Trying again

I guess I'm inspired by my friend Carrie's blog. And by a search for what I should be doing with my life right now. I've decided that I need to write more, and why not do that on my little piece of real estate in the blogiverse?

This morning as I knelt in prayer and thought about what I have to be grateful for, the overwhelming answer was "love." I have many friends who love me, all over the world, really, and some close to home. I have my mother who's always loved me, and my father, who, though on the other side of the veil, I know still continues to love and support me. There are so many, and there is so much love. I may not have the element of romantic love in my life right now, but I do not feel empty. I truly do have much to live for and to be grateful for.

On to the next thing. I've been playing with the idea of allotting a certain amount of time each day to writing. Recently I reviewed the little Flash Fiction stories on this blog, and I thought: You know what, Kris? You can write. They may be silly, they may be bits of fluff, but with over a year elapsed since I wrote them, I think I have it in me to write some stories.

The problem is, ideas. I'm not one of those people with plots running around in my head, just waiting to spill over into stories told to others. I am in awe of those with that gift. However, I learned that with a little prompting, I have a fertile imagination that can produce some readable stuff. So I think I may challenge myself to give myself some story prompts and work with them. Photos, situations, overheard comments -- anything like that can be starting ground for a story. If I had money I'd take a class, but at the moment I don't, so I'll have to challenge myself.

So, that's one way I could go. I also need to start doing more with my self-taught InDesign and web design training.

All right, I'm glad I did this even though it sounds like so many of my journal entries; lots of potential and ideas that don't get follow-through. Right now I'm going to tackle some work in my basement office/spare bedroom, which looks like a tornado hit it and really needs some work. I've been avoiding my work in large part because I can't handle this space right now.

Handywoman

Yesterday I worked until a corner of our unfinished basement was safe for humans and human belongings (the rest of the basement is still a habitation for spiders and their prey, lots of dust, and cobwebs). I then set out to assemble this (photo to come)-- my Gorm shelving unit from Ikea. So, I know, no great feat, but I'm no handywoman so I'm proud of myself for every remotely handy type activity I complete. Ta-da!

I have a blog, so I guess I might as well blog in it.

I started this blog up for the express purpose of participating in a Flash Fiction group which seems to have gone on a lengthy hiatus. But "my blog" is taking up space on my bookmarks toolbar in Firefox, so I figured I might as well use the thing.

And besides, I need another excuse not to work.

What I call work: I'm a freelance writer/editor. I don't do the kind of stuff most people would think of when they hear those terms. I haven't ever written articles for magazines or that sort of thing. I do take the odd editing job here and there, but my bread and butter for the past couple of years have been family histories. My good friend Andrea is a genealogist, and back in the day when I actually had an office job she recruited me to help get a book ready for publication. Life changed, and I've been doing that kind of work ever since.

I think that's all I'm going to say right now. Hello, world!

FFF #9: Vera's Garden

This challenge was issued over a month ago, but I needed a writing jump start, so decided to try it on the "better late than never" principle. Anyway the prompt includes a flower, a sentient tomato, and a goblin. So here goes:

Vera's Garden

The morning glory vine was, without doubt, viable. It twined around the trellis it was meant to twine around, and shot out tendrils into the air in search of new supports. It had wandered around the railing of the deck and was constantly trying to join the caged tomato plant that sat beside it on the deck. But Vera vigilantly redirected the vines to other posts, or, sometimes, just cut them back. She loved morning glory flowers—especially this variety, Heavenly Blue. But it was already mid-September, and the vine, full of lush green leaves, had yet to produce a single flower bud that she could see. Vera wondered if it was withholding blooms in stubborn retaliation for her efforts at keeping its wanderings in check.

“This may be Georgia, but it’s not eternal summer here, you know,” Vera told the plant. “Before long there’ll be a freeze, and you’ll die. You’re an annual in this zone. If you would just produce some flowers now you might still have a chance to have some seeds ripen. Then I could collect them and plant them next year, and your life would continue that way.”

