Scene Storming: "Surface"

More practice for me. Thanks for your patience. I know the ending is contrived. I haven't learned how to do it better yet. With gratitude again to Darnell Arnoult at Dancing with the Gorilla who gets me going when I am good and stuck.

When she arrived at the supermarket, the parking lot surface shimmered with puddles rippling in the low areas left after the new tar job. “A quick trip for milk and I’m out of here,” she muttered, pulling her skirt down behind her as she slipped off the high seat. “God, I hate driving this thing.” Grabbing the handle, she tugged at the rusted door with two hands, swinging it closed with a clunk that left her arms vibrating. “Seven years ago I was only going to have to use the truck a year or two. Yea, right,” as she walked away from the fourteen-year-old pick-up toward the store.

She tried not to look at the Mercedes SUV’s, the BMW’s she passed, ignoring the shining black Lexus that inched out as the driver waited for her to walk behind him. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” she chanted to herself as she walked through the revolving door. “It gets me where I want to go. That’s all I need, right? At least the grocery-store-side of the parking lot is paved again. If I had to walk through the mud one more time to buy a gallon of milk, I swear I’d shoot myself,” she thought, glancing to the other side of the lot, where a sign explained that a restaurant and designer shops were taking shape, amid a dusty construction zone.

Her high heels clacked as she walked the five miles to the refrigerated section at the far corner of the store, wondering for what seemed like the thousandth time why they couldn’t put a milk display up front. Checking the date on a plastic carton, she heaved it under her arm.

Inhaling, she acknowledged that it wasn’t the truck itself that was getting to her, or the parking lot. They were her scapegoats. After a day like today, something always needed to be. The truck didn’t bother her usually. With Darryl out of work for so long last year, and for six months the year before that, they were lucky to have any wheels at all.

Beat up as it was, the truck had, after all, been with them for the whole of their marriage. They bought it together, two weeks before the wedding, pooling together most of their cash and taking out their first loan so they could drive it on their honeymoon to a campsite up in the White Mountains. It had seen them safely through many an icy winter, plowing out their driveway as well as three of their neighbors’, and it never slowed down over any of the countless weekends they had driven down the rutted track to the cabin at the lake. It had even taken a fifteen-hundred-mile, mid-summer journey down to Florida non-stop without complaint. Smiling, she remembered last Fourth of July when after the fireworks, Darryl took a detour down a deserted fire road, just as he had when they were teenagers, into darkness that feathered soft and warm, and how his breath smelled of spearmint as he leaned in toward her.

But earlier today she had jammed the shift into first gear, and then stomped on the accelerator too hard while recalling the endless phone calls she’d been required to take at the office. The truck had squealed and jerked forward, then filed a protest by stalling mid-intersection, with a trail of honking commuters stacked up far behind her.

It wasn’t her fault that the XQ30 was recalled for safety reasons. But she was the Senior Customer Service Manager and her job description required that she allow people to vent at her as if she was the one who designed it. All day long she had listened as angry voices demanded to know how soon the two-inch part that would get their backhoes back in service could be shipped. And all day long she had replied: “I hear your frustration, sir. We will get it out to you as fast as possible. No sir, we don’t recommend you drive your vehicle until the part has been replaced. We have been informed that there have been incidents where the machine has failed to stop. Please accept our apologies.”

“And now this damn truck,” she had said between gritted teeth, as she sat in the intersection, turning the key and praying the engine would turn over. Coughing and choking, it did, spewing grey smoke in a haze behind her as she pulled in to purchase the milk.

Ten minutes later, in line at the automatic check-out she fidgeted with her keys behind the elderly woman who didn’t know how to use the scanner. Closing her eyes for a brief instant, she sighed, then stepped forward, demonstrating how to scan her courtesy card, and then the bar-code on her items; pointing to the correct button to push when the woman was ready to pay. Concentrating on the smile the woman offered her, she felt herself relax. “This is what I like to do. Help people. I’m good at it. It’s not the truck’s fault that people were over-the-top mad today. I would be too.” Checking herself out, she resolved to have more patience, to be kinder to the vehicle that in truth had been part of their family, a part of their lives, for so many years.

