this is sort of a sequal to the story i wrote a while ago called Serial Killers.  except it's not.  and i'm trying to develop some characters to go with my dialogue  so bear with me.  i wrote this while listening to heartbreak warfare by john mayer.  i can't believe the guy at the tapout gym actually thought i should sign up for the 10 week fitness boot camp.  the goal is to loose weight.  he showed me pics of the before and after for lots of different peeps.  but where would i lose weight from???  i want to gain weight you f-er!  this guy did NOT get it.  i don't think guys get it in most cases.  please watch out for life.  do it now.

Let’s Go Fly A Kite

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: my peeps and Chewy

"Who's to say where the wind will take you

Who's to know what it is will break you

I don't know which way the wind will blow" ~ U2

P ran, his hair trailing behind him in the wind. He looked over his shoulder and tripped a little on a jutting root; he picked himself up and sprinted for the field. A bruise from the day before was tender on his shin but forward he went.

Everyone else followed, squinting into the sun and tasting the peanut butter on their lips from lunch. They looked out from underneath their eyebrows to the open space filled with air and bugs and pollen and wind. Past the tree with crispy winter leaves they ran. Over dusty dirt and trash and weeds into the world they flew.

P smelled like sweat and dirty socks, his clothes hung off his skinny frame with a flourish. Pumping his arms, he could feel his heart beat harder and faster and his breathe came quick. But his mind saw the plastic flitter in the sky, with a back drop of blue and white, specked with sun. He could feel the twine between his fingers and the spool un-winding farther and longer until the inevitable dive bomb that meant untangling the line from the pear trees ringing the field and digging burs out of socks and shoes.

The kids behind him were a flailing mass of brown motion; screaming and yelling things P couldn’t hear. P’s mind jutted out into conscious thought and the word Kite repeated itself over and over; he ran past the gopher skeleton without even seeing it, and rotting fruit on the ground was just a smell in the air.

Some days, P could just sit and drum his fingers on the bench, pick the dirt from under ragged nails, or bite the skin from a chapped lip. Other days the kids wouldn’t leave him alone until a game of make believe took them to invisible lands. One time all the imaginary friends fought a brutal and bloody battle from which they did not return. Today P would touch the air.

After it was over, the darkness sent them packing. The cold took them slowly back to where they had come from. A can ringing from a kick in the night and his toe aching from the impact, P trudged forward, nothing to show for the day and only a glimmer of thought for the next election.

ps.  sushi in california kicks ass but sushi in arizona has my peeps.

I wrote this a while back and just got around to editing it.  It is NOT a negative commentary on Henry James who I love.  It stems more from a conversation between Lynn and DaRa that we had after the Nutcracker at El Charro.

Book Club

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: all readers and writers

"And should you like him to write our story?" - Henry James
 
When So and So read The Turn of The Screw it was so boring and complicated that he eventually looked it up on line just so that he would understand the basic plot. 
 
“If I could re-write that story I would make the ghosts actually say something.  Who believes in ghosts who can’t talk?”  LaLa wondered.
 
“If I could be in the story I would be the nanny because everyone else is either retarded or dies at the end,” D said.
 
“I didn’t like the story,” So and So exclaimed.
 
“Henry James is supposed to be this amazing author and instead I read The Turn of The Screw as a rambling ghost story with too much non-information,” J flipped through the pages of the book.
 
“Somebody recommended it to me, one of these books you have to read before you die kind of things,” D reasoned.
 
“I think we should make a list of 100 things to do before we die,” LaLa suggested.
 
“I don’t regret reading it though; at least I can say I’ve read it.  What else are you going to do with a story like that?  Let it sit on the library shelf?”  J explained.

 “Well, I thought it was scary,” said D.
 
“It was scary, but it was also pointless, who cares if the kids could see the ghosts or not?  And who cares if the house keepers had an affair or not.  I think that book is supposed to be about random sex acts but it just doesn’t come through in the story since you couldn’t really write about stuff like that back then,” LaLa gestured with her hands as she spoke.
 
“I have too much A.D.D. to read a story like that,” Vee said.
 
“What are you talking about?  It is super short; took me a few hours to read.  You could read it, you just don’t want to,” J looked at Vee across the room.
 
