Master

Illusion

2011-04-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

I never had control over my world...all was an illusion. If I let the door open completely to my African culture, if the door were left ajar, I wouldn't be able to function in the Western world I am sure of it. I certainly wouldn't get to work on time. Something inside of me doesn't believe that I would be less effective if I got to work at 7 instead of 6:45. That my ability to think critically would be forever tragically altered if I weren't always at a trot instead of a saunter. I look better when I saunter. I am grateful for what I've gained, the balance I have achieved, but at times the balance escapes. I express the magical realism that is my otherness in my writing, personal relationships and family. Language, people, life's mysteries and rhythms are what haunts my soul. Something about facing my three greatest fears: loss of close friends, health and husband allowed me to ride on Hermes back while he soared between the gods and men, allowing me the view of the vast landscape below.It is true that many live a bit of a schizophrenic life of sorts, however middle-age reawakens. A comfortable, minimalist life style appeals to me, I have acquired more material items that I ever dreamed. The extra room to live and expand opens my personal conscious psychic space, causing the world to be the earthly festival I always knew possible.

Japan

2011-03-14T23:18:00.000-07:00

The word devastation is bandied around with little regard for its real meaning. Whether it's related to a bounced check as in, "Ooohhh, I told her not to cash that until Friday!" or, "I thought I could make it to the gas station, I can't believe I had to call Triple A to take me three blocks!" At the time, those situations truly seem devastating. But after watching Diane Sawyer on the Evening News in her neat fitting, all-weather jacket and rumpled blond hair, touch the round-faced children of Japan like Mother Teresa or Princess Diana would were they still alive, left me in a whirlwind. Taking me to a dimension string theorists have yet to discover. I was not prepared. My insides continue to scream, "What Happened?"

A record breaking earthquake which touched off a tsunami, which led to nuclear reactors melting down, leading to the evacuation of towns, causing other towns to wash away. Now the people. Alerted not to come outside, others in lines for food, their friends and neighbors in line for gas (just in case they were told to evacuate, difficult to accomplish without gas). People in yellow protective suits, others holding up worn pictures of the missing, some wearing white face masks. Rescue workers from New Zealand helping out when they were on the receiving end of relief less than a month ago.

The biggest devastation for most of us will be the realization that we are indeed one big community after all. The word world is the culprit. It makes us believe that this is all very big, and what happens over there can not possibly touch us over here. However, those age old tricky substances water and air connect us. Here in L.A., e-mails were flying, everyone worried that the wind from over there may blow over here, across that wide expanse of water, the Pacific, and the nuclear fall out would reach our shores. If not now with this disaster, can we doubt that there will be another one soon? They are coming faster than we change our sheets. Have we already forgotten about the crude oil pumped into the sea month after month last year? Why are our memories so short? Does it make it easier to focus on that bounced check and the ding-ding of the low fuel reminder? Here's a tip, Mother Earth, Gaia, may be getting a wee-bit exhausted with our hubris. Like any other tired overworked mother, she may just choose to put her slightly swollen feet up on the ottoman, shove a pair of earplugs in and go to sleep for awhile, letting the chips fall where they may. I can't say that I blame her. Sweet dreams.

Inner Beloved

2011-03-03T23:33:00.000-08:00

My dearest,

I do so love the name Inner Beloved, I hope that this name is alright with you. I know that you are with me, I feel your pirouettes, I sense the toss of your head and am nourished by the cascade of your hair. Every now and then I catch a glimpse of you unexpectedly, your reflection is mine, but it is me when I am full and certain, when there is a song that bubbles up my throat, that passes through my lips and I allow it to unite with the air as you are united with me.

You have chosen me and have waited since my dawn. There have always been ripplings, you have accompanied me during shy and awkward moments when I didn’t fit in, when I sat alone in noisy cafeterias in new schools, before the new friend made of skin, bone and muscle would appear, you my corporeal love would emerge and hold a brilliant space of yellow, soothing light. Warm companionship that has held me through frightening diagnoses, and inevitable goodbyes of the other.

You are light on your bare feet and graceful in your long, flowing skirts. You are the one that has made it acceptable for me to wear blue jeans more times that not, yet give me the air of wearing the most feminine of frocks. Funny that this is our first written correspondence, how then have we been communicating? How is it that you have cupped and cradled me so completely all of this time with such unpredictable nourishment? You thrive as if you have been fed like Cleopatra, sustained by the choices of wine, pheasant and dates. You are the most dear to me in the time that exists between the cool, slow rush of the wind that shoots inside of me when I inhale and the warm, thoughtful air that trickles out.

Funny, you must inhabit fields of time and space that I am not meant to comprehend at this time because I have caught you out in the world as well. I hope you don’t mind me telling a few of those. You were captured more than once in the folds of Mother Teresa’s face, in Princess Diana’s hesitant smile, Jacqueline O’Nasis’s footfalls, Maya Angelou’s laugh and my grandmother’s repose. I am not jealous Inner Beloved, because you always return once more to me. You have such strong shoulders for they have held all of my fears and the weight of my wants. Finally, thank you, for the tools to allow me to whisk away with you in the interchange of black and the deepest of purple that lie behind my eyes in meditative moments, we have fun together do we not? I will leave now Inner Beloved, for the day, the outer world beckons. I hear doors open and close, muffled voices of my friends and the gnaw of responsibility taking hold. I will look for you today and when others wonder what a quiet, lazy smile is doing on my lips our secret will be revealed.

Busyness

2011-02-26T23:10:00.000-08:00

I was often told when I was young that I was lazy. My only two days off, the weekend, like other school age children was filled with things to do. In the end it felt like my days off were not days off at all. Saturday was the day you had to get up to do chores, such as sweeping, mopping, dusting, laundry or yard work. Sundays I had to get up early for church and most of that day was spent visiting relatives. I often wondered, where is my time? To think, sit, wonder, dream...to let my imagination take flight. I spend a fair amount of my days doing that now. I struggle with this from time to time now. Shouldn't I be doing something? Shouldn't I be producing, making, multi-tasking. The answer is no. Lazyness is a wondrous treat and feels as good today as when I was reprimanded for it forty years ago.

The Return

2011-02-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

Aaah, so glad to be back! Had to re-member my life. Have been to foreign lands, pitched tents and slept under the stars. Have been protected by circulating monks, and held by Professors, have a new tribe and a new love. Been a little busy. What's good for my soul is peace and have recreated that for myself with a little perseverance, a raised voice and a triumphant spirit. My mind has been opened once again to new ways of knowing and being yet it all feels like home. Received a present of a book of poetry by Pablo Neruda entitled Stones of the Sky, me along with others stood up at the table at a restaurant (other patrons left though they were very nice) and read an excerpt, we took turns celebrating with wine and wonderful communal fellowship, reading snippets of whatever moved us, even the waiter took his turn. That ladies and gentleman is the power of the word to move. Long after your gone such as Rilke or while you are still here such as Maya Angelou, your words fall out of mouths around the world and you have moved, connected and caused a change in emotion without you ever being the wiser. I thank the gods and my muse Clio for the gift of writing and wonder. I have missed this blog, I don't imagine that anyone in particular is chomping at the bit to read it, not sure that that is even the point of this public diary. Just know that it is nice to have a record of these wonderment's of life, my memory is pretty much shot, I primarily dance along with my images and allow them to come and go like my breath, so the moments when I want something a tad more concrete I can return to this cyber home for sustenance. Yum and hurray! When life is good it's great, when it's not so great, okay will do just fine.

The Wolf

2009-09-12T14:34:00.000-07:00

My story gets easier to tell and sounds more true to my ears when I say it. The story of the quiet girl, the nervous girl, the lonely girl. The girl with a passion, an art, a muse. Aphrodite--the girl is a writer. The girl is able to comprehend and illuminate everyones story. The girl travels down her path and while still very young meets her wolf. Her wolf is love, passion, devotion, trustworthiness and total dedication. There is something to prove to the wolf and to herself. Her self becomes distracted, so entirely engulfed in distraction that she expects that it will always be this way between her and the wolf. Until knowledge begins to form, a light begins to shine and the path isn't so set. There are forks in the road, bridges to cross, mountains to climb, fast moving rivers to swim, many are there waiting to give the girl a hand. Somehow the girl is no longer frightened, quiet or lonely. The girl realizes her feelings for what they are, periods of temporary sadness and uncertainty, This is her life and she expects it. The girl travels back to her beginning to start again, anew. The girl can see the wolf ahead and is happy to see him, but this time is not distracted by him. The girl carries wisdom with her this time and is not afraid to acknowledge it because it is her and with it she is never alone. Her spirit soars and welcomes and embraces life. She is alive, her name is, she is called, she has become. Bridget

Cast Away/Ulysseus

2009-08-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

Time exploded for Tom Hanks, the high level Fed-Ex employee that had what he thought was a reliable relationship to time. A modern day Ulysses, stuck on an island for years. What does one do when there is no hope? Or is there hope even if you don't see it. Is it coming down the path but you've just turned the corner and looked back and it's out of sight.

The internet is like sending out flares on a deserted island. Like feeding the small fire created. Hoping, assuming, that there's a plane overhead, behind the cloud cover. I don't see the plane but I hear the engine or is that sound coming from inside of me? There is an attempt to be heard, understood, rescued.

Ulysses spent seven years in captivity on Calypso's island. Rescue comes from a persuasion by the Gods. Calypso is persuaded to release him by the messenger God Hermes, sent by Zeus. Ulysses builds a raft and is given clothing, food and drink by Calypso for the voyage. Tom Hanks character is sent part of his long discarded crashed plane from the Gods, and creates a raft and collects his own food and water for the voyage. His Calypso is his girlfriend, Helen Hunt's character, who'd given him a photograph of her.

My raft is literature. I travel into unknown waters using the compass of others before me. Those braver than I could ever imagine being. I hesitate because there is land under my feet. I know land. I know the earth. The water is home too, but a different home. Possibly the first home from which everything was created, but it seems anxious to swallow, to return me back to where I started. Neptune can be very patient, but then again so can I.

Vision Quest

2009-08-02T09:18:00.001-07:00

Just returned from one. Had always heard about them, read about them from Native American Cultures and all sorts of peoples we like to describe by using words like: primitive, third world, jungle-sand or desert niggers, "those poor people over there". Well, those poor people over there aren't losing themselves, aren't falling into a void of technology they can't seem to re-surface from. They aren't shooting their co-workers, or complete strangers for no reason at all. These killers often described as the "nice, quiet guy who lived next door". These people ride the changes in life like an experienced surfer would a nice ocean wave.

