100 words a day

The daily routine shatters, and unpredictability reigns.

I should be cleaning the house.  I should be working on a wiring diagram for a network I’m building.  I should be going grocery shopping and doing the laundry.

Instead I’m text messaging, on the cell and the computer.  I’m taking dozens of twelve-second-long cell phone calls, and spending my evenings driving 40 miles to get a few tacos.

All to get as much time as possible spent looking at those eyes.  The calm blue ones, flaked with black onyx, that pierce my skull like a brain freeze.

Everything else just seems dim.

Remember this? It was just you and me alone in bed at night, lying by a single light bulb. I could tell you anything, my deepest secrets, the lightest trivialities, and there was never any judgment.  And you never stopped listening, always willing to take what I gave. 

And then I moved on.  I turned in my fancy pens and special markers for a shiny new laptop.  Words and phrases are erased and immediately forgotten.  My penmanship has been lost to the tap-tap-tapping of fingers on square keys.

I miss the silence.  I miss the permanence.  I miss the page.

Evening at the station, and I’m late and ruffled. In the swirl of commuters, I see her. Blond hair, not auburn as it once was, and her stomach is swollen with an advanced pregnancy, but she is still instantly recognisable as the Margaret I knocked around with in college 18 years ago.  

We shriek at each other and hug, and she says how different I look, which I guess is her polite way of saying older.  

She gives me her card, says she must dash for a train. Another hug.  

We both know we won’t be seeing each other again.  

I attended this writing workshop thinking I knew it all:  my manuscript was great, and maybe they’d make subtle improvements.

Not really how it went down.  Mine sort of sucked by comparison, but I learned how to make it better.  

Our manuscripts were picked through, then picked on, for phrases we’d written that “you can’t draw a picture of”.  My “I was overwhelmed” was one of them. 

Then, “You can’t tell us how you lost weight unless you tell us about being fat.” (No euphemisms like “overweight” or “heavy”).

I became overwhelmed when I had to talk about being fat.

It’s a one word question, black text blazing on the blue cell phone screen.  I read it and my stomach does a pirouette and a backflip at the same time.

What I started out thinking of as a conquest became something much more, the first time I felt the electric dance of her lips on mine.

Since then it’s been head-over-heels smitten, head in a cloud of pixie dust, grinning for no reason.

I know it’ll never last.  And I know the devastation I’ll feel when it’s over.

But if that’s the cost of the dance, sign me up anyway.

Before my holiday last week, I was pretty excited. But the anticipation of seven days’ relaxation by the turquoise waters of the Aegean Sea was spoiled by constant questioning.  

“Who are you going with?”  

(Even, once, “Which friend are you going with?”)  

Er, no-one. I joined a trip and met people there. Not a problem for me, but clearly for everyone else, whose reactions ranged from disbelief to astonishment to pity.  

Tonight, I chatted to a guy I sometimes see at the station. He’s off to the Dominican Republic.  

“Who with?” (I couldn’t stop myself.)  

“On my own,” he replied.  

Let me set two scenes:  a crowded roof-top bar and a small private house party.

The bar is loud, full of sweaty people milling around.  I’m engrossed in a conversation of minimal importance with a friend.  A man interrupts and introduces himself.  His wingman casually leads my friend away and we talk for thirty minutes. 

The party has less than twelve guests.  Everyone is standing around, making small talk with their happenstance neighbors.  People trade places and the conversations continue flow like a lazy river ride.   He doesn’t talk to me once.

Any guess which man got my phone number?

“I have something to tell you,” he whispers into my ear as we straddle the Harley bolted to the main floor of The Cuff, a gay bar in Seattle.  

“Ok.”

“I’ve fallen for you.”  I’m drunk, but my mind isn’t THAT impaired.  

“You hardly know me, Brian.  How can you have fallen for me?”  Here I am with a co-worker straddling more of me than the motorcycle, wondering how I let this happen. 

Fast forward 45 minutes.  We’re lounging in my car, awaiting the water’s magic effect when he pounces – literally. 