“Maybe I don’t want to read it, you can’t force me.”
 
“Why are you in a book club then?  You should join a sofa sifting club.”
 
“Fuck off.”
 
“Next I think we should read some Shakespeare, or some Milton,” D interjected.
 
“Or maybe we should try writing a ghost story of our own,” So and So recommended.

“I don’t have anything inside me to write,” LaLa glanced around the room.
 
“Neither do I,” Vee stated.
 
“Well this is some book club!”  D stood up ready to go.
 
“Let’s combine all the choices for next time, either write a story, make a list of 100 things to do before you die, read something from Shakespeare or Milton or just sit on your sofa,” J proposed.

“Makes me want to join a real book club,” Vee whispered inwardly.
“Well, I’m outta here, thanx guys!” D opened the door.

“Me too.”

“Bye.”

And in the end, as Henry James would say, So and So and LaLa “were alone with the quiet day.”

The Refrigerator Memoirs

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: all closet zen people and kupie and wacker, kerm and cooner, j and d, stockdale, susilla, toy boy and his brother, t, e and e and anyone who has played with magnetic poetry

My brother has an old fridge in his garage. The garage is packed with discarded life items; the fridge is packed with a sampling of high end microbrews. I love to open the door, and peer into the cold interior, each time the selection is different. The beer chooses me.

The fridge in the cabin was so old it had a stainless steel handle that you pulled out to open and pushed in until it clicked to close. Its rounded edges gave it a sensuality only seen on women wearing skin tight clothing from the 70’s. The smell in that cabin was a cross between smoke and pine trees and the fridge clunked when the compressor kicked on so the quiet was never quite peaceful.

The first fridge that was given to me came without an interior light and I am lazy, so I never replaced it. Most of the time it was ok except when you wanted something from the back or you were trying to decide if a food item had mold growing on it. That fridge sort of worked but sort of didn’t. Beer was never quite cold enough and meat spoiled a little too quickly. I gave that fridge to some not so nice type of people who deserved it more than I did.

The fridge from my childhood was yellow but the front was covered with magnets, random papers decorated with drawings, pictures of relatives and take-out menu’s. My favorite memory of that fridge was finding a bowl full of white goopy stuff with no lid on it and dipping my finger in deep to taste it, except it wasn’t pudding, (gag), it was chicken fat. Nothing gets rid of that flavor in your mouth.

My fridge in college had word poetry on it. Friends would come over to hang around and have a beer and make wonderful poems out of strange English words deemed worthy enough to put on a small magnet. Poems like: ‘slather to your orange, this sound upon me’ and ‘delicate whisper like an elaborate symphony to his death’ and ‘weak moment think me’. None of them got published.

The latest fridge that owns me was a freebie from some friends. It came filled with piss and shit and mouse death. I didn’t find the nest until I had turned it on and the compressor had a chance to heat up and cook the mess until the smell filled my kitchen. And then I couldn’t quite identify the stench, but my nose finally picked up on the pee stink above the others and I unscrewed the back. Ten mice bodies lay desiccating on the pan of the fridge, snuggled among hair, poop and urine. As I pulled the corpses out, I found two small cat toy mice that had been nestled amongst the others. It turns out mice can show good will to their likeness. A bunch of man hours and a sixty dollar un-needed/un-returnable/over-priced electric part later this fridge freezes burritos and keeps beer super cold. My sweat and blood has replaced the dead and the poo and a new vinyl drain tube decorates what used to be home to ten mice and their two mannequin buddies.

And next? Who knows? It could be the fridge at school, that isn’t used by anyone but was left by a teacher that I have never met and is filled with five years of stuff sitting at 28 degrees Fahrenheit doing strange biological things. It might be the fridge of my future, perfect in every way or at least willing to accept me for who I am. It has been; in every house, in every shack, in some garages and even in my car, masquerading as a leaking ice chest. Refrigerators exist as art and in graveyards and in my heart.