Logically change happens to us, it's supposed to, but that knowledge doesn't prevent that primal feel from surging through our blood stream, causing us to doubt and worry and wither away a bit on the inside. It doesn't prevent our unconscious selves from asking our conscious selves a million questions about what we could have or should have done differently. If done differently, maybe we'd be somewhere else, doing something else or be somebody else. But I believe in plans, and in an unfolding. I don't think it's conincidence that the sun always sets in the west. That certain birds gather around each other at specific times of the year to migrate to places on the other side of the world without the assistance of mapquest. That your grandmother's rosebush will come back the next year, even after she's gone.

Well, this small being (me) needed a challenge, needed to face a fear, needed to know I could do something in particular, something daunting, alone--and come out the other side not too tattered or torn. The worst for me was lost luggage and a bit of malodorousness on the flight home. Maybe that was the worst for the guy sitting next to me in row 21 seat B. Sorry again, -- he seemed to understand, he was flying stand by too. I flew stand by all of the way to Manchester England knowing only one person who was going to be sort of waiting for me when I landed. I took a sleeping bag, and a cheap tent and slept under the U.K. sky. It felt right.

It reminded me of my truly tomboy days when I used to do such things with my father, like when we went fishing. Or, when I helped him build things in the basement. I refused to have anything to do with his hunting, I was morally opposed. I do remember waking up and drinking coffee with him, begging him not to go. (My hands still shake from drinking coffee at six). He'd smile, gulp down his coffee, and come back with flattened squirrels, rabbits and every once in a while a deer. We ate them, that was the least we could do, that way their deaths would be less of a waste. I struggle a bit with that, but hey that's me. Fishing seemed okay, I know - hypocrisy, I'm working on that.

Matthew Modine did a movie called Vision Quest in the eighties. The most outstanding thing at the time was the fact that Madonna was in it and sang a song I loved called Crazy for You. Also the female lead was beautiful.

The point of the quest was about facing something, someone, maybe yourself and the chances are you probably won't come out unscathed but you do it anyway. Joseph Campbell calls it the Hero's Journey. This was the first time that I felt the importance of the Journey --not the destination. The journey felt like a truncated life that I was living. The good (getting on the flight out of Manchester after being told by three people that I didn't have a chance of making it) the bad (some of the Delta employees at the "help desk")the frightening (once again some of the disinterested Delta employees, and a particularly dicey flight into a rainstorm in New York) the unexpected (a guy willing to share his tent if my zipper around my entrance door froze up on me one more time) the quick solid friendships (a few taxi drivers who immediately took me under their wings like I was a particularly slow family member), the hopes (these were mostly me hoping my name would be called to board an already overbooked flight).

I took planes, trains, buses, cabs, the tunnel, walked, ran and rested...alone. And it didn't feel weird, or wrong, or like I should've been somewhere else, with someone else. It was fun talking with people I'd probably never meet again. Smiling at people and having short or longer conversations about nothing in particular.

But mostly, it felt good entering my own body once again. There I was waiting for me, the tomboy, we listened to the rain beating down on our cheap tent under the U.K. trees and smiled.

Twitter?

2009-06-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if it's necessary to state a thought and place it out into the atmosphere. How self involved are we becoming? I am guilty, I've twittered too. There is something that gnaws at the inside of me if I hear a term too many times without understanding what it's about. But, new technologies are merely ideas and not needed by everyone all of the time. Sometimes, they are not needed at all. How has twittering advanced us as a people, or a culture? I don't want to know what anyone is doing or thinking all of the time. And usually, once again including myself, it's nothing substantial. Time is wasted reading inconsequential information that seems to keep us very busy doing nothing at all. Social networks are something else that I can actually feel wasting the hours left in my day.

So why do I feel left out if I haven't checked my Myspace or Facebook page in three days? Have I missed some all important correspondence from someone that will change my life? I don't think so. Maybe because all of this is still fairly new and the potential glorious, but as everything else in life a balance has to be reached. I have an image of two kids on a see-saw, at first one's high in the air and then the other, but once they get comfortable, they are both in the air, weightless and being in their own space yet together without saying one word.

Freedom

2009-05-10T18:12:00.000-07:00

Freedom seems to mean that you're open. You can feel and see again. Old familiar worries don't mean the same thing, you don't mind that someone's broken your rose-colored glasses. You can actually feel the air coming in and out of your nostrils. Focus comes with those galloping hormones. Because of experience you know the scary, bad feelings won't actually get you. You realize you can handle whatever's coming your way--in your own way...because you are beginning to know your self once again. Now I know why people protest, and die for it.

Horror Short

2009-05-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Medallion

It had been under Jacob's bed for twenty-one years; he had forgotten it was there. The medallion was in a trunk with one loosened hinge and held: old brittle papers with crisp curled edges, his mother's bible, several photos, loose change and a few tarnished keys.

Jacob Hayes heard his wife Ophelia coming up the stairs toward him. He'd been lying in bed most of the day, his head under her pillow facing the wall. The wall needed a fresh coat of paint but he was too tired to do anything about it. A soft yellow would be nice, he thought, though he knew Ophelia would not agree. She gravitated toward boldness, opulence, and carried the aroma of indulgence. He focused on the jagged crack that raced from one corner of the room to the other-- a winding road of deterioration.

"I knew you was gonna still be in the bed."
She spoke to him as one would a child who had wet himself after much instruction not to, then produced a weary sigh.
"I just laid down cause we haven't had no customers in a while. I was about to get up and…," he didn't finish what he was going to say to her, she had turned her thick body toward the closet. Ophelia was getting an outfit to wear that night. Her hand went into her hair and she began scratching her scalp, reminding him of the sound of fallen leaves rushing down the middle of the street.
"It don't matter none Jacob. I'm about to go over to momma's anyway." Everything about her was apathetic though she had enough energy to turn around and face him once again, one of her eyebrows rose, daring him to comment.

Both Jacob and the small figure inside the medallion underneath his bed shuddered at the thought of Ophelia's mother.

"Never could understand why your momma don't like me none."
He had an idea. Both women were disappointed Jacob wasn't the meal ticket they'd each longed for. Ophelia’s mother didn’t like Jacob. She was only fourteen years older than Ophelia and when together they acted like disturbed sisters-- loud, frantic people, with no concept of personal boundaries. Initially, he thought this trait sexy in Ophelia; he mixed it up with being free-spirited, now she merely fatigued him.
"She ain't never said that," Ophelia hissed.
"She ain't never had to."

Ophelia remembered she and her mother's late night discussions after Jacob began showing up at their front door. Initially they didn't know which one of them he was interested in, but her mother watched his lackluster eyes follow Ophelia's roundness through their two room house, and after the third visit Ophelia's mother began making demands.

"Girl, this here's our chance, I don't know what you call yourself waitin' on. We got us a fish here and you better reel him in!" Her voice was hungry, and their situation was grave. Her mother could never hold down a job and she didn't encourage Ophelia to, it evoked a feeling of inferiority in Ophelia's mother and she would not have that sensation living in her house.
"I don't love no Jacob Hayes, besides I think somethins wrong with him anyhow."
"Ain't nothin' wrong that money won't fix. You just get what you need to out of him, start actin' out and he'll put you out the house. You come on home, by then we'll be done cleaned him out." And on and on the conversation went until the day Ophelia found herself in front of the justice of the peace saying "I do," when she did not. She never loved him but now that feeling had dislike piggy-backed right along side it.

Ophelia and Jacob stared at each other, Jacob because he still waited for an answer, Ophelia because there was nothing more to say.
"What you got them clothes for?"
He sat up in bed so that he could see her better. "You ain't spendin' the night over there again are you?" Jacob knew the answer.

Even though the argument would send them further away from each other he chose to start it and like clockwork his breath became shallow and his head grew foggy with the anticipation of the new hurt she was about to bring him. The uncertainty made him feel closer to her. She couldn't have this argument with anyone else; it made a bond between them that was theirs alone.

"Don't start with me now Jacob," she touched a spot over her right eye, "I got me a headache and I don't feel like it," she said this while bending over to search for something out of her panty drawer. Ophelia's mother had been right about that one. It was a tried and true remedy for just about anything Jacob confronted her with that her eighth grade education couldn't wiggle out of.
"Last couple of months you done got into the habit of spending the night over there. I don't understand-- you my wife."
She held up her hand to stop him, waving it as if flagging down a phantom motorist.
"You know I don't like walkin' these streets at night. Plus," she added when she saw that he was about to interrupt her, "you know momma gets lonely, half the time I just fall asleep on the couch."

And the other half you pass out.
The collection of words weren't in his head and then they were, like a present dropped off, an afterthought. "You must have sense enough to know," she continued, "that I'm not gonna' stay at this store just sittin’ around all day lookin’ at you".
He could easily sit around all day looking at her.

Big beautiful women were Jacob’s weakness. He was slight- average height, average weight, but loved women taller then he was with big fat breasts and round wide butts. Ophelia fit the description perfectly.
She had E’s when he thought breasts got no larger than D’s, and Jacob could watch her bounce around the store and up and down the steps to their apartment all day. Although she'd gotten into the habit of ignoring him, her body continued bringing him unprecedented joy. Her big soft thighs rubbed together when she walked, the swishing sound music to his ears. Flesh lunged out of the top of most of her clothes, the vertical line between her breasts held small beads of perspiration that called to him.

He sat up completely swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
"I don't understand this 'Phelia. You my wife-we married. This is something we need to talk about."
"We'll talk about it later," she said, but she would be gone later.

The bell over the door downstairs clanged harshly-twice.
"Go on and get it," she said as the smell of chemicals wafted through the open window from the cleaners across the street leaving an undercurrent of tension between them. Jacob sometimes felt guilty about it, "Aw, don't worry 'Phelia, a couple of months, six at the most," Jacob had promised, it had been three years.
Even though he was sitting up Jacob found he had no energy to stand. Ophelia moved around him with purpose. She was like a bee collecting items first from here and then from there, rhythmically, then she stopped. Her favorite dark blue dress with the red flowers hung lifelessly over her right arm.

She had a perfectly shaped face with strong bones, a well-chiseled broad nose, pouty big lips and piercing eyes. Jacob had seen a book once in a library. An over-sized, colorful, travel book and inside was the photo of a head. The sculpture was of Nefertiti, in Egypt. When Ophelia turned to the side, when he glimpsed her profile, she looked like that. He wanted to tell her but something stopped him. Something about the way she made him feel about who he was made him keep that information close.