I playfully shove him off and start the car.

The picture of G and me, all decked out in our wedding finery, sits on my window ledge like a taunt.

It was taken on one of that July’s rare fine days, at the marriage of friends on the banks of the Thames. A day for drinking champagne, laughing at nothing and snatching crafty kisses during riverside walks.

It’s hard to recall many happier days from 2007 than that Sunday.

A year on, it’s all so different. Now who knows where we are going? Some days, I look at our smug smiles and want to smash the thing to pieces.

School’s actually ramping up for our kids who return to classes August 18^th here in Dixie. The temperature will hover in the 90’s, the humidity will be like a swamp and their interest levels will dwell near- or at- zero.

Our son and his teachers already know he should probably skip a grade like his big sister did; but he has his familiar “crew” he’d miss by doing that. Interest is minimal.

Everyday our daughter receives catalogues and brochures from Stanford, Yale, State University, Podunk Poly-Tech and everyone in between. Mentally she’s on a university campus somewhere.

No school till September!

My backpack is always ready for adventure and function. Our family is always traveling last minute; we each prepare differently. Our kids pack iPods, books, laptops and treats for long layovers. Their mom totes her company’s command-center computer along with the family gear moms always bring.

My essentials include pens, paper, camera, cargo shorts, aloha shirts and two important books; “The Old Man and the Sea” and my little red book. Hemingway allows me to get lost immediately and the red book is for collecting meaningful words. There are 84 Tao principles, bumperstickers, T-shirt slogans, and observations not yet seen.

Another 100 for Guatemala! 

A worm, 3 slugs and the biggest spider I’ve ever seen, in my room.  A scorpion right outside.

Rain daily, being so cold I wore the same “warm” outfit almost every day, even though it was constantly damp. 

Scratching like a junkie by the third day, due to overnight bug biting attacks.

After a few showers of ice water, figured how to get a steady drip of hot water.

Rinsed my toothbrush under the tap and paid the price.

And yet, still, the absolute best week of my life. Bugs, dampness, rain, cold water and all!

On holiday in Greece, my eyes lit up at the sight of a backgammon set on a dusty shelf.  

I beg Vangelis, the boat’s captain, to play. I lie about being the UK champion. When at last he agrees to a game of this ancient board, dice and counters pastime, an interested crowd gathers in the lounge. Predictably, he thrashes me.  

“Well,” I say, huffily. “Of course, they play a different version here.”  

When it comes to leaving, I’m embarrassingly close to tears. The cook translates for me.  

“Tell Vangelis I’ll be back to beat him next year,” I say.

The response to my email plea is not what I had hoped for.

The problem was the girl.  Not only is she too young for me, but she’s several levels of cute beyond anything in my league.  But even after seeing my picture, she’s interested.

So I asked a few female friends for help.  I was looking for tips on things like how to lose twenty pounds overnight, or how to turn a Toyota into a Ferrari.

But all three responses are the same.  Be yourself.  Sit up straight.  Mind your manners.

Yeah, because that’s worked out great so far…

She asks how the workouts are going. I tell her they’re fine. I didn’t say “tough” or “killer” or “homicidal.” I should have.

She puts me on a treadmill and makes me sprint for a quarter of a mile. My chest constricts, my lungs contract, my eyes well up.

She increases the escalation. I negotiate – You can keep your higher escalation as long as you reduce the speed. She won’t consider it. My memory races back in time and locates the only asthma attack I ever had. I think I might die.

Seven hours later my lungs are still irate.

Every day since I’ve switched back to contact lenses, I’ve taken the precaution of bringing my glasses with me to work.

And of course it’s the first day I forget to bring them that I end up needing them, at the tail end of a ten hour workday for job #1.  Somewhere in the day a piece of grit rendered a lens unusable.

Driving home with one functional eye, to retrieve the glasses and then head towards job #2, I wonder how many of my fellow commuters are half blind and pissed off.

I really hope I’m the only one.