One Inch Square

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: everyone living their lives the best they can

That one spot on my desk is warped from coffee cups and spilled food. The varnish is almost the shade of wood but more like the color of the inside of tree bark, where the soft pith starts. My finger nail leaves a dent where I picked off a piece of hardened Doritos. White specks are randomly distributed through the area; I peer closer to find a pattern. It looks like the splash when a diver does not execute a nine or ten (or how vomit would look when it hits the floor from a fall of four feet) and is sort of in the shape of a butterfly, one who is going to die soon. That section of desk smells like the inside of my nose, or the inside of my nose smells like my desk, maybe it has no smell. I can’t tell because when I lean over and inhale, nothing strikes my brain. I tasted it by licking my finger and wiping it on the desk and licking my finger again; my tongue touches dust, Cheetos and Earl Grey tea. That part of my work station needs to be washed, scrubbed, scraped, and re-painted and it is usually covered by books and pens and scraps of sticky notes and random papers. I uncovered it to get a better look at it. I wish I could peel it off and rub it all over my body but instead I wipe the inside of my wrist across it, the smooth flesh touches warped fake wood that is colder than me, colder than the room but warmer than the snow outside. If I listen closely I can hear the ocean. Shhhh.  Listen.

the hunda rally chronicles continue...we did rally again today which i must say took a lot of guts on my part after being booted out yesterday.  but i spent yesterday and this morning clicking and treating for heeling around a rally sign so i was pretty sure i could do about 20 seconds in the ring.  so i walked the first four signs, which included a SLOW sign as the first thing we had to do (sucks for the poor novice rally dogs to have to do a slow right off the bat).  hunda was a TOTAL spazz and the ring steward had to back away because he thinks he should go up and visit everyone.  then he tried to visit the judge but i got him back and started.  needless to say, there was no SLOW in hunda's today so we just heeled past the first sign and got to the normal sign which put us almost at the ring rope which was a left turn to a stop and down.  hunda and i got all the way to the stop and down which he is amazing at with a verbal cue only and i paused for 2 seconds and then ran for the exit thanking the judge on my way out who was standing with her mouth open.  hunda and i ran for the tree where the treats were stashed and bailed for the car.  the comments i got for the rest of the day were great:  "you should teach him to watch you when you heel" (really??? it's a vallhund, it took me 2 years just to get eye contact during a stationary sit), and "does that dog do agility? he sure is a spazz" (i don't think hunda's spazzyness is due to doing agility), and "he sure is cute" (of course he is!!!!).  i am proud that we were able to function together in the ring and have a rally show n go planned in two weeks to practice more.

pickle held his sit stay during group today in open!!!!  woot!!!!  he had already failed for not jumping the high jump after the retrieve so pressure was off.

a story i wrote a while ago:

Clear

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: Goop (who used to live at Magic Carpet Golf) R.I.P.

I saw a sky bigger than anything I could fit into. And green hills rounded and mounding and a black rock or two, darker than what’s inside and rivers twisting through steep canyons. The backing was peeled of the mirror and I could see straight through myself into nothing. I wasn’t even sure I was alive. But the space between the ground and the clouds was painfully visible. Foxtails tickled my ears, I looked so hard it hurt and I held on too tight, my hand wrapped around the air, knuckles dug deep.

Goop

Hunda made a friend at the AKC trial.  Here is a picture of Hunda and Blaze.

Killing Bees at 5 MPH

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: the weird lady with no electricity who lives in Kerm’s complex

“She said I can be a frog

I can be a bat

I can be a bear

Or I can be a cat”

From ‘I Can Be a Frog’ by The Flaming Lips

“Someone should have called adult protective services,” Y said.

“Or the cops.”

The newspaper headline had been vague but couldn’t hide the fact that a 60 year old woman had died alone in a condo with no working utilities.

“When I was a kid something like this wouldn’t have happened.  I remember borrowing a cup of sugar from the neighbors, and repaying it with half a dozen cookies,” Y said to H.

“Yeah, and remember May Day?  I loved leaving gifts of flowers and ringing the doorbell and running.  We had escape routes all over the neighborhood.”

“I feel bad for that lady, she must have been cold and alone.  And crazy,” Y moved to pluck a leaf from the bamboo plant.

“I was stuck in an elevator with a lady like that,” their neighbor said.