“You can’t believe ya’ got me hunh? Well that makes the two of us, go on downstairs and get the door,” she laughed and laughed as if it were the funniest joke either one of them had ever heard.
"I heard about all of them wild parties over there ''Phelia".
There were whisperings of men staying over to all hours, of beer bottles in the backyard, and fights in the front-- fights over who really was dating who. Some of the men with flashing teeth and questionable pasts would say, "Man what you doin' over here again? I dun told you Ophelia's with me. You better be over here seeing her momma I know that." Or "'Phelia, you goin' by the store soon? We need stuff---I don't know what all, go on and ask your momma what else."
Jacob came back to himself, she was watching him.
"What's wrong with you? I wish I had known for we got together that you was crazy." She shook her head, sorry for the plight she'd found herself in. He couldn't remember when she'd become so mean to him. He imagined it began when she started dating Mr. Franklin.

Marshall Franklin wasn’t refused anything often. He had several women friends he visited but Ophelia was his favorite. Most of his friends were someone else's woman or used to be someone else's woman which meant they were older, but Ophelia was still young enough, only 26. Marshall Franklin felt that his ways were not his fault, "I like variety," he would say to the envious men around town, those he knew were not his friends, "I like a woman with experience--sho nuff, but sometimes there's nothin' better than lickin' the dew off that young shiny rose from time to time." He'd then smile in a knowing fashion causing some listeners to smile civilly and others to pale. The paled ones would need to hurry home to observe their wives closely for signs of Mr. Franklin having been near.

Mr. Franklin was dating all the women in town who'd let him and most did. A good-looking man with the gift of making a woman feel she was good looking too--no matter what her mirror said. His eyes were promises, assurances of incessant love, endless pools of warmth that left women forgetting to come up for air. The possibility of a love that made them risk everything they'd ever known: family, reputation, respect; things known to be of value until meeting Mr. Franklin. He caused women to look down at themselves making sure their clothes were covering all of the essential parts; hands repeatedly fondled bra straps making certain the thick white reinforced material was properly tucked. They adjusted slip straps so the feminine looking lacy bottom wasn't longer than the hem of the dress.

"While you're down there grab me some stockings Jacob," Ophelia said, an afterthought, the words flung over her shoulder in his general direction. He sunk lower into the mattress.

"That's part of the inventory Ophelia--if you wear 'em I can't sell 'em," his eyes didn't meet hers. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten into the position of apologizing for her wastage. More than once Jacob caught her replacing a pair of hose after wearing them for the night complaining they had been the wrong size. Or removing one tablet of Alka-Seltzer out of the small frosted glass bottle because she only needed one not two tablets as the directions recommended, returning the lone one back to the shelf. He absolutely forbade her to work the cash register after realizing she wasn’t charging friends and family at all.

So Jacob wasn’t able to make the anticipated improvements to spruce up the store after old Mr. Thomas died and his wife sold him the place. The same crack was in the lower right hand corner of the front window, no new paint inside or out, no new tile for the floor, and certainly no roof. He’d learned to live with the metallic patter of rain water dripping into the rusted pails in the backroom.

"Just get me the stockings, damn! We got to fight about every little thing?" She stomped past him returning to the small bathroom. He smelled lilac in the air where she'd been moments earlier.
She's gone.
If she'd ever had respect for him it no longer lived inside of her and would never return.
"Anybody up there?"
A voice floated across the store, through the maroon and mildewing curtains that separated the store from the upstairs apartment, and up the stairs.
"I'll be right there." Jacob's voice returned back down the stairs through the curtains and into the store. He recognized the voice, it was Hazel's. Jacob felt energy again and actually smiled.
So did the figure inside the medallion.

Hazel was a neighborhood girl, young and absent-mindedly sensual.
A girl, not a woman.
Jacob's existence consisted of women. Tall skinny women, low fat women, women so light in complexion they looked like they were white. Women so dark they appeared blue when the sun hit them just so. They walked back and forth from the same places everyday with short straight hair and long curly hair, and long straight hair and short curly hair. Men came and left the neighborhood but the small weathered homes kept the women inside of them.

"I'm nineteen," Hazel had answered when Jacob asked her age. He was 33.
She began to frequent the store and seemed overly nice to him. Overly nice to Jacob was someone talking about something other than the weather, making eye contact and listening to him. She did all of these things. Hazel did this for others too, but she hadn't left him out of her community travels. She was a wheel that journeyed from one area to the next and neighborhood pressure hadn't caused her to fold. Hazel unlike Ophelia never looked at him as if she thought he should be someone else.
"My momma always be getting' on me 'bout my clothes," Hazel said to Jacob the first morning they met. She made no attempt to explain further. Hazel wore skimpy summer dresses cut low in front; the straps straining, fraying in front of his eyes, breasts barely staying in their assigned homes, all but spilling on top of the counter, onto the gum and daily paper. Her dress stuck hugging against her obscenely; across her curvaceous butt and in between her legs if Jacob was lucky. When that happened he would excuse himself and go into the bathroom for a long time, a Closed sign dangling vigilantly on the door knob.

"Hazel, where is your slip?" her mother would demand to know before boarding the streetcar for work.
"They too hot," was Hazel's answer.
“Those are too many clothes.” “What’s a body to do when you’re sufferin’ like that?” "Sometimes momma’s need to realize that a girl dun grown up and need to make up her own mind about such things,” would be what the men would say when they knew Hazel's mother was no longer in ear shot.

Some said Hazel was slow. Women tended to think she was conniving since her dimwitted nature seemed to kick in precisely when a penis entered the room. Suddenly normal tasks and thoughts themselves were too demanding and the only thing that sufficed was a giggle accompanied by an index finger planted seductively between her lips. The tightness of her skin and the glow in her eyes forgave all for the men who stood near her bragging about nothing in particular.
Jacob Hayes didn’t care, he was glad that she was downstairs. He heard the water turn on in the sink and Ophelia humming softly.
She's getting ready for her date.
Jacob cocked his head over to the right some, he couldn't remember what the voice inside his head sounded like before, but it had a lilt now.

"'Phelia, maybe you could stay on home tonight, we could go to the movies or somethin'." He heard her stop humming and then heard the water flowing louder from the tap.
"Will you go on downstairs and wait on whoever it is Jacob--please?"
Kill her.
The cramped figure inside the medallion sighed and adjusted it's leg.

A fiery rampaging fear tapped Jacob on the shoulder; he was afraid down to the calcium resting snugly in his bones.
Jacob had heard voices inside his head for as long as he could remember and had ignored them for just as long, eventually they seemed to meld into one strident determined speaker but it was not the one who was there now.
When he was small and afraid his mother would say to him, "Don't pay attention to nothin' but what I say to you," but she had been worried.

Jacob heard his mother and her brother talking over the kitchen table one morning when he was twelve years old, his uncle having come through town unexpectedly for coffee and a place to rest. He had a wild spirit that Jacob envied, something that could not be harnessed with promises of a good job and steady love.
"You know--naw you probably don't even remember," his uncle said as he began pouring a little of the Pet Milk out of the can into his coffee and then his sisters. It began swirling like small tornadoes, the brew becoming creamier calmer shades, he tapped the spoon twice on the side of his cup and continued, "Daddy would hear folks talkin' inside his head all the time."

"Well I told Jacob to thank God for Jesus and to go on about his business."
"I almost forgot," he said, reaching down into the bag beside his right foot.
"Don't tell me you dun brought that boy somethin' else. Where'd you go this time?" Jacob's mother smiled, and puffed her self out, proud of the fuss her brother made over her son. Although she would never admit it to anyone no matter the punishment, Jacob made her uncomfortable sometimes.
"Got this here charm, man who sold it to me called it a medallion." He held it by the chain. It was the size of a half dollar and swung slowly side to side, its back to her. It had a hypnotic momentum.
"Let me see the front of it," she said reaching for the chain in his hand.
"Put out your hand."
She turned her hand over from the brown side to the pink side, palm up. He placed it in the center of her hand. The chain circled and gathered around itself like a snake preparing to rest.
"Good God," she said dropping it and crossing herself though she couldn't remember ever doing that before. Usually she would place her hands together upright as if in prayer when life worried her or she felt evil stood too near.
"Ain't it something! Look at the detail. Don't it look like it's a little man inside of it. This gonna' be worth a lot a money one day. Whoever did this piece is probably already famous."
She returned the piece to her brother, pushing it closer to his side of the table, then got up and began washing her hands. Deliberately, slowly, like a surgeon.
"Where'd you get it?" she asked because she knew he wanted to tell her, not because she wanted to know. She already planned to put it somewhere deep and far away, to be fished out whenever her brother darted into town and asked about it.
"I was in West Africa for awhile," he said, straightening his long legs so that they shot out and stayed in the center of her kitchen. "I ran across this merchant who told me he got it from some haunted tribesman."

Jacob listened outside the kitchen door as his uncle recounted a tale about an infamous tribesman who'd been caste out of his village. The haunted tribesman said he'd been a respected man of the high council in his village, people came to him asking for advice on matters they didn't understand; to counsel others was his life. One day, the tribesman went walking along a trail, I've walked it many times, the tribesman said.
He found the charm, chain and all lying on the ground, put it on and it helped him, gave him luck, made him think clearer. The tribesman became even more loved and respected, worshipped like a God - powerful. He harbored the conviction that he was power itself believing it had no beginning or end without his involvement.

Alienation from former friends caused him worry, though it was clear to everyone that he was the one choosing to isolate himself. Over the following weeks, he began the slow process of disposing of those he did not like, as well as those who did not share his vision. Women he wanted he took for his own, others possessions he took for himself. No one dared try stopping him; they could see his influence as well.
Weeks later, the tribesman's eldest son questioned a decision he'd made, not in front of others--which would've been a cardinal sin, but in private as custom demanded. His son had begun hearing grumblings from men, younger, daring men, and not all that was said was unfounded.

I killed my son, the tribesman said, stabbing him in the heart for doubting my wisdom. His wives couldn't believe what he'd done; suddenly everyone was afraid of him, they were keenly alert because there was a madman in their midst. He tried throwing away the medallion but it talked to him. He was afraid to get rid of it and afraid to keep it. It ruled me, said the tribesman.