“What, are you trying to scare the poor thing?” asked an indignant voice. Vera looked around. Just her and the potted plants there on her deck. Not even one of the usual squirrels.

“Well, I guess that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” she replied (after looking around very carefully to make sure she wasn’t in earshot of any neighbors).

“Well, I guess you’re not very nice then, are you?” retorted the tomato—the only possible source of the voice that she could identify. And a sentient tomato plant wasn’t that much of a stretch, to her way of thinking—she had always known that plants were alive in a more literal sense than the scientists admitted.

Vera was taken aback by the words. After a slight, shocked pause she defended herself: “Hey! I mean, I’ve watered and fertilized you all summer. Not to mention that that vine would choke you if I let it. Who are you to say that I’m not very nice?” Vera was becoming rather indignant herself. The loving care she lavished on her plants was a point of pride.

A wheezy, high-pitched giggle came from within the plant. Then, “Ha! Just bustin’ chops. No need to get all huffy on me. And tomatoes don’t talk, silly lady.” More giggles as the tomato plant started rustling, and out came a small leathery, wrinkled, manlike, naked little creature.

“Oh . . . oh . . . ewww. . . what are you?” sputtered Vera. “A goblin?”

“Well, well, not a goblin, we don’t like that word, and you’re not so pretty yourself, is she?” asked the creature, looking back inside the plant. Another face peered out of the leaves at Vera and grimaced, then grinned wildly and laughed. “Nope, she ugly.” They both giggled and snorted and stomped the ground. “But we like you,” the second creature—a female—told Vera. “We here to help you with this garden.”

With that, they both jumped up, and before Vera could even register what was happening, began pulling leaves off the morning glory vine, fast and furiously. “Hey!” she yelled, “Stop that right now!” She moved to pull the male away from the plant, and he suddenly bared pointed teeth at her in a rage, causing her heart to drop into her stomach as she backed immediately away. His rage turned to back to laughter in an instant, and he was giggling once more, till his companion shushed him. She addressed Vera again: “Lady, you calm down. We helping you, you’ll see. This plant don’t care if you make threats. We scare it the way it understand.” Vera no longer had the courage to do more than watch as they resumed their plucking until they’d defoliated about a third of the vine. Then they both looked at her and smiled and yelled, “Bye lady!” with a wave. Just before they jumped over the deck rails and scampered across her lawn and into the woods behind her home, the male said, “You can call us leprechauns or menehune if you want.” “Or even brownies or gnomes,” added his companion, “but not goblins.” Followed by more giggles, of course. She could no longer see nor hear them once they dove into the undergrowth. “But leprechauns wear clothes,” she protested weakly, in a whisper. “And we’re in Georgia.”

Vera just retreated into her house in shock after a few moments, sure that of course she must have imagined what could not have been possible. But in a few days she saw tiny flower buds all over the morning glory vine, which still had enough leaves to look fairly lush even after its plucking. A week or so after that, the first flower opened and bloomed—large, perfect, glowing deep blue. And then the following week, rich waves of blue flowers covered the plant and tumbled down the deck just as she’d meant them to when she’d planted the seeds last spring.

FFF #4: A Fate Postponed

Here's my latest Flash Fiction Friday entry. The prompt:
Write anything under 1000 words that includes the following sentence:
The elephant found me.
For extra points, include the phrase
stinky smelly stenchuous odoriferous elephant dung

So here goes:

A Fate Postponed

I’d just fallen off a cliff—a truly death-defying fall. As a matter of fact, all my companions assumed that I hadn’t survived and went on their way. And I suppose I wouldn’t have lived much longer, but as fate would have it, the elephant found me.

I was lying there, feverishly dreaming of the gentle kisses of my One True Love, when I was awakened instead by the insistent nudges of the aforementioned pachyderm’s trunk. Or was it the stinky smelly stenchuous odoriferous elephant dung that brought me to consciousness? Either way, the dream was decidedly preferable to my waking sensations.