“When I try to imagine what it was like for her all I can see is the mesquite tree in the corner of the yard that I used to climb.  When I lay in the crook of the trunk I could see through the branches to the sky and leaves fell into my hair.  Clouds puffed past until the back of my neck hurt from bark that poked through my shirt.”  Y watched H break split ends from her hair.

The neighbor moved to join a conversation on the other side of the club house where a couple sat crunching peanuts.

“We were hoping someone else would deal with it,” he said.

“The inside of me felt one way but the outside of me did something completely different,” she said.

“Well I had tea with her once.  The china was a swirly Wedgewood pattern and I felt bad because my lipstick smudged the cup,” the neighbor tried to make eye contact but the couple was focused on the peanut shells.

“Did you hear about the swarm of bees?” she said.

“I did, the swarm was buzzing in the alley.  Bees tumbled from the air to the ground and bounced back up.  I saw Y drive over them in her car,” he said.

“Can I drive over them?”  the neighbor asked.

“Sure, just make sure you go the speed limit,” he said.

I could have sworn I had posted this but looked and couldn't find it.  Don't write stuff that you don't want to come true.  Check it out, the 'old blue van' story exists in a green van at a state park in washington.  No lie!  This story was inspired by both my families 'old blue' suburban that went EVERYWHERE and did EVERYTHING and by an old van that was parked at the 138/I-15 interchange for a year...

Here is a pic of the 'green van man/banjo guy' to prove it!

The old man chose his new life carefully.  He knew it would be his last; the doctor had said six months to a year, but treatment might prolong it.  

“Prolong what?” the old man had asked.

“Your life,” the doctor said.

“Oh, you mean the pain,” the old man clarified.

The old man liquefied his assets, paid bills, and organized his accounts.  No family meant no will and no strings.  He tried to remember his brother and got as far as his sticky black hair before he had to sit down with a headache.  The seat back was straight, he leaned into it and rested his elbows on the table in front of him.  He planned for the months to come.

The van was an old blue Chevy; with rust for wheel wells and two cracks running horizontal the length of the windshield.  The old man walked around the van and kicked the tires; the rubber was bald and gray.  He stood there for a moment, scratching his head while the salesman starred off into space.

“I’ll take this one,” the old man said.

“Why don’t you look around?” the salesman suggested, “We have a lot of models to choose from here on the lot.  This old blue here isn’t going to last but six months to a year.”  He patted it affectionately.

The old man smiled, “Perfect,” he said.  

Together they walked back to sign the papers, the salesman had to adjust his stride to match the old man’s.  The salesman held open the door while the old man shuffled to the counter.  Pen in hand, the salesman went through the particulars while the old man nodded.  Then he gave the pen to the old man, who wrapped his bony hand around it.  Ink leaked onto his thumb and left a smudge where he signed his name.  The old man exchanged the pen for the keys, and a shake of hands sealed the deal.  The salesman watched the old man walk out of the lobby.  He had to squint in the glare of the sun but could see a smile on the old man’s face as he hobbled away to his new van.

That night around the dinner table the salesman turned to his wife of thirty years and said, “I sold the blue van today.”

His wife stopped eating and looked out of the window into the dark night.  “Wow,” she said, “I have so many memories of that van.”

“I know,” the salesman said and put his hand on hers.  He squeezed and felt the warmth of her skin.  He glanced at her face and saw a tear slide down her cheek.  “Good old blue,” she said.

The old man took to ownership of the blue van like static to a dryer sheet.  Everyday he set himself a new task; he had thirty days before the new owner of the townhouse showed up.  He cleaned the van, on the inside only; there was years of accumulated dirt and goo to remove.  The old man left the outside of the van alone, he didn’t want to risk flaking off any of the oxidized paint.  He put new sheets on the mattress in the back of the van and piled it high with thick, soft blankets.  It was as if he were building a nest and the more pieces of material he could add the better.  A few pillows topped it off; a cocoon of comfort.  

The old man packed two milk crates full of oatmeal, sardines, pasta, crackers and other dry goods.  The milk crates fit perfectly under the bed, as if the bed had been built with that purpose in mind.  He stowed a flashlight in the glove compartment and a map under the visor.  The first aid kit fit in the console, he made sure it was full of band aids and Neosporin.  The last thing the old man did was to stash pain pills near the bed.  The bad days were getting worse and he did not want to deal with the hurt.

