe anyway. He was not afraid anymore, but he thought, with a fire escape outside, this one window should be kept closed, and yes, maybe locked also.

He reached up, put both hands on the window to bring it down, and then it happened. A man stepped out of the darkness where he had been standing and stared open-eyed into the boy's face.
Slowly, the boy's fingers lost all their feeling and his legs wouldn't hold him up. His vision blackened and he fainted dead away, crumpling in a heap on the floor in front of the window.

Blackboard Updated

2008-05-09T01:31:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems our platform is going to be updated before the next semester begins. We received an announcement that we're moving up to Version 7.3. We're only a little behind. In researching, I see the app is up to Version 8, which looks quite different from what we're using currently. I really enjoy working with BB because you only have to take care of things once and then the system grades and maintains the work so it can be reused each semester, but of course students find things to complain about.

The brightest always seem to be able to log in, do their assignments, and log out without any issues, while the (for lack of a softer description) slackers always have problems. "I couldn't finish the quiz. The system locked me out." "I finished the quiz, but I didn't get the correct grade!" And we don't even make use of adaptive release. If there were criteria to be met before being able to proceed, it would probably cause more problems than the teachers have time to handle.

MacMillan's English Campus (MEC) was not popular with the students, even though the exercises were relatively easy. I think because it worked too well at what it was supposed to do. I love all my students (when I run into them at the mall, that is.), but very few show innovation or enthusiasm, and most just go through the motions. Was I like that at their age? It was so long ago, I don't remember.

To give an idea of how long ago that was - I remember one semester, early in the term, when our English teacher predicted that a song just beginning to get airplay on the radio (remember when the major source of music was the radio?) would be a big hit before the term's end. The song she was referring to was "Light My Fire" by The Doors!!!

Anyway, it's a new era. Now we work online so much. Back then, there wasn't even a line to be on. And so, Blackboard is being updated. I'm looking forward to the changes, but not the excuses. By the way, I've been listening to a lot of indy music, and I predict...oh, nevermind, I never get this right.

What's Happening at The Office?

2008-05-09T00:44:00.002-05:00

The latest episode just wasn't funny. Everyone except Pam and Jim showed their mean side. Ryan was the worst. He's become so nasty since his promotion. I suppose later the writers will try to convince us that his coke problem brought out his nastier nature, but after seeing everyone scratching at the walls like that, who cares?.

Discussing this with a friend, we came to the conclusion that this fourth season should be scratched when the show goes into syndication, except for maybe the dinner party episode which was pretty funny.

Having seen all of the British version, most of which made me cringe, I thought the Americans had made the comedy way more palatable. Now, I'm not so sure.

Anyway, I'll keep watching for a while, and hope things come around to where they were, character-wise.

Some Interesting Sites Noted

2008-05-06T22:13:00.000-05:00

Check out what Emily Jo Cureton has done by illustrating some of the words she finds each day in the crossword puzzle in the New York Times. New York Times Crossword Drawings. Her work and that of many more illustrators is featured on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog.

Watch some Brickfilms. Not sure what they are? They're video clips made with Lego (usually parodies of cinema films). You can find loads of them on YouTube or you can search the source at Brickfilms.com.

For insightful reviews of new (and some older) movies visit Cinematronics by Álvaro. His reviews are en español. I find myself agreeing with his viewpoint more times than not.

To hear the latest indy music being made (also accompanied by insightful reviews) visit Ryan's Smashing Life.

Lifehacker presents hundreds of tips and tricks for you to try out on your computer, and they offer many helpful hints on how to give new life to things around the house that you might have been thinking of throwing away. You can also find Free Download of the Day here, wherein you get to try out software, sometimes fully functioning versions that are given away on a time-limited basis. You have to act quick or lose opportunities.

BigThink is an ambitious online project that brings together the views of experts from a range of different fields across the world and enables users the opportunity to interact and make their own contributions with an easy-to-use and accessible interface.

I have all of these sites on an RSS feed so I am constantly made aware of updates. My aggregator is Bloglines. You should check it out and sign up for free. There's nothing to download, but whenever you sign on, you can find all your favorite blogs and news in one place. I used to waste hours surfing all over the 'Net for interesting information. Now I just spend a couple of hours poring over my growing list of favorite sites.