“Everyone has a compelling story to tell to someone willing to listen.” I’ve said that to our children so not only do they believe it, but they practice it. My quote is one of my many mantras. Lately, I’ve been around some people with stories both fascinating and frightening. Those kinds of stories I’m used to and usually seek out, but these new ones are different. The people who are confessing these incredible dramas have never been listened to before. That’s something I’m sure of. It’s not my listening skills- these people are just beat down, largely forgotten and alone.

Animals are a significant part of who I am. Our fortunes have allowed us to share our lives with some great ones. Our travels have put us fact-to-face with some extraordinary creatures; enriching our minds and capturing our hearts.

I volunteered this week at our local animal shelter and nothing, nothing prepared me for the overwhelming sadness I saw. I’m a hunter and fisherman and fully understand both wildlife management and the commercial use of animals. What I couldn’t believe were the amount of abused, neglected and mistreated animals, who were just put down for lack of a human family.

I begin looking at fifty this week and sadly I haven’t grown any wiser or smarter. I have a great deal more experiences and expertises under my belt, people think I know more than ever; but truth is, I’m more in the dark than I’ve ever been before in my life.

I have more worries and questions marks than I did at forty or even at 20. Things should be easier now, but I’ve managed to complicate my life when all I’ve ever preached was simplicity.

Back to basics. Be nice, tell the truth and flush the first 49 years.

It’d be impossible to sum up my ten days in Guatemala in 100 words…but I’ll try.  Toasting marshmallows in the lava at the top of volcano Pacaya, navigating vocabulary and currency in country where I don’t speak the language, meeting many great new friends and writers, workshopping my manuscript with one of my favorite authors, waking to a spectacular view of the deepest lake in the Americas and another volcano, exposure to a culture where possessions and makeup are not the priority they are here. 

Getting out of dodge for awhile and realizing I want to do it more often!

I’m not living up to my potential.  There, I said it.  Unlike the Army Reserve, I’m not all that I can be.  My book is frozen in digital limbo and does not rest in pestering me.  There it is; as a desktop icon and an incessant nuisance.  And I do nothing about it.

I deliver mail for a living.  There’s nothing exquisite, unique or me about that.  Yeah, my calves are amazing and I can buy a plane ticket without whimpering but I never said I wanted to be a mailman when I grew up. 

Am I the status quo?

Like any art student worth her solvent, I love the smell of fresh paint. Turpentine too. I’m tempted to dab it behind my ears.

Today I was heading into a meeting I’d been dreading for days. The hallway to the conference room was lined with construction workers. They’re tearing down walls, erecting new rooms. The adjacent room was almost finished. The noxious fumes of recently applied paint disarmed me. My scents memory took over and instantly I was a sophomore again, painting on the second floor of Kresge Hall, oblivious to the passing hours.

I paused and smiled: instant Zen.

R phones, wanting to meet up the weekend after next, and, as usual, I am dithering hopelessly. She says it’s fine, it doesn’t matter, that we’ll do it another time, although she’s not sure when she’ll next be free. I know her well enough to know different, and I can hear the disappointment in her voice.  

The waves of guilt wash over me. R is one my oldest friends, and, again, I have refused to commit to seeing her, on the ridiculous off-chance that the alleged boyfriend might be around.  

I hang up, burning with shame, wracked with miserable indecision.

A friend of a friend of a friend chain arises, leading me to a part time job interview.  Someone wants a computer network built for his small business.  We discuss his needs and my availability, and I promise to give him a quick estimate.

Doing my research, I realize what a huge job it’ll be.  Then I picture the tech support - frantic calls in the middle of the day, and decide it’s not worth it. 

Rather than just saying that, I make the estimate this ridiculous figure.  He accepts without batting an eye.

I guess I’m on the job.

I realized I have a current of anxiety running throughout my body. I didn’t notice until it vanished.

I met someone and my mind ran away from me and began to plan: the functions I’d never go to solo again, the dinner parties I’d co-host, the lazy Sundays I’d spend with my legs propped in his lap.

All the things I never minded doing alone. I felt a sense of relief – like I could see the finish line of a race I didn’t realize I was running.