And that was it.  He drove off from his home of twenty years and did not look back.  The day he left was cloudy and overcast and made the desert look soft.  He heard noises in the engine compartment as he drove and something clunked when he hit potholes on the road.

The news reporter stood in the shade of the porch, he was interviewing a woman who commuted to work down in the valley.  “I saw that blue van.  It was parked at the end of the road by exit 142.  You could see it as you drove from the highway onto the freeway.  Anyone could see it.  It was in plain view,” she said.

“Did you ever wonder why it was there?” the news reporter asked.  His hair blew in the wind as he scribbled information on a memo pad.

“I guess so.  Sort of.  But I was one my way to work and I was always late.  Then the rush hour blues would kick in and I would forget about it.  Plus I couldn’t see it on the way home; only on my way to work, by the time I had been to meetings and luncheons I could barley remember where I was off to next, let alone think about some blue van parked in the middle of nowhere.”

The news reporter encountered apathy on many assignments and this one was no different.  As he drove to the next interview he picked at his cuticles.  They bled and he had to wipe his fingers inside his coat pocket.  The thought of an old man, dying a painful death, holed up inside a dilapidated van made him unsure of his own humanity.  The old man had lived 80 plus years, known people, had family, possibly had pets and then packed up and come to the desert to die.  As far as the authorities could tell, he had no living relatives and since he had left enough money to take care of the van and his remains, it was a closed case.

“Yeah, the blue van, parked out there in the desert.  I heard about that.  Some old guy died in there, he was dead for a week before anyone thought to check.  Thank god it was winter.  Wonder what his story is?”

“Were you ever worried that your store was in danger, that you might be robbed by the owner of the blue van?”  The reporter eyed his scabby fingernails as he waited for the store clerk to answer.

“Nah, we get robbed once in a while but it is usually yahoo kids on their way to Vegas.  They drive nice cars and are in and out so fast you don’t know what hit you.  As soon as that guy turned off the motor to that van we knew we were safe.  Never saw him though.  He didn’t come in to buy anything.  Although I think he used the hose out back to get water.”

By that time it was old news.  The paper ran the story, not much was disclosed.  The van had been towed and impounded and the body taken to the morgue.  Local residents labeled the spot, “the blue van location” and stayed clear of it.  Some of the carpools that passed the area merging onto the freeway discussed it lightly during their drive to work.  

“What happened to that van?”

“I heard some guy died in it.  He was really old.  I read about it in the paper but they didn’t explain many details.”

“Why would you choose to die in a rusting old van?”

“I don’t know but the article said that he had been camped their three months or so.  Aren’t the police or the welfare authorities supposed to check on things like that?”

One lady that drove by the spot two times a day taking her kids to school and back silently chided herself for not stopping to see who was living in the van, or at least calling the fire department and having them stop.  She felt a slice of guilt every time she drove by the “blue van location” for the rest of her life.

The wife of the salesman kissed him as he left for work.  He looked into her eyes, “I sometimes wonder what happened to that old man that bought old blue.”

The Fault
By: ffluffy
Dedicated to: Dad

When I stand at the road cut and stare at the fault I see more than just the wavy layers of sediment, the broken lines that were laid down flat but now twist back upon themselves, turn sharp and go nowhere, end before they start.  I can see back into my child hood, mineral collecting trips, fossil hunting expeditions, roadside geology books, pulling over and wandering around in the road to ‘get a better look’.  Growing up in the southwest made observing rocks easy.  There are no soil horizons because there is no soil; it never rains enough to break down the feldspar in the granite Santa Catalina Mountains into clay.  There are no trees growing on the bare slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains to block the synclines and anticlines from view.  The sonorant desert is naked in its geology, spread eagle for the world to see.