Click to scribble

2008-05-06T21:12:00.000-05:00

The Other Half of the Rent

2008-04-26T12:18:00.000-05:00

Pending resolution. This is an ongoing matter.

If the devil only knew...

2008-04-24T00:07:00.000-05:00

April 23rd, 2008

Rating:

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

This was a finely made, riveting movie. Some reviewers in the NY Times Readers' Reviews say the scene on the porch between father and son didn't add much, or has been done better before, but for this viewer it was a gratifying explication for the motives which began the terrible events here related. This was the kind of thing missing from such highly rated (and Oscar-rewarded) stories as There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men. When those films were over I did leave the theater wondering why such pathological characters were the focus of our current crop of "great story-telling movies." Unexplained motivation leaves me cold.
In Before the Devil... Lumet has not missed a beat. Everything we need to know to be involved in these characters' tales is included. Sterling performances by all in an excellent display of cinematography, from Amy Ryan's few scenes up through the histrionics of Hoffman and Finney. Pooh to anyone who finds fault in this film, and Coen brothers, take a lesson in how to involve your audience in caring about dysfunctional characters. It's not enough to just be quirky and photograph it beautifully. It helps a lot to include even a small scene supplying motivation.

- michaelbrown7

The Last Lesson

2008-04-19T23:20:00.000-05:00

Dear Haojun:

Thanks for your nice letter. I can tell from your tone China is very excited about the return of Macao. I hope the transfer is as smooth as that of Hong Kong. You seem all caught up in the festivities and they seem less worrisome than the Y2K business and millennium madness we are experiencing over here. I wonder how you are doing vis-à-vis computer problems. We have not exchanged e-mail in quite some time.

It has been a long time since we last communicated. I know you have been very busy redecorating your new home. It must be coming along beautifully. Perhaps you can send me a photo.

Let me tell you why I have not written. Just as you are trying to improve your English, I have been trying to better my writing abilities in my native language. As I told you before mostly I write fiction. There is much need for improvement if I wish to capture a readership. I wish I had the abilities of our mutual favorite Lu Xun, but that is another story.

I signed up for a six-week online writing course and have made many new friends. Each lesson required us to approach the craft of fiction writing from a specific perspective. One week we had to pretend to be one of our characters so as to introduce ourselves to each other. I found it difficult trying to discover my own personality as if looking at myself from the outside. Another time we had to focus on point of view and how to use it to tell a story. For that one, I wrote the assignment three times before I settled on telling it in the second person. I wrote, "You say..." and "You go..." as if I were telling the character what to do. It was critiqued positively so I guess the rewrites paid off. And once, we had to interview one of the characters we'd created as if he or she were applying for a job in our stories. That piece took me a while before I settled on a magazine type interview wherein I pretended the reporter wanted to speak to "the man on the street" rather than a celebrity.

Each week I struggled along slowly and painstakingly trying to get better at the craft. However, this last lesson I found most difficult of all. It was concerned with conflict, complications and plot. How to build to a crisis and then resolve it. And I was at a loss. My conflict was I could not come up with a plot I liked well enough to post and perhaps develop later as I go into further courses.

My friend John suggested I use the tension filled story I wrote about the boy and the unlocked window, but I had written it so long ago, I found it sophomoric. I really felt uncomfortable using any of my very early writing.

Then he advised me to use two characters who have been floating around in my head for a long time without a story, but as I explained to him, they don’t have a story yet. They are just colorful characters without conflicts of their own. I need to think up some interesting situations to place them in, but for this exercise I was drawing a blank.

I thought of writing to you to ask for help with something that would seem exotic to my friends over here, but there wasn’t enough time and besides, many of the online students are not from America, so if I wrote of something I was unsure of I would just look foolish.

What to do? What to do? Time was running out.

I came up with a plan, which I am not proud to tell you. I cobbled together an unbelievable labyrinthine plot from a book I purchased a very long time ago. It wasn’t much help back then and I should have known better than to try to make it work for me now, but I was desperate to end this course with a completed assignment. I used the book’s suggestion to string together little bits of action that were supposed to coalesce into a complicated tale of vengeance. What I wound up with was a tepid second rate murder mystery and it was so badly put together and underdeveloped, it read more like a summary than a story. As the final day approached and no other ideas were forthcoming, I threw up my hands in exasperation and went ahead and posted my work.