Now, in the book none of this actually happened; this whole plotline is a rather demented aberration from the familiar story. And in the movie, well, it was a horse and not an elephant that woke me up, but as we’re already fabricating, I might as well go for it.

So as I was being transported on the elephant’s back, I was able to formulate some plans for warfare against oliphaunt-riding Southrons. And I guess you know the rest: Helm’s Deep, the Paths of the Dead, serious battles against overwhelming odds and, ultimately, good triumphs over evil and the Age of Men is ushered in, but not without a price.

The elephant gave me only a temporary respite to play my part (although, if I do say so myself, a fairly glorious one) in the affairs of this world. And now it is time for me to succumb to my postponed fate, while my One True Love will remain awhile to contemplate the loss and loneliness of an Age that has waned and a choice made many years past.

Five Years Ago Today

Five Years Ago Today

(Note: I know that my memories pale in comparison to anyone who actually suffered real losses, and I don’t mean to diminish in any way their stories. This is just about how 9/11 affected me.)

Five years ago today I arrived at my job at National Geographic in Washington, DC. The morning was bright, sunny, and clear, an absolutely idyllic day. I was a few minutes late to work, and oblivious of the events of the morning. I walked across the hall to the office of an editorial assistant and was just chatting in a friendly manner when she said, “have you heard?” and I said, “heard what?” She told me about the plane hitting the first tower in New York and directed me to the TV down the hall, where I watched the coverage, hypnotized, along with a number of other employees. We soon learned that a second plane had impacted the other tower, and as we remained glued to the horrifying coverage, the reporters began talking about something happening in Washington, although they didn’t know what. They just said that there was smoke visible, that apparently there was a fire somewhere and initially they thought it was in the area of the Old Executive Office Building downtown. I don’t remember how long it took them to learn that the Pentagon had been hit and report that.

I do remember, vaguely, the panic and confusion that set in when we learned that the attacks were so close to home. I called my parents, who were retired and hadn’t yet heard anything about it, and told them that I was fine but that apparently there had been three terrorist attacks and they needed to turn on the TV. I believe it was around 10:30 when we were given the word that we should all go home.

What a nightmare—the whole federal government and most of the rest of the DC workforce leaving the city in a mass exodus, never knowing what was going to hit us next. Most of the coverage was about New York City, and understandably so, since there was so much loss of life there. But we were quite affected in DC as well. I called a friend of mine who worked at the World Bank and lived at Pentagon City, just across the Interstate from the Pentagon. I knew she took the metro to work, and since the Pentagon was the Metro stop just before hers, I talked her into coming home with me because I didn’t think there was any way she could get home—roads around the Pentagon were blocked off.

It took me forever to get to her office; for that matter, it took forever to get out of the parking garage. My rush-hour commute was normally around 50 minutes, but that day it took me close to 3 hours to get back to my northern Virginia home. We were listening to the radio the whole time; I believe I was in shock and not really registering any of it. I used to drive past the Pentagon every morning on my way to work; if I’d have been a little over half an hour later I would have seen the plane hit.

By the time we were fairly close to my townhouse, my friend asked me to turn off the radio. I was a little annoyed at first, because I wanted to know what was happening. But I finally realized how affected she was; she was Portuguese by birth, raised in Mozambique when it was still a Portuguese possession, and she had lived through the revolution there, so this was bringing back all her memories of civil war. I had to pull over a few blocks from home so she could get out of the car and vomit.

When I arrived home one of my roommates came running to the door hugging me and said, “Oh there you are, you’re safe, you’re safe!” Like I said, I think I was in shock and my reaction (internally) was “of course I’m safe, I don’t work at the Pentagon, what are you hysterical about?” Although I am an emotional person, I just don’t react like that in times of stress. Anyway, like the rest of America, I remained glued to the TV for most of the remainder of that day. Sometime in the early evening we learned that I-395 had been opened up to traffic again, so I drove my friend back home. She lived in a high-rise apartment building, so we went up to the roof and watched the flames and thick black smoke pour out of the Pentagon.