Then I remembered I don’t mind doing these things alone; I hate them.

I flew home for a friend’s wedding. It was fun to wear colorful saris and eat tons of delicious Indian food – all vegetarian! It was great to see my college buds, relive old memories, and catch up.

It was awful seeing one friend’s profuse sweating and sudden change of personality. He morphed from dancing with a tie around his head to sitting down, withdrawn and tired. He must’ve taken heroin when he went to the restroom. I helped him to bed and confronted him the next morning.

It’s hard to be there for your friends when you’re 10,000 miles away.

It was a simple jump stop. I’ve done countless and have already gotten lax in procedure.

I didn’t see the dog under the Jeep.

When I turned to exit the porch, I was greeted by a medium Australian Blue snarling and baring teeth. My gut clenched, my heart throbbed in my temples. I tremulously wedged myself between the door and screen door, banging on the window.

My dog spray and my phone were in the truck.

Thirty minutes later – after screaming “Help” to a passerby who tossed me the dog spray – I inched around it and bolted to the truck.

I just couldn’t help marveling at all the Greek menus I came across while holidaying on some of the smaller islands there last week.  

One place had cheese crochets on offer (I guess they meant croquettes – the whole thing was a little woolly); I think it was the same place which was also trying to tempt diners to sample some of its lamp cutlets. (I had to wonder whose bright idea that was.)  

In another taverna where we had lunch, you could order the cramp salad.  

I could only conclude that this was something you got after you’d been swimming.

I decide to spend the weekend with my half-a-novel and a large red pen.

The first day, the blood ran deep.  Whole chapters got hacked into pieces and boiled in oil.  The running joke I was so proud of had to be retooled and enhanced.

Then I hit a wall.  With my head.

My ending disappears.  All of a sudden I have no idea where I’m going with it all.  I think of the late nights I’ve wasted.  I consider the whiskey - but, no - a better idea pops up.

Three Marlboro Lights later, it all becomes crystal clear.

I walked off the pier. I landed in the Red Sea. I saw some white fish and some brown ones and a splash of lavender coral. How exciting! After demonstrating some skills, I followed my instructor into the open water. As we moved out, it was a colorful feast for the eyes. Fish of every color, and coral like Queen Anne’s lace swaying in the salt water. One sense was overwhelmed, and it was odd to lose another – speech. So I pointed and took pictures. After two days of diving, I received my certification on July 4. I’m independent underwater.

Wasta in Arabic means an intermediary or connection.  Wastas can help you get anything.  Almost anything.  I had a potential associate swing by with the grandson of a former president to show how connected he is.  Sorry, Charlie, wasta doesn’t jive with me.

Until I needed something – a plane ticket to Jeddah for the long July 4^th weekend.  The airlines were all sold out.  I asked a colleague with a travel agent friend if he could help me.  The next thing I knew I had a plane ticket for the perfect days and times.

I’ll call it another cultural lesson.

It was 6:30 in the morning and I was leaving my home. I locked the door, closed it behind me, and checked to see if I had my keys. I didn’t. It was a minor sequential mistake that had major consequences.

I flagged down my super. I knew he’d been in my apartment once before when I wasn’t home. He looked through his assortment of keys. He found two unidentified keys and tried them both. Both failed. Strange.

Then he pulled out his wallet and removed his driver’s license and winked. Twenty seconds later he was standing inside my apartment.

The Wednesday night poker game is in full swing when it happens.

I’m sitting out the hand and guy on my left shows me his cards.  He’s the latest player to be one card away from a flush.  No one else has made it tonight.

“Think it’ll work?” he asks me, and I respond without hesitation.

“It’d take a miracle.”

The girl across from me laughs.  “Fezzick, are there rocks ahead?” she asks.

The guy on the right chimes in: “If there are, we’ll all be dead.”

Ten minutes later the cards are abandoned and we’re watching The Princess Bride.

My boss talks in circles.  He creates whirlpools of words that leave me disoriented.  Meetings with him can be tough.  I need all my energy to focus and concentrate: if I can control the conversation, I can control the current. 