I regretted my action immediately.

As was to be expected, it was met with a lukewarm reception. We critique each other’s work and a few of my fellow students said some kind things, but most, including my mentor, made it clear they did not think it was my best work. They were right.

I was ashamed. It’s only a writing course, you might say, and there is always tomorrow to do better. It’s true, but my pride would not allow me to let this hodgepodge represent me in my final assignment of my freshman course. I was not being true to myself, and so, I deleted it from the postings. Now, I had nothing to represent me.

What to do?

I went out to take a walk to clear my thoughts and saw all the signs of the coming millennium celebration. I also saw a dead pigeon in the street. It made me heartsick to think of how many hours flying the poor useless creature had put in to arrive nowhere, and here it was, a pile of crumpled feathers someone had brushed off the sidewalk into the street.

When I returned to my apartment building, your letter was waiting for me and it made me feel so much better. Every time we communicate, I realize how big this world is and how insignificant some of my “problems” are.

I read your letter and like a flash, I came up with an idea and must run now to re-post my final assignment. I realize where the conflict is and how it could be resolved. I must thank you for writing and unknowingly helping me to see what was under my nose all the time.

Thank you very much for the stamps and the magazine clippings.

Please extend my greetings to your mother and the rest of your family.

I will write to you again soon now that this course is finishing up and I will have some free time.

Your friend,

Michael

Eight Years

2008-04-17T19:34:00.000-05:00

It feels like yesterday. Still in my heart. Still in my head.

The What-If Factor

2008-03-29T20:16:00.000-06:00

Sally Graham

2008-03-14T21:15:00.000-06:00

Five years ago I was intimidated by Sally Graham. Well, I respected her superior intellect. She was almost ready to retire then. I think she told me she was fifty-eight. She's a psychiatrist and a member of the American Philatelic Society and at that time I think her stamp collection numbered in the 60,000s.
The way I met her was I was talking to the doorman and I mentioned I was just renewing my interest in stamp collecting, something I had done when I was a kid. And he told me there was someone in the building who was also a collector and if I wanted he would give her my apartment number. I told him go ahead, why not, I wanted to meet other people who were into it. That evening, she rang my bell. I invited her in and we talked for an hour or so.
She sat on my dining room floor explaining things to me like how I could always tell stamps that belonged to republics of the Soviet Union because they had letters on them in the Cyrillic alphabet that looked like CCCP and NOYTA and how stamps from Taiwan differed from those from mainland China because those from the Peoples Republic had an ideogram resembling a wishbone, and it was the symbol that stood for man. It was pronounced ren, but I only had to concern myself with that on the earlier issues because the later stamps now said China in the English alphabet and the sets were numbered. She was a free spirit and her hair was unkempt and she reminded of nothing so much as a wilted flower child, but she sounded very intelligent.
She told me I should join the APS and I would get circuits on approval. It was a good way to fill up my collection cheaply and it was a very secure procedure.
The difference in our ages precluded becoming very friendly but every once in a while I would see her in the lobby on my way out to work or coming home and I remember when she told me she had officially retired. She was looking forward to more time at home and not having to see patients. They all had so many problems. She said at times she felt like she might bug out.
About a year ago I had a problem with the APS. Someone from the Society called me and told me the next person on the Peoples Republic of China circuit did not receive the booklets I had looked at and sent on. He was a Chinese with a post office box for an address and I had my suspicions. The stamps were valuable. I called Sally and asked her advice, because whenever I received a circuit from PRC she was always the prior recipient and this particular time I had foolishly forgotten to save the priority mail insurance receipt.
She told me in her soft-spoken solicitous way, "It's a test. To teach you to follow the instructions. Why don't you call the APS and tell them the number and maybe they can track it down without the actual receipt?"
"And if they can't?" I asked.
"Well," she said, "It couldn't cost you more than a hundred dollars. That's all it was insured for."
I felt like one of her patients. It was not what I wanted to hear.
I was able to clear my responsibility with the APS with a phone call, but after that I asked them not to send me anymore stamps from China. My collection was pretty full and I didn't want to be responsible for something that expensive again.
As I say, that was a year ago.
This afternoon, in the crisp December weather, I went downstairs to buy some lunch in the new Garden of Eden gourmet food shop that recently opened in our building's ground floor. It is filled with the delicious aromas of all kinds of exotic foods, fruits and baked items, meats and poultry, cooked and ready to go. I bought some three potato salad and some roast beef and when I entered the lobby I ran into Sally Graham. I was a little taken back by how she looked. Her teeth were all discolored and her hair was still unkempt but now it was completely gray. It looked dirty and she had put on quite a bit of weight. She was wearing an ill fitting down jacket with food stains on it.
"You cost me five dollars," she said, and it really sounded like an accusation.
"How's that?" I asked. I really didn't want to stand there and talk. I wanted to come upstairs and have my roast beef.
She went on to explain since I wasn't on the Chinese circuit anymore, she had to walk all the way over to Fourth Avenue to the Post Office to insure her package and send it on to the next person on the list instead of leaving it with the doorman for me.
I asked her how many stamps she had now and she told me she had stopped counting when she went over 100,000.
"How do you catalog them all?" I asked.
"Well, I haven't gotten around to doing that," she said. "They're all in shoeboxes. Some of my friends who are dealers tell me I should, especially if I want to sell them, and I may have to soon. I'm running out of money."
I was surprised and said, "Oh?"
"Yes," she said, "I just paid October's rent."
That really surprised me. It was not the kind of thing I expected from her.