The medallion told him men were coming to kill him. Plotting to take his life because they feared his wisdom, feared his might, and feared what he would do next. The tribesman knew everything about everyone because of the position he'd held-- that was the most frightening thing of all, so he ran. That was when the merchant found him wandering the desert talking to himself, re-enacting the motion of thrusting the knife into the heart of his eldest son.
The tribesman told the merchant, I'm to give it to you now, and he placed it in the center of the merchant's palm.

"Now, I don't believe none of that," Jacob's uncle said noticing how still his sister's back had become as she continued facing the sink and not him. "I think it's good luck, and who knows, like I said before, it might be worth some money for the boy one day--stranger things have happened."

He chose not to tell his sister how the merchant finished his tale, the villagers found the tribesman dead the next day, the merchant had recounted chewing on the end of an unlit cigar, "found him in the desert on his back, staring directly into the sun. They left him there--a cautionary tale". The tribesman's story was told to squalling, baleful children. Even though blinded and scared, he would find those who'd misbehaved because he'd died alone-- lonely, and wanted bad children with him, for companionship.

"Yaw'll upstairs? Should I come back?" Jacob could hear Hazel's high heels walking back and forth, back and forth, as if taking inventory of each item in the store. She stopped. He imagined by the pickle jar near the counter. He would offer her a pickle every time she came by the store.

The huge wooden pickle container sat in front and to the side of the counter where Jacob spent most of his day. She’d accept his offer, bending over, taking her time so she could choose just the right one. Hazel would giggle as she fished her right hand into the cold pickle juice, capturing the one hoped for.
"Got it," she'd say displaying small white pointed teeth, pleased at nothing in particular at all. She'd place the dripping pickle between her lips, holding the center between her front teeth while Jacob scurried under the counter to find a rag to wipe the glistening juice off her hand. His thoughts were obscene as she ate the pickle, but it was just his thoughts.

Jacob did watch her once with one of the neighborhood boys. He was taking the trash out back to empty; the two were on the other side of the stacked cans that leaned against the wall. The boy had his hand under her dress between her parted legs, only his wrist visible. The boy’s head was turned away from Jacob, toward the street. Her head was turned the opposite direction and saw Jacob as he came out of the door.
There was no flurry to get her clothes back in order, no apologies, no shame—she stared at him, surrendering all of her weight against the brick wall of his store. The screen door had been caught by his hip but came free slamming behind him. It startled her partner who turned around just as Jacob was sitting the trashcan down.

“Come on man, can’t you get out of here?” the boy asked.
“Of course…I’m sorry. But you kids shouldn’t be out here no way.”
Jacob was flustered. He hadn’t taken his eyes away from Hazel’s. He felt for the door and somehow made his way back through it. She waved good-bye to him with just her fingertips as the young man continued what he'd been doing.

The water turned off in the bathroom, Jacob could hear hair spray exploding out of the can. Ophelia's hair would be shiny and reflective as she left out the front door to go meet Mr. Franklin.
"'Phelia?" She would be angry that he was still upstairs while there was a paying customer downstairs.

Kill her! How much more of this will you take?
Jacob was overwhelmed and felt himself weakening, it was as if he was melting, becoming another substance completely. He slid forward off the mattress and onto the floor, turning around so his knees were under the bed, elbows resting on top of the mattress, arms making a triangle. He began to pray. He heard the bell once again, Hazel had left. She would return-- no one had any place to go.
Their entire neighborhood was suspended in some type of secretion excreted by dispassionate Gods, the kind which did not allow for growth or possibilities. Dreams soared for a short while, maybe took a stroll around the park, but soon returned unfulfilled.

"Give me strength now Lord, be my friend here in my darkest hour of need." Jacob did not know what else to say so he stayed where he was, waiting for either the voice to come back or more ideas to add to his prayer. The bathroom door creaked and Ophelia almost stumbled across his back. She had been taking one last look at herself in the mirror as she walked out of the bathroom.
She stared down at him and Jacob gleaned: bafflement, (he hoped pity but he didn't really believe that), despair and then fury radiate from Ophelia.
"I asked you twenty minutes ago for a pair of stockings Jacob where are they?" Her eyes scanned the room as if the broken lamp on her dresser, or the picture of her father hanging crookedly on the wall in front of her held the answer. "I'm about sick of this shit. I'll get 'em myself. I hope you down there prayin' for another wife."

He was about to get off his knees to try and discern what Ophelia meant by that remark but then he heard movement under the bed. Had Jacob not been on the floor he was sure he would not have heard it. Even so he hesitated, initially suspecting a mouse - that was all he needed; a mouse in the bedroom meant a mouse in the store. He sighed. Later, when it no longer mattered, he would decide the sound had been one of struggle.

Jacob peered into the darkness and saw an object in the shape of a thick wide square, an area blacker than the blackness around it- a trunk. Scraping could be heard on the floor before he realized he was bringing it toward him and out into the light.
He sat cross-legged, what he and his sister called Indian-styled, looking at his fingerprints left on the surface of the trunk-- perfectly shaped ovals of oil in dust. The creaking sound flooded the room as he lifted the top, the smell of earth; clove and malevolence marred his next breath. Jacob didn't save much, hadn't felt the need to preserve things. No personal photographs (his sister kept things like that) even his letters were official, of a formal nature - records. There corners of each paged arched. Jacob picked up his mother's bible I haven't thought about this in years. The bible had gone every place his mother had until she died, and then it was his. She had insisted he take it, not his sister-him. Jacob found a few more old books, three buttons, a weathered photograph of some woman he didn't know and a tarnished necklace. He assumed it was a piece of jewelry belonging to his mother and was about to close the lid when he thought he saw movement.

"That's funny," he said reaching for it.
"I'm about to go, if you can stop talking to yourself long enough to hear me. I won't be back tonight, stayin' at momma's." Ophelia stood in the doorway prepared for his whimpering which would be punctuated by his sulking. She was armed with a flurry of hateful words and thrashing arms.
"I'll see you later then," he said.
What caused Ophelia to hesitate was the sound of his voice, there was a lilt to his words like they rode on a wave. It sounded like he had an accent.
"You mean you ain't got something smart to say?" Ophelia asked. She had no reason for hesitating, Marshall Franklin was already waiting for her and he hated to wait.
"I will see you later," he said quietly, tersely. She turned and walked out the door but not before she saw Jacob curl his fingers around something, and his face become eerily satisfied.

The medallion was just as old and ugly as the day his Uncle Duke handed it to him. Jacob spun it around on its chain until the charm faced him. It still gave him pause. Every time he looked into the face of the thing, the detail shocked him. Features were remarkably defined considering how small it was--the size of a half dollar.

Jacob had shown an interest in art and the library had a few books of the great ones: Renoir, Monet, Michelangelo, but the piece he held of the small man who almost looked trapped inside the metal was more precise than any work he'd seen by those artists.
It moved.
He laughed, "It did not," he decided, talking to the cracked walls, broken lamp and Ophelia's father's lopsided picture.
It was as if someone had shrunk a real person down. The face was recognizable. He didn't know who it was, but it was so well done it could have been a photograph. The muscles in the legs and arms so strained you could almost see them twitching.
Jacob's back hurt just looking at the miniature bent spine. What did you do to deserve this little man? He didn't remember putting it around his neck but felt its coolness as it bumped against his skin the first time. New sensations assaulted him right away. It made him feel impulsive, like going on the roller coaster and finding out at the last second there were no seatbelts. He imagined listening to the slow painful arthritic creaking while ascending, and then time passed and he was in the sky. Emptiness on either side of him, just that black track directly ahead. Very soon he would past the crest and begin the descent, the wind rushing into his face, before falling out of the car wrecking himself onto the tracks below. He was going to take a few people with him first.
He heard the bell once again and knew Ophelia was gone.

Methodically he began destroying everything Ophelia owned. All of her clothes were cut into long confetti-like strips. Colored fabric lay at his feet like he worked at a turn of the century textile factory. Every piece of jewelry she owned was broken, stomped on. Jacob found her wedding ring in a pool of brown water on the sink. The light captured the gold band and the tiny chip of the stone inside.

"Where's my diamond Jacob?" she'd asked after they finished making love the first time.
"Can't afford one right now, but it'll be soon," he'd said catching his breath, reveling in the knowledge that he was able to perform with a woman like Ophelia.
"A great big one Jake?"
"Yeah, a big one."
"Never had no diamond before, can't wait."
"You ain't got to wait long."
She'd sighed letting him kiss her again, relieved that things were falling together so soon for her.
He smashed the ring under the sole of his right foot.

Living inside of Jacob was an unfed, angry, stranger - he decided to let him come out and play. The stranger wanted blood, and suddenly like everything else in Jacob’s life he couldn’t control him.
On the outside he looked like Jacob Hayes—on the outside, but on the inside the stranger would not allow any further abuse and he was in control. He was the pilot. Jacob reassured himself that at least he was the co-pilot, actually he was the flight attendant on her first day not sure where to put her purse.

The bell clanged again, it was Marshall Franklin. He and Ophelia had just missed one another; they would meet at her mother's house. Marshall wanted a pack of cigarettes.
He likes to smoke after sex.
"Yeah, ain't nothin' better than lightin' up after, makes you feel like a man," he'd been heard saying.

Jacob descended the stairs. He felt the little man in the medallion move against the wall of his chest with each step he took, as if he were suddenly inpatient with his inability to stand.
"Let me have a pack of smokes Jacob--you know what I like," Marshall Franklin said, a flash to his black eyes; the color of wet tires. He was taunting him, medieval in his torment of Jacob who turned away from him reaching for a pack of cigarettes.

"'Phelia around?"
At first Marshall Franklin avoided Jacob's eyes and then thought better of it deciding to challenge him instead. Marshall was getting tired of this dance; he planned on leaving town soon and had no desire to take Ophelia with him. She did not know that nor did he want her to until he was well down the road and settled some place as far away as Illinois. But he intended on using her until then.
Marshall Franklin had nothing but a galloping disdain for the goblin-like man who stood before him, and since he was leaving shortly he felt no need to be careful in expressing his true feelings.

"No, Ophelia is at her mothers. I imagine you'll be meeting her there directly."
Marshall Franklin had his hand on the pack of cigarettes but something made him clutch them too tightly. Something was different. Men, who came in and out of towns, supported by lonely, dissatisfied women in those towns, developed an internal tuning fork and something just struck his. He'd never witnessed a mans demeanor change so completely, as if Jacob was now certain about things he'd pondered for years.
Marshall Franklin went through an internal rolodex of responses. He could deny planning to meet Ophelia but he chose not to, refusing to feed into this new sensation that caused him to doubt himself.