The next day I returned to work, where I learned that two National Geographic employees, Ann Judge and Joe Ferguson, had been on Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, along with a group of teachers and students they were accompanying on a field trip, of sorts. I didn’t know Ann or Joe, but many of my friends and colleagues did; one of my best friends worked in their division (Geography Education Outreach). We were all in shock. Not much work got done the remainder of that week.

The following week there was a memorial service held by NGS for Ann and Joe in a hotel across the street, because our spacious auditorium was not going to hold the number of people who wanted to attend. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate for me to attend, since I didn’t know them personally, but it soon became apparent that that didn’t matter. That memorial had such an impact on me; it was beautiful, with an audiovisual presentation made with all the talent that NG has to offer, along with all the love that friends and colleagues had for them. I really felt that I’d gotten to know two remarkable people. But one of the things that affected me most deeply was that over and over again the tributes mentioned how much they loved their work, their passion for what they were doing. And I couldn’t help but think, “No one could really say that about me if this were my memorial.” And it was true. I had a job in a remarkable organization, and I really loved the people I worked with, but I didn’t love my job. I didn’t love the 9-5, and I really hated the commute. And the whole thing made me do some soul-searching.

Well, the upshot was that by the end of that year there were layoffs and I went to my supervisor and told him that if our department got hit, I’d volunteer. I knew the severance package would be good, and I could use it for another dream I had (and to pay off some debts). I ended up going to Africa the following summer; originally the plan was to teach English at a university in Mozambique, but that fell through. Instead of working there, I spent two months as a volunteer with a humanitarian organization, where I made lifelong friends and left a piece of my heart. I'll go back one day, and still work on their newsletter. I returned home, and after a series of other experiences (long-term subbing and almost going back to school for a teaching certificate), I ended up in Georgia, living w/ my parents and doing freelance work from a basement office.

A couple of years ago I went to Ground Zero in New York and the church that the firefighters had used as a sort of rest station, and last night I watched just a few minutes of a program on the firefighters on 9/11, but when they got to the part where you could hear the bodies dropping, I just couldn’t watch any more. For the most part, I haven’t watched a whole lot about it ever since that very first day, even when everyone else was still glued to the TV and radio. It happened, it was horrible, but my own processing didn’t include me wanting to understand every detail. I think I might be getting closer to wanting to go back and revisit some of it now that five years have passed. I know it didn’t happen to me; but really, it did happen to all of us.

May the families of the victims find peace.

FFF #3: Ordeal

This is a story for Flash Fiction Friday. Here are the rules: "Your assignment, should you chose to accept it, will be to write the very worst short story, between 750 and 1000 words, you can. Must contain at least three of the following words: putrefy, jewellery, encephalogram, aardvark, banana, and zombie. Extra points for using all of them. Cliches are nearly required, as are excessive use of adverbs, sentence fragments, run on sentences... Extra points if you include the opening phrase 'It was a dark and stormy night...'"

So here it is:

It was a dark and stormy night when my beloved received his encephalogram, which, according to freedictionary.com, is “an X ray of the brain made by replacing spinal fluid with a gas (usually oxygen) to improve contrast.” The winds howled through the alleys around the hospital, nearly drowning out the pounding of my heart, pounding, pounding like the throbbing of our loins just before we locked together in the throes of lusty passion, but this time the pounding was the beat of fear, fear for my still and silent Aloysius who lay pronely upon the hospital bed, incapable for the moment of passion (or even, really, the most basic bodily functions).

“Oh Aloysius, my inert and suffering love,” I cried, “You must not depart from me now!” as the nurses escorted me once again to the waiting room, this time threatening to physically restrain me there should I attempt to enter the lab again. “Putrefy in hell, you unfeeling harpy!” I shrieked at the last one’s back as she departed. “Have you no feelings? Have you never hovered worriedly over the unconscious form of your beloved, in hopes that calling out his name tenderly over and over would evoke a response in the deepest recesses of his heart and mind?” I emoted.