Pocketing her change that spit from the automatic dispenser, she heard snaps and static as a voice over the intercom called, “Will the owner of a green Ford pick up, license 573WIP please come to the customer service center?” Eyes wide, she looked up at the clerk bagging an order at the end of the next aisle,

“Did you hear the crash?” He asked her. “A backhoe outside just drove into some old pick-up truck.”

Performance

A contra-dance of snowflakes—partnering, grabbing hands, shifting, circling, touching shoulders, stepping off—textured flecks merging to liquid on a heated windshield—droplets, tracking down, a step, a stop, Promenade left, Allemande right, pausing on a beat, flowing forward, bumping an obstacle, splitting apart, clear ants sashaying back to the nest, parallel sequences chasing themselves, down a speckled windshield.

On the Bright Side

Wow! I have been negligent in posting the Happy Award that Tamika gave me several days ago, into my sidebar and now I have been honored again by Tabitha at Through my Eyes. I'm reluctant to bore you though, so if you are interested, here is my "Ten things that make me happy" post. I’ll add to last week's list, this online world, where people are so kind and encouraging and helpful. I’m grateful to you all!



Gosh though, it’s funny to receive this award today. I am not supposed to look at what I write in my Morning Pages exercises, and for the most part, have not. But, today the following surfaced, as I wrote: “So often we spend life doing what we think we should do, and fail to realize that we’ve buried what we must do. Then for some reason, the status quo changes and the ‘must do’s’ revolt and shoulder aside the clutter. As a result, life opens up, grows bigger, like a multi-colored piñata stuffed with surprise gifts, instead of sheer white curtains wafting by an open window. Time becomes less about minutes to live through, and more about moments to discover.”

Perhaps this sounds naive and trite, but as I wrote it I was thinking of the job I had up until last year--how I methodically plodded through my days, scheduled and routine, marching through life but missing it, stuck between a good pay-check and what I thought was a too-hard place. Then a shovel arrived, disguised as a pink slip, and I’ve emerged, digging myself out as if after a fierce snowstorm, brushing off my sleeves, unwinding the cotton strips that entombed my mummified spirit.

There are anxious moments each day to be sure. But here’s the thing. Every morning (once I get over the fact that it is still dark out), I rise engaged and motivated, with things on the agenda to look forward to. That drag-myself-out-of-bed-moaning, “Ugh, I have to go to that place again” feeling no longer descends. The room may be black but the gloom has dissipated, slipping like the cold through the leaks in our aging windows. Anxiety and fear still surface, but they are rocks that I kick as I walk along the road, flat stones I throw side-armed as I skip them into a calm teal sea.

I'm knocking on wood as I write this and searching for my rabbit's foot. I'll cross myself a few times just to make sure. After tossing some spilled salt over my shoulder though--I'll say this: Yup, I'm pretty sure this is what happy feels like.

The Happy 101 awards simply reflect it.

Feast or Famine, Of Course

I’m going to keep this short today. I am two classes behind on my on-line writing course, and have a brochure to write for a non-profit, with my fingers crossed that another job will be coming along soon. Sorry to say that The Artist’s Way has been relegated to the bottom of the pile which, kick myself, is NOT where it is supposed to be.

So instead of a Middle Passages post, I’d like to ask you to click over to, and read the last few posts at Where Sky Meets Ground, by Jon Paul, a writer, and a helicopter pilot currently based in Baghdad. Jon Paul wrote a hysterical account of a fictional job interview about a helicopter pilot trying to get a position as a writer (read both posts). Those of you who know my past will understand why the topic resonated with me, but it was his writing that kept me laughing.

Without further ado, I give you Jon Paul, at: Where Sky Meets Ground.

Enjoy.

A Hunger for Words

“The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way.

Saturday my husband, daughter and I drove to Rhode Island on a preliminary college reconnaissance mission. After strolling through curving asphalt paths past the red-brick buildings at University #2, we took a detour through Providence, up through Federal Hill to a specialty Italian Food Emporium that I visited seven years ago, but have not been to since.