"Yeah, I might stop by there to say hi to everybody."
"I'll see you there," Jacob said handing Marshall Franklin his change. Two things caused the rattling inside of Marshall this time. Jacob never set foot over his mother in-law's house, everybody knew that and secondly, Jacob did not look like himself at all, especially behind the eyes.
It was as if an imposter haphazardly put on a Jacob Hayes suit but didn't check himself in the mirror before going out. Things were incorrect about him. His voice was deeper, his words sounded more determined, less open for debate. He walked with a foreshadowing purpose and he emanated a smell. He smelled like an open grave.
"I said, I'll see you there," Jacob repeated, finally letting the coins fall into Marshall Franklin's hand, causing the high-pitched tinkling sound that only coins can make when colliding into one another.

The bell rang over the door and Hazel stood in the entrance. She was perspiring, waiting. "Yeah, I'll look for you then--see you later," Marshall said. He was going to cancel with Ophelia tonight, he didn't need the trouble, he had plenty of women he could see.

Hazel stood in front of Jacob wearing a hat well into its autumn years, her thick curly hair thoughtlessly tucked underneath. She wore a nice black Sunday dress, dusty brown high-heeled shoes scuffed up the back near the seam, and carried a cheap traveling bag in each hand -- little more than a couple of brown paper sacks. Leaning against the counter she said, "I was in here earlier, I come to tell you I'm headin' for the bus station, my momma put me out again--she won’t let me come back this time. Caught me with Lou and them up the street. Guess I’m goin down South to stay with my grandmother"—she scrunched up her face horribly when she said the word grandmother, “at least ‘til I figure out what I wanna' do.”

She began twirling her index finger around a strand of hair over and over again while looking at Jacob Hayes…considering things. Finally she continued, “I wish I knew about a place, ‘cause I’d stay, but I’m about to get on the bus now. It's funny I never needed a lot of things like other girls.” She said this last bit as a puzzling confession.

Jacob imagined the men on the bus making room on either side of the aisle for Hazel, so they could rub against her as they traveled down the highway toward somewhere else. He wanted her so badly he would’ve made a pact with the devil.
And then he did.

“I guess I can tell you this now Jacob since I’m goin’ anyway, I had a crush on you--always in your nice suit, so polite and all.” She talked as if she’d merely forgotten to mention it before, an afterthought, as if verbalizing a diary entry.
Jacob was at a loss and felt an urging, a pushing from somewhere. He noticed that the muscles in his arms and legs were aching, hurting. Then he rubbed his back like he'd seen pregnant woman do in their last month and surmised that he must have slept funny.

When he returned to himself he was releasing Hazel. He had been kissing her and she laughed at him brightly, he got scared.
“I don’t think you’re crazy Jacob," she said into the warmth of his mouth and then backed away from him, "I hear them talk; I hear what they say ‘bout Ophelia and Mr. Franklin, and stuff, don’t worry 'bout it none hear? You a nice man,” she patted his arm gently. Hazel’s sympathy for his situation tore a final thing loose in Jacob. A slow girl with no place to stay other than with a grandmother who didn’t want her pitied him.
He closed the store.
Jacob didn’t even watch Hazel’s hips saunter down the street toward her future.

Time had passed but Jacob was not sure how much time. He now hovered inside a small area of himself; the man in the medallion was in control. Jacob was walking the half mile to Ophelia's mother's house.
I can already hear them, the loud talk, the laughter, the smacks on the back and the staticy radio that was never turned off. He could see Ophelia and Marshall Franklin in her mother's bedroom in the back of the house, separated only by a sheet hanging between them and the kitchen. They would be dancing closely to the sound of the staticy radio while the fish fried. She liked to dance. They would be moving together in an intimate way that announced they'd been together many times before. He walked faster. And then he saw Ophelia walking toward him. She was in a hurry, upset about something.

Jacob darted behind the tall bushes. All the neighborhood women avoided them after dark, eight tall bushes lined in a row to his right, the sudden change in surroundings reminiscent of a story in a Grimm's fairytale. At one time, the bushes had been well taken care of, now they had grown wildly treacherous.
Ophelia hadn't noticed the tall bushes until a leaf brushed a few strands of her hair back from her ear like a lover's finger would.

At the very moment she’d turned her head like one does when they are about to turn their body as well, the bend of an arm came around her neck, snatching her backward into a world of leaves, moistness, sticks and dark. The aroma of green assaulted her completely. Ophelia's mind stopped, shut itself off. She was no longer able to distinguish what reality was. She had been on her way home to see what was taking Marshall so long. He would meet her at the store if not her mothers, and she'd forgotten to cross the street.

Ophelia felt like she’d been in the center of the bush for a long time. Coming through the back, she felt the humid night air once again in degrees; first her head felt it, then her shoulders and then all of her in a rush--like being born.
She struggled to take a good deep breath. A dull crack came next and the sounds inside her head dampened. Her head as well as the rest of her felt too heavy to hold up. Another arm encircled her, lifting her. In a blur and for a second she saw a ridiculously small man inside a piece of jewelry beginning to straighten himself and stand upright, rocking back and forth in front of her eyes, an angry man on a metal swing. Turning her head away from what she didn't understand, Ophelia saw a cat on a neighbor's porch lifting his front paw to sniff and then carefully examine.

Ophelia thought her assailant was going to drag her under her arms so her feet left two scuff trails behind them, two snakes growing in length as she was taken further away from her world. But she wasn't on the ground anymore; she was thrown over a shoulder. The man's arm encircled her, supporting her, holding her urgently as if trying to draw her inside of him. All she could think while being whisked away into the darkness was, he must be very strong. Periodically she was being touched by a small metal hand.
Ophelia prayed to go completely mad.

Jacob go between the houses.
"I am, you see that I am."
Jacob talked freely to the man who now stood up in the carved medallion, his feet the only things holding him to the metal. He stood inside it like a kid would an old tire hanging from a tree in the backyard.

Jacob cut in between houses, taking her behind homes that where still and foreboding even in the daytime. Ophelia felt bare, sharp brown sticks from surrounding foliage scratching her shins, heard them breaking in two with small inconsequential snaps all around her. Those cuts would be a lot worse if I hadn’t put on my Vaseline.
Preposterous thoughts took the place of rational ones because the rational ones left her wanting. Wanting to have seen the bushes before she’d gotten to them, wanting to have waited for Marshall at her mother's house instead of trying to prove a point about being stood up. The thought of Jacob saving her from whatever was about to happen didn't occur to her once.
You are taking too long, you will be seen.

Ophelia was now being carried at breakneck speed, the man’s feet seeming to merely skim the ground. His grip was loosening and she moved sharply in his arms. She was getting further and further away from the store. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She wanted to scream but nothing came out but warm wet air. His grip loosened a bit more and she spun almost entirely around and off his shoulder. Both the human man and the miniature metal one shot their right arms out to catch her.
"Oh God," she said not wanting to be touched by either. The man caught her before she was on the ground but not before she saw his face; it was Jacob.
He hit her again.

Jacob knew instinctively where to take her-- the abandoned school.
Forty minutes later the clanging and ringing behind Ophelia's ears were relentless, a high school cafeteria full of kids on the last day of school. Her lips moved, though if anyone had been close enough to kiss her they would not have heard a word.
I hurt all over; I just want to lie here -- a little while. It was merely a thought spoken aloud; her body began relaxing once again having found a nice resting place in the warmth of what could only be her blood leaking out. Expelling an immense amount of effort, she turned onto her right side, her cheek resting on the cool linoleum. This small movement, the same motion a person does in his sleep without thought, fatigued her. She felt small granules of dirt and glass trapped between her cheek and the floor.

How am I going to get up? She considered this for a while. Ophelia knew she had to get to a hospital-- there was no part of her which did not hurt, ache, pound or throb. She refused to look down at herself; needing to pretend a while longer. Pretend that some of the quick flashes of memory starting to come back were a dream and the warmth and wetness on her and underneath didn’t mean anything that bad. Ophelia knew she had to start walking, and then all at once she did. She felt like an old woman who'd been in her sick bed for a month.

Forward she went on shaky loose legs timidly dragging one foot next to the other one, more of a slide than a walk. She thought about the mummy movie she and Marshall went to see last month and chuckled, certain that was how she looked slowly scraping her feet across the floor. Ophelia peered at her shadow on her right and was saddened to see that her description had been an accurate one. She looked broken. She was broken.

Walking slowly from the dark room of pain, Ophelia made a conscious decision not to look back. She heard sounds, knocking and moving, if Jacob wasn’t through with her there was nothing she could do about it, Ophelia was fairly certain she wouldn’t have enough steam to make it out the door.
If she had turned her head to the left, she would've seen Jacob's body twitching, gyrating. He was having a convulsion, her husband was fighting himself, but he wasn’t going to win.

In shadows and blurred pictures, in between convulsive fits, part of Jacob Hayes remembered what he'd done to Ophelia over the forty-five minutes they'd been together in the abandoned library of Beaumont High School. He'd looked into the face of the woman he was going to hell for. The same face he fell in love with and then married. The face he'd hit over and over again so that Marshall Franklin would have nothing more to love. Jacob Hayes sat on the dirty floor that had been the high school for the white kids that used to live in the community until the black families moved in. Then it became their high school, now it was no ones.

Shadows circled the room as if waltzing. His eyes followed one image around which caught his attention, it resembled a business man. The man seemed to have on a suit and carry a briefcase. He was wearing a hat and was in a hurry, having many places to go. These were all of the things he'd wanted. "I ain't gonna' have none of that now," Jacob said to the empty room.

He'd seen Ophelia making her way to and then out of the door. The stranger inside of him wanted to finish what was started, the little man was almost completely free of the medallion, (only his right foot remained) and he demanded Jacob to finish.
You are no longer her fool…end this.
He was to go after Marshall Franklin next, there was too much he was going to have to pay for. Madness got the upper hand again and off he raced after Ophelia.

Ophelia was dizzier with each step she took. She heard sounds behind her; it could only be Jacob coming to finish her off. She realized in that moment that she possibly deserved this. She'd always known he was unstable yet it had given her joy to demean him. The man she was going to hell for.
Ophelia saw a figure that seconds later became Marshall coming toward her through a bank of trees; then heard the voice behind her that was not her husband's though it came out of his mouth.
"You will die Ophelia. You will die tonight."
"Help me," Ophelia said and the look on Marshall's face told her that something horrible was happening behind her. She saw Marshall's right hand reach into the inside of his coat pocket where she knew his gun rested. She fell then because she could walk no further.