I exhorted myself to gather my emotions and comport myself as a lady of proper breeding, dabbing my eyes daintily with a hankie, reflecting pensively upon the events of that day, which had dawned serenely, never promising to yield the perilous ordeal that followed. The sun had streamed liquidly into the room as the birds chirped merrily outside as if in celebration of the wonders of love. But as I stretched and yawned and reached my hand out to rest it languidly upon the beefy physique of my man, whom I expected to be spent and still sleeping after a night of most vigorous activity, I was puzzled to discover that such physique was not present in the bed, nor in the room, nor was it in the bathroom or anywhere else in the house.

“Oh Aloysius, my dear, burly specimen of manhood, where have you gotten yourself to on this most exquisite morning?” I queried throatily, bereft and puzzled by his absence. His virile response thundered from the front yard: “I’m off to do some aardvark hunting, my love.” Far from spent, he appeared to be most invigorated—he then burst through the front door and in three quick, powerful strides arrived at my side and clasped my tiny form to his massive chest in a breath-expelling embrace, his sinews rippling and his lips seeking mine possessively like a writer seeking a bad metaphor. “But I eagerly await your greeting upon my return,” he breathed huskily as he pulled away from the kiss, his dark eyes burning like embers from the flames of last night’s passion, threatening to reignite into fresh blazes at the slightest caress of the summer breeze. As he set me back down upon my feet I felt a tug and a resistance from the pendant around my neck, and he gently requested, “Woman, kindly assist me in untangling your jewellery from my gun holster.” We successfully negotiated this minor disentanglement, ignorant of the coming catastrophe, and all too soon he was on his way, and oh how I wish we had remained entangled, never presenting me with the most awful of dilemmas!

As I tenderly watched his departure, preparing my mind for a lonely day awaiting his return, the succeeding events took a freakish turn away from the blissful and idyllic and into the realm of the horrific. As he stepped into the yard and away from the bungalow, he jauntily reached up and grabbed at a fruit in a cluster on the banana tree, which, although ripe, did not yield itself readily. I later returned and burned that tree—oh, if only it had not resisted! A battle of sorts ensued, resulting ultimately in the banana releasing itself into his hand and the lowered branch snapping back up and smiting him viciously upon the crown. My Aloysius dropped with a seemingly lifeless thud to the ground. I rushed to him, detecting a pulse and shallow, labored breathing. Our cottage was remote, hours from any medical care, and I was forced to drag him to the jeep, fueled and strengthened by adrenaline and my desperate desire to restore my love to virile manhood.

That effort alone took over an hour, and I will not describe the obstacles to my journey once I began the long drive to the nearest hospital. Ominous storm clouds were gathering and night was falling as I finally delivered him to the emergency room, and the storm finally broke, just like my grieving, fearful heart, leading to the previously described outbursts for which perhaps I may be forgiven.

When the doctor came out and broke the news to me: “I’m sorry ma’am, your, ummm, husband? has been like this for too long. We can keep him alive, but we will never be able to help him. He will be no more than a zombie to you, I fear,” I was by then past hysteria, I wept silently, a single attractive tear streaming down my cheek, as I solemnly pledged to remain by Aloysius’s side and care for him for the rest of his days. Dr. Hammond was most solicitous throughout this ordeal, and indeed has remained so in the following weeks. I do believe that he has found my dedication and vulnerability to be quite appealing. And I must confess that his reassuring presence has been most comforting, which has perhaps led me to dwell on the thought that his profile is indeed most handsome, and to ponder the possibilities of his prowess outside the realm of the medical . . .

And so to my dilemma! Naught but a plug stands between me and newfound happiness. Oh Aloysius, you wouldn’t mind, would you?

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