This morning my mind blinked, I lost my focus and got swept away.   I tried to recover but I couldn’t regain my footing.  One sentence flowed into another, then looped back around and tied itself into a slip knot.

Today I was no mood. 

When he finally came up for air, he asked if it all made sense.

“Actually. No.”

As the late George Carlin said: “If at first you don’t succeed, try again.  Then quit - there’s no use being an idiot.”

You know what, George?  You were absolutely right.

This is what I tell myself as I gaze at the folded post-it note with the phone number written on it.  The one I got from a friend, with all the usual promises.  The one I just decided not to call.

I’m tired of all the hesitant and excruciating first dates.  It’s time to park myself on the bench for a while and just watch the crowd go by.

I am near euphoric when I get to work.  I am singing atonally and loudly, dancing to the beat that can barely be contained by the doors and windowed panels of my car.   Monday hasn’t felt this good in a long time. 

Within hours I have a pseudo-friendly shouting match with a colleague.  Then I decide I need to leave my job.  I wonder what the hell I’m doing with my life.  I’m despondent.  And cranky.  Everyone is bothering me.

There are times I forget that I, like the ocean, am a mere slave to the moon.   Then I remember.

I’m sitting in my car with a friend, agreeing that it doesn’t get any better than this.  

Outside, my ride is being hosed, lathered, sponged, and dried by the local high school cheerleading squad.  When they’re done, I’m expected to give them $10 - which I expect will go towards uniforms and equipment and numerous other things I couldn’t care less about.

We peer through the soapy glass and exchange satisfied smiles.  The girls grin and wave.

Driving away, I say truthfully: “That was better than the last five dates I went on.”

“Let’s go get my car,” he says.

I have one million reasons why I stopped painting.  They’re printed on business cards I hand out easily whenever anyone asks.  The one I don’t give out is the only one that’s true: I couldn’t get past its meaninglessness. 

I asked myself how the world would be different I stopped painted.  I knew it wouldn’t.  

No one would be worse off.  No one would be any different.  No one would notice.  I couldn’t bring myself to continue doing something that had absolutely no impact.

Almost five years later, I think I finally understand something.  Someone would be vastly different: me.

Brian, my station’s Union Steward, asks as I’m clocking out, “You wanna get a beer?”

It’s unlike me to go out drinking with the guys to talk shop but I agree nonetheless, thinking positively. 

He knows many people in the dive.  Heads turn as we enter.  He orders a Pineapple Upside Down Cake and asks if I want one, too. 

“So, have you figured it out yet?” he smiles.  I see a rainbow streamer near the door.  I’m genuinely shocked. 

Fast forward two hours:  he asks if he can see what it’s like to kiss someone with a pierced lip.

According to the clock, it’s one thirty in the morning when my hands finally go full carpal and refuse to function.

The eight thousand words I felt so proud of have now become twenty one thousand.  Along the way, the story has evolved enough in my mind that I know the first half will have to be rewritten.

That will come later.  After my thumb stops shaking and the pad of my pinky stops screaming every time I hit the left shift key.  After I call in sick and have a cocktail.  After I sleep the dreamless slumber of fulfillment.

The butterflies have flown away. The constant preoccupation has already become a memory whose edges are curling.

What just happened?

June tore in like a cyclone; it consumed me out nowhere and then threw me out with its uncaring centrifugal force. Now I’m exactly where I started. The furniture is where I left it, the bed is still made. I’m still me, with slightly longer hair.

I remind myself that this is what I wanted. But this isn’t exactly what I wanted. It’s part of it. The independence, the freedom, the unaccountability, yes. The solitude, the boredom, the loneliness. No.

“She was arrested again,” my mother sighs into the phone.  This news isn’t shocking to me anymore.  It’s just another chapter in the dismal tale of my older sister.

Pregnant from a one-night stand; undercover cops busting into her home and finding illegal drugs; failed job after job; death threats with a knife against my mother in front of my younger siblings and her daughter; now a second arrest. 