Marshall Franklin shot his gun.
The sound reverberated, explosion-like amidst fragile tree branches. The bullet sliced through the right side of Jacob's neck. Jacob actually felt no pain for a second. In fact, Jacob Hayes wondered if he'd been shot at all, and then he felt the warmth, a great amount of it, saturating the collar of his shirt and his favorite gray suit.

Jacob leapt forward grabbing Marshall by the throat.
"No," Marshall said before dropping his gun. Marshall watched it bounce once and tumble away from him. Jacob was taking great pleasure in feeling the air leaving Marshall's mouth and nose.
Use all of you strength; choke the life out of him. The man in the medallion said, his face having shot up into a grin, making his metal cheeks round and fat. To Jacob, Marshall's throat felt as though chicken bones rested deep inside. The second shot came from Ophelia hitting Jacob in the left side, causing him to hop twice on his right foot; the impact whip lashing him. Jacob released his hold on Marshall’s neck.

Marshall dropped to his knees; clawing at himself as if something slimy and wet had been there instead of a man’s hands. For Jacob Hayes cold reality set in, Ophelia's bullet ripped open his aorta; he was dying...he wanted to explain; and then he was dead.
The little metallic man smiled and stepped off the medallion.

No one working at Homer G. Phillips Hospital that night was sure why Ophelia wasn't dead. From the janitor on his third coffee break, to the nurse coming out of the restroom, to the resident with the morning breath waiting for her in the Emergency Room.
"She didn't have enough circulating blood in her to keep a puppy alive," the resident said later, “but I pulled her through”. The nurses smiled, nodding as they were paid poorly to do.
"You did doctor, that was something."
"One for the record books alright, I didn't think she was gonna' make it."
Later, the nurses said to themselves that God took over that night.

Ophelia slept eleven hours straight before finally waking. The pain so excruciating she couldn't form words; moving was out of the question. She felt each of her shallow inhalations were the only thing holding her organs in place and was certain that if she beared down just once, her insides would be on her outside. Ophelia could hear movement, then smelled Marshall's cologne.

"Come on over here, I don't want to have to move," she said quietly, waiting for him to say what she knew he was going to say. The doctor had already been in earlier explaining what had happened to her. The young white boy in the dingy lab coat with the attentive face and trail of blonde curls said: she’d never have children; sex would always be painful for her, "there's such extensive internal scarring," had been said more than once and her face was asymmetrical. The right side caved in, deflated.

"I used to fake headaches with Jacob…now I have 'em all the time."
"They say you'll be gettin' out a here soon--that's good news."
"Yeah…good news."
Marshall paused then continued, when he realized she wasn't going to say anything else. "But I guess when it rains it pours. My little brother havin' trouble and I better be goin' to see about him. But I'll be back," he said patting the top of her hand causing a faint popping sound—the same sound the nurse made hours earlier to get a vein to put the needle in her arm.

"I heard they already buried Jacob, his sister supposed to be comin' by to get his things," she trailed off and then said, "Maybe I shoulda' known this was coming, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how it was all gonna' end."
Marshall smiled quickly and then they were finished.
"You take care of yourself now Marshall, I'll understand if you can't come back this way."
"Now what I say Ophelia? I'll be back."
He kissed her on her forehead like he was her uncle and walked out the door. Marshall Franklin was found dead near a set of rail road tracks in Illinois six months later, but before that, he never spoke of Jacob Hayes again -- though they were reacquainted every night in his dreams.

Ophelia's story became a ghost tale in their little community off Belt Street. Whenever there was a lull, or people appeared to move on to other news, someone would bring them back to that night. In that same six months the bank took Jacob's store back and Ophelia moved home with her mother. An icy tragic air replaced the party atmosphere that used to rain down on all who walked through their door.

"Ophelia's alright now. She was messed up for awhile, but she straight", her mother would announce to those who used to listen to her staticy radio and eat her cornbread hot from the skillet. But they found somewhere else to smack each other's back, laugh loudly and dance closely. When Ophelia's mother showed up to the party the good times left like air escaping from a poorly patched tire, and then she stopped going.

Early one Tuesday morning Jacob Hayes' sister took his few belongings from Ophelia's outstretched hands.
"I gave everything else away," Ophelia said.
"I understand, I'm sorry," said Jacob's older sister.
His sister dropped something. She picked up the charm.
"I remember this old thing," recalling it as the one her uncle had given Jacob when they were just kids. The medallion Jacob bragged about that entire summer.
"I had never seen him wear it before that night," Ophelia said.
"I'm sorry," his sister said again.

Staring at the twisted charm Jacob's sister gasped. What took her breath away from her was not the miraculous workmanship; it was the understanding of why her Uncle had made such a fuss about the piece. The cramped miniature inside looked exactly like Jacob.

Quite unexpectedly she felt the need to give it to the lonely single guy she worked with, his birthday was fast approaching and she was certain he would simply love it.

The End

Work Window

2009-04-11T19:42:00.000-07:00

Friend or foe? Shatterproof? Nothing to tuck fingers under, nothing to wrench against, a vertical hole of the world that does not open. Only shadows of diagonal, columns of light, glimpses of steel, peeks into a possibility…
Pieces of clear tape-scratched, broken, attempts to remove yet they remain. Square vertical strips, some tent shaped. Once holding memos of important information. Don't forget to put in your schedule, Dr. Jones will be covering for Dr. Lee on…If you have not signed up for your fire and safety class… Dirt flecks, specks of cheap institutional paint egg-shell white. Withered taupe curtains hang lazily, limply; the same curtains would have more vibrancy if they hung in a newlywed's bedroom, their first house. But these know they have no purpose so they remember that they are just thread. The overcast day wants to invite, but then understands that you are at work. ....
Past the window is Roscoe Blvd. but it could be any busy street. Union, Hill, Lincoln or Grand - anywhere that has grimy orange city buses which pass every hour with the Rock looking challenged, or Angelina Jolie appearing to be another woman than who she is. There is a light made of the same thing as the street the cars rush by on. Cars pause holding people inside, interiors a harried oasis of NPR or top 40 hits, Jack In the Box wrappers and accordioned reflectors to block out the sun that
is not there. ....

Landscapers dig. Striped-shirts with faded colors, darker under the arms but a different dark than their skin, bleached hair. They rest and then they step into holes they've just dug so only their chest can be seen. Half the men they once were. Clouds, peace in flight, mountains-stoic, promises of a past we were not a part of. A future that is questionable. The world moves by slowly, it can't be seen, something metaphysical. Time is reflected by the orange hand, the orange seconds (15, 14, 13, 12…) running to the opposite side and the white figure that reassures when to cross the intersection. Seven black birds with fat low hanging bellies swoop past, emboldened by companionship and purpose, they are there and then they are not, no longer seen but still somewhere past the hole of the world. ....

If glass is sand, then sand is glass but I don't think of the beach. The birds that flew by weren't seagulls with grey bodies and white throats. There is no pull and tug of the ocean from the tides, only the rush and grind of the engines from the street below. No smell of sea weed, no smell at all though I see fumes shooting out the back of big, old, trucks with sharp irregular branches and lawn mowers. No sound though I see mouths moving, eyebrows raised, mother's heads turned back where car seats hold children with kicking legs in red pants and white socks. ....
Everything's the same, but then it's brighter, yellowier, the volume is dialed up on the day as the sun comes out again, almost shining through the work window and into me, maybe it does. If I were not at work would the world, right here in this place, look the same? If I were not here to notice it out of this hole in the world?....

Overcast Days

2009-04-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

In most spots around the country, maybe even around the world an overcast day is nothing to mention, certainly nothing to write about. But that's in other places. In Los Angeles it creates a glorious mood, a world of potential. There is a feeling of being somewhere else. Since it's obviously still L.A. this tendency of mind wandering only lasts so long. The second you see the first palm frond lying on someones BMW hood you are reminded. But there are long-sleeved tops to choose from, sweaters to consider and warm tea's to embrace. Everything slows down and people stride with a purpose that's hard to imitate when it's over 85 degrees and sunny. The cool demands your body to go outside and see what is going on. Clouds cause you to lose track of time, dream-like, 4p.m. looks exactly like 10a.m. did, if not identical twins then close cousins. The day causes me to grab my MP3, (yes I am a freak and don't own an IPOD) and walk around my neighborhood, seeing all sorts of things I never notice when I'm driving. I make human eye to eye contact, exchange a smile or a word and really see the faces of babies in strollers. But when it's hot I can talk myself out of it. Sitcom repeats are funnier, the living room is nice and cool and the couch feels worn in just the right spots, the central air-hypnotic. What's my point? It's that I need to look up more. I need to remember the wonder of the change in the weather and not assume that days will always be sunny, that L.A. will always be bordering on a drought and that people are too busy to appreciate a cloud or two.

Life is to be Planned

2009-03-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

The management of modern life is a skill. Maybe it always has been, but until it hits you in that way it seems new and unique. Monitoring e-mails, messages on your cell phone, texts, what am I saying to people that is so important? Why do I need a phone plan with unlimited minutes and unlimited texts. At one time half of the people who were on my five favorites calling plan I saw all of the time anyway. Personally, I've learned to turn the T.V. off more and more. Not because it sounds like the cool thing that enlightened people espouse, but because I am aware of being sold something constantly. Most people don't even have money to buy things any longer but we keep watching and hoping to manipulate our finances to buy whatever they tell us to buy. So that we can feel...what? Part of society, complete, loved, important?

There's this great and wondrous thing I've found. It's called nature. I said this to someone the other day and they said, what? Nature? As if they hadn't thought of the word in years. As if it wasn't important, wasn't essential, because it required having to stand up and walk away from your laptop. Even when people are out they are distracted by ipods. I believe I deserve a few hours just for myself. No one needs to know where I am all of the time, I don't even know where I'm going all of the time. I want to go to the park and watch small dogs scurry around the legs of big dogs. I want to watch older kids push younger ones on the swing and hear the screaming and laughter that's sure to follow. I want to walk around my city, not drive but walk and get some exercise and make small talk with people I'll probably never see again. I want to be a part of nature again, I think I deserve that.