We had no plan to purchase, only to wander around the large central glass case where soft lights shined on home-made Italian delicacies, layered lasagnas, breaded eggplants, stuffed green artichokes, bracciole and hard sticks of imported pepperoni. My mouth salivated at the bins of briny olives, wedges of salty Parmigiano Reggiano, meaty slabs of prosciutto, expensive green olive oils, and balsamic vinegars that pour like syrup. We inhaled the scent of garlic and stared at the side wall-freezers stacked with frozen flavored raviolis—butternut squash, lobster, mushroom and cheese.

Around us, clerks spoke in Italian accented English, and in the corners, white haired men sat at marble tables, black button-up shirts opened at the neck as they sipped red wine and a yellow drink I took for Limoncello. Any temptation we had to open our wallet faded at the line of customers stacked two deep in front of a smiling cashier. We left, after savoring the complimentary pizzelle slathered with Nutella a cheerful clerk offered us, wishing for five more circuits through the store, a bottomless purse, and a walk-in freezer back home in which to store the delicacies. Can you believe that we only went to look?

Of course I longed to buy things at the store in Providence, but rationalized not doing so by labeling it a big-picture visit. We would have relished the Nicoise olives I wanted to buy, the quarter pound of textured cheese I imagined ordering, the anticipation of dinner as we plunged lobster ravioli into boiling salted water—we would have savored it all—but then—it would have been gone—a short term extravagance, swallowed and then forgotten.

Instead I left empty-handed but dreaming about the store offerings, which I subsequently cataloged to use at my own discretion. Now that the images and smells from Saturday reside in my memory, I can pull them out when I want to serve them in a story, as an appetizer or a dinner, arranged on a bright blue terracotta platter beside a stem of plump red grapes and a sweating bottle of chilled white wine. I can slice hard sausage and place it in layers on a decorative plate along with ripe tomatoes and dripping mozzarella, dribbling the whole thing with aged balsamic. I can serve steaming artichoke hearts and lemon aioli beside plump stuffed mushrooms, using an ornate silver spoon—or slather garlic infused white bean puree onto toasted ciabatta bread, sprinkling the tops with chopped green parsley.

I can eat until my stomach protests, or graze, an olive here, a sliver of cheese there, a dip of bread into a simmering pink vodka sauce. The feast can arrive at midnight, or three in the morning or for breakfast, and I can offer it to friends or eat it all by myself, licking my fingers one by one when finished. In brief, I can dish up whatever I want, when I want, with whom I want, and however I choose to design the layout of the luxurious repast, well, it all came to me for free.

And, if that’s not enough, Saturday I uncovered a bonus. If someday, all this imagining gets to me, the store sells selective items via mail order.

With Words Like These...

Who needs pictures?

I write because some day, I want to be a person who creates snippets like these, from The Whole World Over by Julia Glass:

“He was trained, she’d always thought, to use silence the way the Old Masters used white. The surface of a pearl, the shaft of light from a window, the glint on a chalice or a dagger.”

Or these, about a woman who’s had a brain injury, from the same novel:

“Riding on the train, she’d notice how highway signs were precisely the same green and white as those woven plastic lawn chairs (was that on purpose?), how she felt like a drop of water sliding fast through a long glass tube, how railroad ties were no longer made of dark motley wood but plain old concrete. But perhaps she had known and felt all these things before. At such times, she saw her brain as one of those pocket puzzles composed of numbered square tiles in a grid; the tiles had merely been mixed up like crazy, and now her work was to move them side to side, up and down, till she got them back in order.”

These two paragraphs stopped me dead. How did she come up with those images?

Ah, yes, there is nothing like good writing—Julia Glass, winner of a National Book Award for Fiction and, fellowship recipient from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Hmmm, a goal to aim for—writing like Julia Glass—nothing wrong with lofty aspirations, I suppose. It makes sense right now though, to start a bit closer to the ground beginning with the following shameless plug.