She’s lost custody of Kylie now.

“I don’t think she’s going to live past her mid-thirties,” my mom says in a voice reeking with strain. 

Will I soon be the eldest?

The date was going well up to the point where the waitress handed out the menus, and the girl looked at it for only twenty seconds before she asked me point blank: “Are you paying?”

I’m shocked into silence at a question so devoid of class, and I quietly ask once again why I put myself through this.

Two hours later, home and alone, the perfect rejoinder pops into my head:

“I don’t know.  Are we going to have sex?”

If it had occurred to me then, I would have said it.  Slowing down in my old age, I guess.

The phone interrupts the awkward silence that spent the night at my place. I don’t recognize the numbers on my caller ID, but I know exactly who it is.

She’s calling from China to wish me a happy birthday.

She steamrolls straight through the highlights of her trip (the architecture, the traffic, the people, the food) and then gets down to business: “Have you gotten rid of the guy yet?”

Funny, I thought I was firmly on the fence about him. She knows better. She knew from the first two words I wrote about him that it was going nowhere.

When the dust settles, I have twenty pages in front of me.

The cost of it was an entire Sunday, two pots of coffee, an ignored cell phone, and the death of a USB Keyboard that long ago had the ‘E’ worn off.

I spend the rest of the day in character development mode, drinking white wine and asking myself obscure questions like “Does he wear a hat?” and “Is he a morning person or a night person?”

Next thing I know I’m half in the bag because I forgot to have breakfast and lunch.

Hemingway, eat your heart out.

What’s in my head:

Why are d-bags like Kanye West so highly-acclaimed I wish he would lose his voice forever ah but then he’d still be able to blog in all caps how is it that I’m still hungry I’ve eaten so much food today that I shouldn’t even be alive right now I’m horny I don’t wanna go to work tomorrow I don’t know how much longer I can last with only one day off a week I miss my family God I just wanna make out with some beautiful stranger my head itches God can you hear me

Coldplay’s killing me slowly.

Radio, it’s commonly thought, is designed to entertain.

This is a lie.

In actuality, radio promotes and advertises; serving as “free publicity” for artists. The written word still holds some sway with prospective consumers, though, and Rolling Stone has been raving about “Viva La Vida” for the past six issues. Politically charged, creatively rendered, and ridiculously hyped? It sounded promising. I was eager to listen.

Now, however, the only thing I’m eager to do is snap a radio antennae. Enough. Enough of Death and All His Friends. Thanks to overplaying, I’d rather hear used car ads.

I often wonder, what music do my dogs prefer? Sometimes (almost always), I leave them my favorite: be it mellow rock or cool light jazz; sometimes I feel a bit country. But what about their preference? Do they secretly change the station as soon as the deadbolt snaps shut? Do they rush to the radio to change it back when I’m pulling into the driveway? Maybe that’s why they don’t come out to greet me anymore.

I think I’ll leave a talk show on next: NPR or Neil Boortz?

Or maybe I should save the energy and turn it off?

It’s that time again, when my introspection skyrockets from ‘maybe-I-am’ to ‘without-a-doubt’ levels of narcissism. This is all to say my birthday is around the corner. This year I’m late with my annual reflections. Recent events have me distracted. Usually these thoughts point out how uninspired I’ve become and culminate in a rousing week-long pep talk about next year being more exciting.

I’m not sure which pep talk I need now.

This last year hasn’t been disappointing, but it could have been bolder. I’m no longer warming the bench; next year I’d like to knock it out of the park.

If I went back in time, I’m pretty sure I could make Thomas Jefferson cry.

I’d start with the subjects of abortion, and automatic weapons, and same sex marriages.

Then I’d move on to the NSA and the Patriot Act. I’d tell him about a schism between the religious and the godless. I’d tell him about a president with the IQ of an alarm clock, and how the Electoral College sucks.

Then maybe I’d waterboard him for a while, screaming my head off about the phrase “cruel and unusual”, and gee don’t you think that’s a little too subjective now?