Views

2008-03-12T19:58:00.000-06:00

One Wish Left

2008-02-14T20:15:00.000-06:00

“What’s that?” Lisa asked, “It looks like one of those genie bottles.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Richard said, “A little six month anniversary gift for you.”
“Oh, Rich, you’re so sweet.” Smoothing out the edge of her black silk negligee, she sat at the vanity and reapplied her make-up. “But it actually looks like a giant phallus. I can’t bring that home. How would I explain it to my husband?”
“Tell him you bought it at a flea market.”
“It’s so large.” She rubbed the gnarled wooden bottle. “I wish you were this big, all the time.” She giggled and aimed it at him like a rifle.

Back at the office, Rich received a telephone call from the ancient sage who sold him the bottle. “I make grave mistake,” said the old man, “I meant to sell you novelty copy of actual bottle. That one contains very powerful magic. You not be able to handle consequences.”
“Well, that’s too bad, pop,” Rich said, “I’ve already given it to my girlfriend as a gift.”
“Please, you must return it to me. I give you copy. She is in grave danger. I'm sorry I make mistake. You must believe me.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see, pop.” Rich hung up the phone while the old man was still protesting.

Twenty minutes later, Rich felt a twitching in his pants. His crotch area became uncomfortable as a certain part of him began to gain about three pounds of flesh. For a moment he thought he had subconsciously recalled his afternoon tryst with Lisa, but then he remembered the wish she made.
He tried calling her at home, which he almost never did. There was no answer.

She was in her white Camaro, stalled in traffic. ‘I hate having to deal with situations like this,’ she thought, ‘I wouldn’t have to if I were a wealthy woman with a chauffeur driven car. I could be in the back of a limousine, eating caviar and drinking champagne.’ “I wish I was rich. Really Rich,” she heard herself saying aloud. Suddenly the gridlock cleared and she zoomed off.

Rich drove toward Lisa’s home, finding it somewhat uncomfortable to fit his newly developed bulk under the steering wheel. She was going to go wild when she saw that. He hoped he could get to her before she wasted her other two wishes.
He had to slow down and stop as he approached the scene of an accident. A white car was badly banged up and wrapped around a divider. Traffic at a standstill, Rich got out of his Lexus and asked one of the attending policemen, "“What the hell happened, officer?"
The cop did a double take as if he recognized him. “Er, uh,” he stammered, “Damn fool guy must have been drunk. Wracked up his vehicle pretty good.”
As they removed the body from the wreck, Rich almost fainted. It could have been his twin. The dead man’s face looked so much like his own. And the guy had a huge bulge in his bloody pants.
The driver’s side door was mangled. It wouldn’t close properly. When the tow truck lifted the Camaro, a gnarled wooden bottle fell out of the car, rolled across the highway and disappeared into the grass.