The New Old Wife

2009-03-23T13:59:00.001-07:00

I'm a writer. Two things about writers, we ask a lot of questions and we never conform. I was lucky that my parents understood me. They taught me about life by showing me who they were.
My mother was impossible not to eat up with a spoon. She was dynamic and daring and lived a life that could have been ripped straight from the headlines. Perfect for a Lifetime Special starring Diana Ross when she still made movies. My father was moody, pretentious, and narcissistic though lots of fun - if you weren't married to him. So where am I going with this? The constant in every relationship I witnessed -the pending marital affair, usually his, not hers. It was the climax of every good dramatic film, Tolstoy novel and woman about to get locked up over the weekend.

As a wife, it is exhausting waiting for the day it happens. And through the years, your free, unencumbered spirit becomes saddled with helpful tips from: popular magazines, older women and day time talk show hosts. You find yourself lingering on Dr. Phil's face as he listens to the tearful brunette confess that she got his password and checked his e-mail. Secretly, you want to be certain there's not some new innovation that entered the market while you slept, one able to answer the question you don't want answered. With each new technological advance, you feel yourself losing ground, trapped at the bottom of the mountain, looking up at the snow bank that is balanced precariously overhead. You wait for the thunderous crack and eventual avalanche that will bury the life you've worked so diligently to secure.

Back to my father, I'd already been married for about ten years when I asked him, "Are the affairs worth it? Is it worth losing mom over? You all still seem to have a lot of fun together…why?" He paused inside the mouth of my refrigerator and then turned to look at me as if we hadn't been formally introduced. But what followed that look was something even more shocking, an expression which assured me that the thought had never crossed his mind. "She's not going anywhere, she'll get mad, but she'll get over it. Your husband will cheat on you too." I played with the idea of getting the shells from the top of his closet, loading his shot gun and - well you get the picture. I realized that it was possible that my husband if not that day, then one day would answer this same question posed to him in the same way. It did not matter that we loved each other dearly, that our friendship began when we were pretty much in diapers. Once, the power of speech returned, I tried to reason with my father but I knew he felt this was his birth right, his universal payback for being male, dying earlier and possibly being drafted in some phantom war he was too old to fight in.

Later, to my horror, science concurred studying cells and brain matter while sociologists combed Aboriginal tribes and brothers in Brooklyn to document what they already knew for sure, mens need to spread their sperm throughout their life time. Nature propelled them towards 24" waists and 36"hips, no matter the girl's age or the history they had with current girlfriends or wives. So what's a girl to do?

Personally, I don't have the energy or the interest to check e-mails, hit the re-dial button on cell phones, time my husbands' trips or smell his clothes for unfamiliar wafts of female cologne. I'm sure there's some way to set up GPS to track cars but I won't do that at middle-age, I won't. And before this appears to be a male-bashing rant (hopefully it's not too late) I confess that I adore men. In fact, I want what they have, the ability to be married and single at the same time. They have pockets of time set aside in their day for husbandly duties, the rest of the time is theirs, I say bravo. How can a woman re-train her brain to do that? It's been staring us in the face since Adam and Eve's kids had kids, the affair. Emotional or physical makes no difference.

It has the most beautiful escape hatch ever created. It gives a woman herself back. Life's natural re-set button. I sit before you unapologetically myself again. Things I wouldn't have done for myself because it would have taken me away from my marriage and that ever looming possible affair somewhere in the distance. Wavering, steaming up mirage-like. But once the affair happens, (emotional, physical whatever) poof, the pressure is gone. Personally I could tongue kiss and send flowers to the other women out there, God love them. Because behind the rendezvous, panting breath and late night e-mail promises of eternal love, there was me. The chick I'd deserted to work 24/7 on making my marriage work. I'd left her in the dust, kicked her to the curb, like two day old spaghetti sitting in the back of the refrigerator when everybody has chipped in for a large sausage pizza.

The very act that was supposed to hurt me the most helped me find her again; luckily she wasn't too pissed off to answer my urgent pleas. Here before you stands the woman who no longer compromises every detail of her life, the person that floats down L.A. sidewalks with a grin, the person who is still truly loved by her husband and who she truly loves as well, but now her husband lives over there continuing to live the life he never stopped living and I'm living over here waking up slowly from a very long nap. I dreamed an odd dream that I will call, The 1980's Mid-West idea of a marriage, don't worry, it will grow on you.

So, welcome to the New Old Wife. It can't be a coincidence that the first letter of each word spells now, ain't life a hoot?

Dreams

2009-02-23T23:34:00.001-08:00

I haven't written in a while. Why haven't I written in a while? Life gets in the way of dreams if you let it. Life gets in the way of possibilities if you let it. Life can derail you from your gift if you let it. I think this particular mantra will be repeated by me for the next forty years or so until I remember it. Until I remember that jobs to pay the bills are always just that, there will always be a new worry to keep me up at night, there will always be a new movie, or t.v. show, or celebrity pregnancy to wonder about. But these things aren't more urgent than my words on this screen or on that yellow legal pad, they can never be.

Basquiat

2009-02-23T23:33:00.001-08:00

Went to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Basquiat Exhibit again. He was apparently the last of the Impressionist. It was interesting to see an artists who'd been interviewed about his own work. It was a giddy atmosphere, everybody drinking wine, a dj was playing music and everybody looked like they were having a good time except for the attendants who were working, keeping all the drunks from touching the art.
Some chick was screaming at the top of her lungs about the art being scary; she was high. The night was beautiful and I was hanging out with cool friends. Went downtown to the Standard and had a drink, was approached by a homeless woman named appropriately enough--Gabby. She had several opinions that she freely expressed. It was a night of drama. Couples barefoot arguing on the sidewalks, drunk chicks smoking and arguing over available men, and frustrated waitresses. Saturdays are great.

Full-time

2009-02-23T23:32:00.001-08:00

I read the perfect article in Poet and Writers Magazine. It interviewed authors who wrote and worked full-time jobs to pay the bills. It celebrated the art of discipline. Well,maybe I have it and maybe I don't, but it seems to all be working out okay for me so far.

Not sure how I'm balancing it all. Maybe I hadn't had the energy before because I didn't have the passion before. It seems as if writing has woke something up inside of me that has been asleep for a while. Grateful to the fingertips and the lap top. I want to do with words and characters what Louie Armstrong did with the sax in New York in the 30's. The characters in "Her" are starting to wake up now. Scratching their hair, rubbing their eyes and about to put the bottoms of their feet on the floor and get ready to go to work.

About to review some of Dina's work she is a quiet literary goddess.

Artsy

2009-02-23T23:31:00.001-08:00

Went to the Long Beach Art and Soundwalk, an installation of unique ways to utilize sound. I watched a guy play his upside down bicycle, now how's that for a Saturday night? A plant had music piping out of its roots and low and behold when you put on the headphones attached it was listening to 50 cent. I should've guessed, it was ever so slightly leaning to the side. Listened to the actual recording that Orson Welles did in the 30's about the Martians landing. The one that made more than a few people jump out of windows to avoid being probed by the aliens. I believe that was over reacting just a hair, but who am I to judge? I think there's plenty of room for aliens in the southwest. People in Montana just need to move over some. Long Beach has wonderful buildings, a mixture of the old and new; and the air was clear and fresh near the shoreline. I believe I'll open up my bottle of champagne just because it's Sunday, and I don't have anything to do but wait for friends to stop by with their bad movies and wait for my catfish to thaw.

The Split

2009-02-23T23:30:00.001-08:00

It can be difficult to split yourself into these dual people. The one that behaves in front of company: ie. co-workers, people at the gas station, on elevators. And then there's the real you, the one who doesn't get the opportunity to do what you want, when you want, how you want. Making it next to impossible to sit across from people at work, feigning interest, nodding politely, smiling over steaming cups of coffee, when all you really want to do is get one of those special swords Uma Thurman had in Kill Bill and start swinging. I need a day off.

Dedication

2009-02-23T23:29:00.001-08:00

I've been gone for a really long time. What happened to my dedication? What happened to my work ethic? What happened to my money? Well I'm back, having received yet another rejection, from yet another agent. Now how is that supposed to make me feel? I'm really not sure. But one thing I am sure about is that it makes me feel like an artist. A person who has handed a total stranger their complete soul, all of their inner workings and hidden secrets, only to be told (in a very professional way of course) "it's not for me sorry, maybe in your next life." Well, I return to the keyboard, on a new computer with new ideas and even more enthusiasm. Possibly I possess a sickness called optimism, but more likely I realize that I'm done anyway. If one person read my book and enjoyed it I'm going to finish the second draft of the sequel and have it finished by summer. Crazy hunh?

Alex

2009-02-23T23:27:00.001-08:00

I've gotten back the review copy for Alex. I'm excited and I have to calm down, take twenty deep breaths, because part of me (the immature part that needs Prozac) wants to return the book as is and say "they're great print them all as is," when I've already found ten things I need to change. But thank God for being 99, I know the world won't stop turning if I actually take the time to review the book properly so that I will be proud of what's on the shelf when I'm 199. I'm watching a rhino's butt on television right now. Some PBS station and I have to say they may be the ugliest mammals I've ever seen. I'm sure to another rhino that butt was amazing but I found it appalling. Maybe through some telepathic avenue I will never understand the rhino felt my displeasure, she is now taking off after the photographers and just for the record, ugly or not, rhino's can run. The photographers are laughing and screaming, but they seem to be doing more screaming. They got away, good thing they didn't get a flat. Okay I'm signing off, I have to find the remote, they're about to mate.

Caffeine

2009-02-23T23:26:00.001-08:00

Is it possible that a person can become too old for caffeine? I don't think it's a helpful substance, it makes me want to scream out loud while listening to mundane conversations. I stand there wondering if people know that I am considering the ramifications of shouting in their faces that "no one gives a damn what they fixed their son, dog, cat or husband to eat last night for dinner". Yet I stand there nodding, smiling and even once in a while throw in interesting tid bits of my own. I only notice these moments after a strong cup of coffee. There must be something about those small brown beans, or the steaming hot water swimming with chemicals from some leaking manufacturing company they'll expose two years from now.
There was a traffic jam of such magnitude yesterday that the 405 North was completely shut down right before rush hour. A woman called into a radio show saying it took her two hours to drive two miles. She could've crawled faster. The only thing sadder than this is when I asked people to guess how long it took her and one said, "Oh probably three hours." I tell myself it's because my story led him to suspect a ridiculously long amount of time. Another person wasn't surprised, just shrugged his shoulders. I personally am going to raise a donkey behind my apartment building, initially he'll be in my apartment, I'll raise him as if he were a dog that just kept growing, got out of control if you will, and then I'm going to ride him to work. He has to go faster than two miles in two hours. I don't know what to do with all of this traffic outrage. I think I need a cup of coffee.