Thanks to Simon, over at Constant Revision who mentioned it on his blog, I’ve entered a contest called “Why I Write” at The Editor Unleashed. My entry was culled from a Middle Passages post I wrote this autumn called "Scotch Anyone?" If you’d like to read it (and popular ranking plays a part, so you’ll be my best friend if you do), click on the "Scotch Anyone" link.

The contest is open until the end of the month if you want to enter; the top 50 will go on for further judging.

Old Enemies

An assignment in The Artist’s Way, requires that we record a real life “horror story” that resulted in “damage to our creative self-worth.” Per the author, “It is necessary to acknowledge creative injuries and grieve them.” For the most part, I think she anticipates that enemies are others--outside parties who question the artist’s skills. In my case, the enemy resided within. I can’t change the past, but I can recognize it, mourn it, and crumple it up in the fireplace before touching it with a match. Join me if you like, in front of the crackling flames.


At the end of my freshman year of college, I jumped off the “undecided” fence I was straddling and dipped myself into black ink by declaring myself a Journalism Major. The school hosted a small department--two cranky full-time professors who may or may not have once been journalists, one part-time teacher who also ran the sports section of the local newspaper. He was the one I liked the most.

Toward the end of sophomore year, our “final exam” in Cranky Professor #2’s class involved conducting a bona fide interview with a public official. I was shy, shy, shy, and back then; it took little for what confidence I had to trickle out of me like water from a low-flow sprinkler. Too scared to knock on the door of some stranger, I constructed my own little press conference by convincing a friend in class that we could interview the Chief of Police together.

She knew better, I’m thinking, but agreed. Off we went, making sure to write and ask our own questions, take our own notes, and author our own feature articles. Our collaboration, if you call it that, occurred because we sat in the same place at the same time. Since writing was always the easy part; my article flowed from me. The story contained a stellar hook; I remember it went something like: “As a boy, Joe Smith always wanted to be a policeman. Now he’s proud to be chief.” I passed in my completed assignment feeling pretty darn tickled with myself.

The day he returned our graded articles, the teacher walked around handing them out one by one. As he approached my desk, I gasped at the red “F” at the top of my paper--staring in disbelief at his comment: “Miss M--- says this is her story!!” I looked in shock at my friend and she waved her paper marked C+. Of course I should have waited until after class, but instead raised my hand and asked why he failed me. He offered a condescending comment her paper getting in first, and rather than bawling in class, I stomped out.

It was clear, whether it was his plan or not, the professor had called my bluff. I was a chicken, and chickens don’t make it in the rough and challenging field of investigative journalism. It galled however, the way he arbitrarily assigned the failing grade to me. Not that I was wishing it on my friend; I wasn’t. But she never claimed it was “her” story; he never asked. The F landed with me simply because hers landed closer to the top of his pile.

In looking back I thank God, that I, and not the friend I had coerced, was the one that got the F. Back then though, the unequal punishment chewed at me. Deep down I knew I had dug my own hole; I had to build a ladder and climb out. The next day I marched up the steps to the professor’s office in my wooden clogs. During that meeting, in which he informed me that my paper would have been graded an A, I was successful making my point about the unequal treatment in his grading. He granted me a second chance to complete the assignment.

Leaving his office, I walked the three miles to town and interviewed the Postmaster, returned to my room, pounded out an article on my manual typewriter and marched it back to the professor’s office. I remember the hook to that story too: “Some people dislike their jobs, but the Postmaster of Winooski never feels out of sorts.” Grade on that one: A-

Sadly though, after I proved myself, I caved. Rather than admitting I could, indeed, conduct interviews with strangers, and write a damn good story to boot, I rationalized all over the place about how unjust the punishment had been. I wasn’t going to put up with it, no sir. Within the week, I confided my woes to the head of the English Department and switched majors. Two years later I graduated with no clue as to what to do.

The irony to this story of which I am not proud, is that seven years after that life-altering class, I fell into a career in an HR Recruitment role in which I spent anywhere from 50% to 90% of the time interviewing strangers. Unfortunately, the position did not require me to write.

Should have, would have, and could have… nothing now but phrases to warm my hands by. If I had toughed it out all those years ago though, I might have learned to do both.

Did you have enemies to your creative self-worth? How did you banish them?