The San Andreas Fault exposes itself many times on its way north from LA County.  The destruction it has caused over the years is exhibited in the fault scarps that wind their way along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains.  There are valleys with such massive failure that rocks stick straight up into the sky next to rocks that hang themselves parallel with the ground.  Devils Punch Bowl is one place that you can drive to and stare down at a massive syncline of sedimentary and metamorphic rock.  Such extreme failure has occurred at this point of the fault that the elevation difference between the top and the bottom of the syncline is plus one thousand feet.  Then if you hike about three miles from the Devil’s Punch Bowl you come to the Devils Chair.  Another dissection of the fault made public.  Rocks going every which way, jumbled and tumbled and strewn about, ‘what happened here’?  If it was a jigsaw puzzle, you would be hard pressed to find a corner piece just to get started.

On the tour of the San Andreas Fault, a swamp turned grass land shows how just a little up lift is enough elevation change to kill the moss and lichens and make the liverworts give way to scrub oak and grass.  And that change occurred slowly, unobservable on a daily basis, except to the liverworts.

I can’t wait for the catastrophic movement.  Like the scarps we saw with the University of Arizona Geology Club at Loma Prieta: ten feet of vertical change in less than six horizontal inches.  It was so tall that the biggest guy on our field trip couldn’t reach the top.  What would happen if the earth moved like that with a person standing in the vicinity?  The immediate violence of it would mess with your inner child and your give you vertigo all at the same time. 

Psycho analyzing the Earth puts everything into perspective; life is short, geologic time is not.  This can be summarized with my brother’s favorite saying, “watch out for life;” more than likely we will all be watching the Earth.  I will never be able to drive past a road cut without counting the drill holes used to blast it into existence, and every mineral or fossil find I mentally dedicate to my dad who drove old station wagons down crazy four wheel drive roads just so that my brother and I could pick up trilobite fossils from the Cambrian period.

note to self: don't forget to identify the problem!

Scared of the Dark Obsessive Compulsive Style aka A Ghost Story

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: Rubicante and the xmas tree in the window of my fav mexican food place...in March

I looked under the bed and in the closet, behind the door, under the bed and under the bed again.  I could feel my heart race and my breath came quick and bumpy out of my throat.  I looked under the bed again and then jumped into it and closed my eyes.  If I kept them shut I wouldn’t see anything.  I squeezed but gave in to the shadows and had to take a peak.  I couldn’t even hear my own inhale, only my mind, so I looked under the bed again and in the closet.  I left the closet door open, not sure if that would be better then leaving it shut.  Maybe whatever it was would run in the closet and I could ram the door behind it.  I looked behind the door again and then dove under the covers.  Still, just me and my heart, but was that movement?  Or dust bunnies dancing in the moonbeams?  Did I leave that hat hanging on the back of the chair or is that the head of a ghost?  Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe deep. Tomorrow I need to clean under the bed, is that a sock, or a monsters hand reaching for me?  I curse the day I read Where the Wild Things Are.

I wrote this a while ago for Kerm but I didn't post it cuz I wanted it to be a surprise.  The question is...how do you feel when you go to an interview?  I think this flash sums it up...

The Interview

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: Kerm 

“What did you say the position I am interviewing for entails?”

“It is a mix between Wal-Mart greeter and Wienerschnitzel drive thru cashier.”

I turned my head and saw the alligator bark on a palm tree outside the office window.  My tongue felt the cracks and tasted the earthy wood.

“We need to know what your last three jobs were.”

That morning the sun rise behind the mountain lit up the sky a pink blue.  But not pink like the color pink, more like pink how skin feels, soft and warm.  It made the mountain stand out as a dark mound with a glowing halo; lumpy like a pile of laundry.

“And what kind of education do you have post college?”

I wanted to ask, “Do you wipe front to back or back to front?”

If a Wal-Mart greeter got a job at a Wienerschnitzel would they forget and welcome the Wienerschnitzel customer to Wal-Mart?  Could you trust a Wal-Mart greeter turned drive thru operator?  ‘Have a nice day, I mean drive thru.’

“And why did you leave your last job?”

The sand at the beach coated my body; it was sharp and poked tiny pricks in my skin under my bathing suit.  It sparkled in the sun and the more I rolled around the more it felt real. 

“I feel real.”

“Do you have any questions for us?”

I shrugged, hoping I would feel sand between my shoulder blades.  The Wal-Mart greeter in me resisted conforming to the shape of a hot dog, even if it was pink. 

“What kind of palm tree is that?”