Commuters' Rage

2008-01-14T19:15:00.000-06:00

It used to be a long comfortable commute on the train from Westchester down to her job on Wall Street during which Alison immersed herself in books from the bestseller list. "I can never find time to read evenings or on weekends, so I always read on the way to work," she told her friend Macy once, before Macy married and moved to an island off the coast of South Carolina. They still compared notes on the latest bestsellers, but not as often. Alison found little time to write letters or e-mail with all the work she brought home to do in the evenings and over weekends. There were so many details. She had to be careful not to leave anything out.
One day, a man ran through the train shooting at people indiscriminately. Alison, looked up from her book at the sound of the first shot and for an elongated moment she could not comprehend what was happening. Then she was hit in the shoulder by one of the bullets, just inches from her heart.
She spent her long recuperation reading accounts of the man's life. Various newspapers told how he had been arrested on burglary and assault charges several times, but had served only two years in prison. He was the son of a teen-aged unwed mother who had died early of a drug overdose. He had been raised by his grandmother who could not understand where he had gone wrong. He was always a good child. She had three other daughters. Each had several children. None had turned out like Vaco. "Vaco's cousins cannot understand this tragedy either," the grandmother said. A photograph showed her crying, next to a photograph of Vaco, with his arm reaching forward, as if to block the photographer's view. From what Alison could see of his face in that picture, he appeared to be smiling. In another, he had a glazed look in his eyes. His defense attorney said Vaco was filled with an uncontrollable rage against society. This rage anesthetized him to the wrongs he commited. The attorney argued, under the powerful grip of such rage, a person, surely, cannot be held completely accountable for how he reacts to the society he feels has wronged him.
Details of Vaco's life filled newspapers for many weeks. Alison read them all. She had plenty of time in her hospital bed and later at home. There was very little written about the sixteen people who were hurt or the man who was killed on the train that day. When she mentioned this to Macy during a phone conversation, Macy said the victims' stories would be related in the soon to be published book about commuters' rage. Alison told her nobody had interviewed her for such a book, and that she thought that was a callous thing to say. After hanging up, she thought it might be a long time before she could speak to Macy again.
Alison went back to work eventually. She still commutes from Westchester, but these days, she never reads on trains no matter how long the ride is.

2007 Story Roundup

2007-12-31T00:00:00.003-06:00

The Din
The Day Before the Incident
Static
Almost a Man
Panic on the Comeback Trail
Alice
Blind-Sided
Intrigue
Finished
Descending and Rising Damp
Why Not?
It's My Belief We're All Crazy

Outside-In

MuDJoB Guest Writes: First Anniversary

Our One-Year Anniversary Together

MuDJoB 03 at Issuu: Micro-Fiction Comics

Grey Johnson has a new Issuu

I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip.

Bob Thurber's first novel coming Spring 2011

Caitlin & Mathias

HoWs of the Rising Sun

Static

Welcome to the Information Age - Eric Bosse

Equation: A Collection of Six-Sixes

HoW 2010: New Orleans

Bill Lapham has a new Issuu

Grey Johnson's Your Pajamas on Issuu

Performance

Critters at Six Sentences

The Versatile Blogger Award

The Day Before the Incident

These Shoes (I Dare You Challenge)

52 Pick-Up

Evelyn's Club

God Is in the Details

The MuDJoB Story

A Look Backward: TecIngles (pre-MuDJoB)

We Can Still Be Friends

Published at CJT's wordvamp

A Union Contract

When I Was Young

Valentine Surprise

Published at disenthralled

Before I Was Born

MDJB's Picos

Published in Gloom Cupboard

MuDJoB 66: Students' Writing

6:52 (short fiction from Six Sentences)

2009 Story Roundup

I, Splotchy: Story Virus v5

Story Virus v5

other stories and observations

Memoirist

Published at Out of Ruins

Men and Women at Six Sentences

Introducing Ethics

Introducing Descartes

Jango Jukebox

Graffiti

World Peace Day

I am a Hoarder

Starting out on the right foot

Chimera

…those who can’t, teach.

Puppet

Six Verses Before the Chorus at Six Sentences

The What-If Factor

Some books from my library

The Sequel

TecIngles Issue No. 13

The Hunger of History

Wicked

Empty

Something I Heard Before

Untied

Graduation Day

Semester

The Setting Sun

Relax and revisit a favorite book

Love Misplaced

In a Broken Mirror

Wife and Spouse Read NY Times

2008 Story Roundup

In the mood to scribble?

Views

Learning

Vibration

Doubtful

One Out of Thousands

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

HP has me furious

Go make some art...