Reading

2009-02-23T23:25:00.001-08:00

Had a wonderful time at the reading on Saturday and got a chance to meet new L.A. authors, always a pleasure. It was really hot that day and traffic was incredibly dense and retarded. I stopped at Jamba Juice because I'd given myself over an hour and a half for a twenty minute trip, on arriving I had fifteen minutes to spare. I lost my mapquest directions immediately after leaving the driveway but my driver knows how to get everywhere if he's been there once. Yeah, for my driver. Everyone needs one here, this person may be your mother, father, husband, roommate, lover, their label is totally irrelevant, their navigational skills--essential. There was a great crowd, coffee, cookies and a bathroom, what more can humans ask for? Have another one in San Pedro on March 24th maybe I'll leave my house on the 22nd and get there on time.

I'm Trouble

2009-02-23T23:24:00.001-08:00

It's funny how the people you've known all of your life are the same, yet different. They know they've changed but are not sure when it happened. Secretly, and in the dead of night it has happened to me. I started to become one of those. The one that creates a small smile and a shake of their head while tossing an "I know the feeling," glance at the girl who thought it was an excellent idea to run into Walgreen's on Sunday morning in her little black dress with hooker heels from last night. The angel was pulling her hem down all the way to the cash register. We've all been there, at least once.
There's some momentary nostalgia yes, but the interesting thing is you don't want to keep going to the same address all of the time. There are other boulevards to explore. I don't think I'm better than the girl from Walgreen's I have been the girl at Walgreen's, I have just chosen to go down another street and through a different door.
It's a calmer door with sunshine, plants and kittens curled up on the sill. Candles, wine (on emergencies a little weed) good friends and different foods to experiment with. As opposed to the door the police may kick in at any moment because they're fairly sure Pookie lives there, the smoke detector is alarming, you don't have any clean panties to where to work and you think you may have enough gas to get there but you're not sure.
Maybe scenario B is a place where we all must travel. But don't stay there long it is a place to vacation, not a place to build a condo. And when it's time, it's okay to cut crazy loose. The formula which informs you that you're done is when you are exhausted yet everyone around you seems to be having the time of their life. Don't worry, you won't be lonely, crazy will want to visit often. But more importantly, with a new found distance from the insanity, you'll better be able to see foolishness walking drunkenly toward all the way down the street. They'll be handling a great big neon sign announcing, 'I'M TROUBLE', if you take the time to look. Stay strong all of my sisters. I think the next Walgreen's girl will catch my eye, and hopefully not look away ashamed I'm going to judge her, I never would. After all, she's the fun one to get into conversations with at the bars.

UPS

2009-02-23T23:23:00.001-08:00

The title of this blog initially was going to be why I hate UPS. But I suppose it was my fault. I should've known the crazy, exciting world of shipping and delivery was all screwy. There's ground shipping, air shipping, super fast, super-mega fast, all boiling down to the we'll get it to you when we damn well please. You live and learn. Plans were meant to be re-arranged I suppose. Going with the flow is a concept I am bound and determined to adopt more readily. I forget that because something means the world to me at this juncture, it's just another day in hell to people who have to deal with my phone call or frantic e-mail message. Parts of me are grateful there is a system to rail against, other larger parts want that system to be perfect and at my beck and call. Did Bill Gates sit in his garage decades ago missing the prom, so I could bitch about my day dealing with the good people @ UPS? Well, truthfully I think so.

“C’mon Baby”

2009-02-23T23:22:00.001-08:00

It fell off her tongue, a desperate want, a sweet urgent plea, almost musical, almost inspired. She only meets my eyes briefly, I meet hers briefer still. If my embarrassment for her escapes she will become angry, she will hold me responsible. The one she’s cornered, her potential, will have time for second thoughts, he might leave her standing in the hot sun, palm extended, frantic.
She takes both hands to her breasts holding herself there, causing them to bounce erratically. It once was a sure thing. An action done in earlier years when less drugs lived inside of her; an action that would’ve guaranteed a reaction; possibly a moan, now just silence, sadness. She is accustomed to offering her body for: money, pesos, dolares, shekels? Her dirty skirt rides up just enough to be enticing; her thick mottled thighs will rub together when she walks away. She goes quickly from one to another, the harder men dismissing her with grunts and loathing, while always keeping her eyes on the soft quiet man. I bask in the uncertainty that radiates from him. He seems to know that it must be bad for her though she dances and sways as if this is exactly where she chooses to be. One could imagine that if offered Egypt, China or Rome, she would choose to stand on Central Ave. at the Chevron station begging for change, begging for money.
Her color is the same as mine and though I am not dancing, I hear the song as well. Her full asymmetrical hips tell me she has a child at home, one with long black lashes and a tooth missing in front. Her tone announces that she doesn’t care about such things; neither she nor I believe that. The nice man allows her to hold the pump handle and guide the nozzle into the small circular blackness. Her entirety softens, becomes even more feminine, a vixen watching the numbers ascend as they make the sound that only a gas station pump can make. A bearded man twitches while he sits on the curb trying not to watch, trying to appear as if they are not together. He doesn’t want the men to see that her thick dance is for him as well. That he too will be able to kiss the needle once the sound stops, the sound that only ascending numbers from a gas station pump can make.
I never saw money exchange hands but I did see her glow, blaze with contentment. I did see the man that had been sitting on the curb begin to stand roughly, the smile on his face making his tangled beard move. They begin walking away in the direction of Central that I dare not take. In the direction of darkness even though the sun shines brightly. The man and I exchange a glance that lasts no longer than mine did with the dancing woman. His stare informs me that I belong on the other side of the city. The L.A. where school boys in starched white shirts, dark pants and helmets ride motorized skate boards and moderately muscled men walk dogs the size of mosquitoes. I have not fooled them. I belong on wide streets with pristine landscaping…so do they.
I don’t suspect I’ll ever see her again, or maybe I’ll see her every time I pump gas at that station. Her hair will still be tangled and twisted, smelly though I will not stand close enough to smell it. Her companion will still ignore her until she has done what he can not do. She will still not be wearing a bra though her hands will find there way up to her breasts to begin the sirens song all over again.

L.A.

2009-02-23T23:21:00.001-08:00

You know you haven't been posting regularly enough when you can't remember your password and the note you've written to yourself as a reminder is wrong. I've been very busy in the real world which I have to remember to visit periodically. In that world I've had to buy myself a home and change jobs. But now I'm back, I visited the museum today, saw Terrence Howard and now I'm back on track. I love L.A.

Bad Things

2009-02-23T23:19:00.002-08:00

If bad things come in three's then how do good things come? In four's, in hours, days, weeks or years? Every second can be this complete and perfect life time. If I can only remember that. It's easier to remember when it's quiet and I'm quiet. When I don't have the radio and t.v. on at the same time. When I don't see the flickering images that seem hungry for my waning time here. There seems to be an urgency by the media to tell me something.Something that is so important I won't be a whole person without the knowledge.
The volume goes up for no reason at all and there's a smiling, shiny woman in a yellow sweater smelling her towels fresh from the dryer. They need me to change. To become more regular, for my teeth to be whiter, for me to stand taller, be smarter, be happier and sleep better. I can do all of those things when I'm quiet.
All year we work to get that vacation. And then we race to pack for that vacation, and then we race through the airport to sit on the plane so that it can rush us through the air to get to a place to look at other people relaxing. We race to relax in a different place with new and different clothes on. I wonder if the people in Iraq and Afghanistan think we're relaxed? I wonder if they want to be us. We fight them so they can be more like us. So that they can rush to work after that cup of Grande Latte. I'm not saying that other people have all the answers, they don't have them either, but neither do we. It's okay to say that. People know it's true anyway. The hardest thing in the world to be is humble.
This is a late night rant I know, have to go to bed soon, but I just have to say that this consumer is full. I've been watching since the 60's and I'm full.

Bad

2009-02-23T23:19:00.001-08:00

Illumination

2007-12-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

Capturing the world in the blink of an eye. Feeling the wind on the back of your neck. Hearing Steve Perry hit the high note in "Don't Stop Believing", celebrating your mother's 68th birthday, seeing your best friend coming out of the sliding glass doors at the airport, submerged under the bubbles reading a new book, the smell of puppy breath, a snow flake landing on your eye lid, the strain of your arch in your favorite high-heeled shoes, wood popping in the fireplace, the orange that only comes from summer sunsets, the sound of the choir getting to their feet for their last number, the first time you hear, "momma," then everything is clear, and I know that I am alive.

Recession

2007-12-17T21:02:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure I don't have to wait for another human being to explain to me whether or not I'm experiencing a recession. Fruit and vegetables are as expensive as diamonds since we've decided they are healthy and essential.

My friend fills his tank and it cost him over $75. Middle-aged white men in tailored suits, expensive hair cuts and manicures, continue to enlighten us, continue to assure us that all our answers are in Ross, Disneyland, or Toys R-Us.

These same men sit in front of cameras on Sunday morning, interviewing each other, hoping we continue to shop though they feel obligated to tell us to save a bit of money... if we feel like it, if we already have everything we want. Do you have everything you want? What is missing? Are your kids tall enough? Are your teeth straight enough? Is your boyfriend cute enough? Is your dog smart enough? I've visited this land called enough and it is a grand and wondrous place.

I have enough. I know enough. I love enough.
There are more things to learn, see and become but I choose not to go at the harried pace set by a New York advertising agency. I don't need to analyze the numbers, look at the economic indicators. I see it in the face of young mother's at cash registers, watch friends make phone calls to get extra shifts, listen to customers yell at pharmacists while holding onto small orange bottles full of expensive white pills. We are lucky to live here they say, we are blessed.

The blessed are going through a recession, the blessed need to save.

MASTER

2005-07-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

I've always been envious of people who lived during the Harlem Renaissance, or the roaring 20's because things were new then. Bonnie and Clyde, prohibition, Louis Armstrong...in a world of so many people, so many choices, what do you do to say I've got something I want the world to see. Maybe it's always been like this, I don't know, it's the first time I've been here but I've written a book called Master and it has to be read. So I learned to use a computer, talked to complete strangers in the post office, ran my cart into people in the grocery store and now my tentacles are reaching through your computer. So my sister Wanda and I...(I haven't told her yet) are going to be here until you buy it. www.bridgetmorrow.com