Century #5: The Fly in the Basement

Posted on February 6, 2011 by randomyriad

11/7/1988

I have to turn on the light now as darkness has come into my basement office. This is where I write. The silhouettes of trees stand against the last gray background of this long wet day. It is autumn and that means rain and cold at the northern end of Puget Sound where I live at the top of a small mountain.

A silent fat fly weaves slowly by my face making a moving shadow on the whitewashed cinder block wall. I can’t see my shadow except for the movement of my fingers on the keyboard, the rest of me inseparable from the darkness outside of the small dome of light.

My fingers are cold and I am noticing the rest of my body is chilled.  I rise about 5:30 get a large cup of coffee and carefully bear it down the steep wooden stairs each morning to write before I head to work. The mornings have been growing progressively colder as they bend toward the end of the year, but even in the summer it is cool down here. Soon I will have to light the wood stove in the corner before I get to work.

The fly is back and is creating a painting from moisture, using its proboscis to systematically cover a space with numerous tiny circles of spit. I wonder if it is sentient. Maybe it is trying with its last energy to communicate with other sentient beings before it dies. The fly is moving down and around the inside of the glass planting its foot-shaped appendage quickly stamping 4 or 5 rough circles, slightly overlapping, and then shifting its body and legs, covering another tiny space on the glass with almost microscopic circles. It has moved almost halfway around the glass at this point.

I am starting to feel hungry. I must leave the mystery of the fly and get something to eat. I wonder what I will find when I come back down. I wonder what the fly knows.

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I Got Nothin’

Posted on February 6, 2011 by randomyriad

It has been a long, long week, and my mind is toast. I have been searching for something to put some words around, but nothing sticks. It is like my brain is made of teflon. I think I will work on  tomorrow’s writing. Today has passed me by and I will let it go.

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We Can Do Better Than This.

Posted on February 4, 2011 by randomyriad

I am watching the unfolding situation in Egypt with a combination of empathy and shame. As a believer in individual freedoms and open democracy I hope that the Egyptians are able to make some of this happen in their country. My shame comes from the fact that people in my country who have power have used it to help a dictator move his country into the desperate situation Egypt is in. It is not like this is the first time either. Over and over again our corporate/military/intelligence “?” community has supported power hungry despots over populist democracies. It always comes back to bite us (Iran, Iraq, The Former Yugoslavia, Viet Nam you get the picture). Now we see our leaders walking a tightrope of rhetoric to extricate our country from culpability and complicity, and once again our credibility in the world is damaged. We hold ourselves up as a shining light of freedom while we assist in the oppression of the rest of the world. The hypocrisy and duplicity is laid bare for the world to see. The question is how do we stop our government from supporting dictators and corrupt governments in our “national interests”. How do we change our idea of what is our national interests to a strategy more beneficial to everyone in our planetary community?

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Century #4: The Drop Off

Posted on February 3, 2011 by randomyriad

Girl Abandoned

4/17/1986

It was 4:56 am  on a Sunday under a black sky with grey patches. Snow lay in smudges with grass poking out here and there. Next to the snow is a road winding up into the hills around a dark lake. The sound of water lapping on a shore issues from out of the dimness. A car pulls off the road on the gravel shoulder and crunches to a stop. A woman dressed in a light sweater and thin dress jumps out of the front passenger door and blows on her hands hopping from foot to foot. A girl of about 4 opens the back driver side door and slides down. The woman in the driver seat looks back over the seat as the little girl climbs down. As the girl passes the headlights they illuminate her tight copper curls and pale cheek. She prances giddily about. The woman standing by the car reaches into the car and pulls out plastic shopping bag. She reaches for the child’s hand and says something to her handing her the bag and stuffs a wad of lined paper in the girls coat  pocket. The woman points to some stairs up to a house. The child looks worried and squints in the beam of the headlight. The woman points again, kisses her cheek, and gives her a push. The child slouches toward the stairs peering back at the woman. She puts one foot on the stairs. The woman waves and jumps in the car which immediately does a U turn before the door is completely closed. The girl stops with small mouth hanging, darkness, headlights, darkness. She sits on the steps at the bottom of the stairs and shivers bag in hand. Finally after an hour or so she leans her head on the rail post. Her small hand falls from its warm nesting place in her coat pocket, and the bundle of paper drops into a pile of snow at the base of the rail post under the bottom stair.

About an hour later a middleaged woman came to the top of the stairs in grey pre-dawn in sensible walking shoes and light jacket, tan pants and plaid shirt. She looked puzzled at what appeared to be a pile of discarded clothing at the bottom, but as she moved down the girl’s form took on life, and the woman increased her pace, a curious panic that the child might be dead took hold as she neared the bottom. But as she approached and put her hand on the child’s face she could see definite signs of life. The child shivered slightly in her sleep, and the color of her cheek although pale had the slight pink of life.

“Have you been out here all night, honey?” the woman asked with a penetrating gaze on her face.

The child moaned and looked around blearily.

“Can you walk, sweetie?” the woman relaxed a little into a tentative smile.

the girl stretched and shivered looking up shyly nodding her head slightly.

“Well, come with me, and we’ll get you warmed up a little. Then you can tell me what is going on.”

The woman supported the girl with one arm, her other hand on the rail. They climbed the steep steps slowly, the girl swaying into the woman’s hip and hand and back into the arm behind her. The bundle of papers lay soaking in the moisture of the melting snow at the bottom under the step.

Posted in Fiction, novel projects, Of the Road and The River, Telling Stories, Voices in the Chorus, winter | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Century #3: Clouds

Posted on February 2, 2011 by randomyriad

August 4, 1991

 the short war was over. Derek came to the city. The city was clicking and buzzing with raw, nervy energy.

Even though he was no good at playing the games that lead to advancement, his skill with helicopters engines and computers had made him indispensable to his unit and his commanding officers. So he was a corporal on leave wondering what to do next. He had always followed chance. He had an image in his mind of himself as a leaf blown here and there. As the wind shifted, he would allow himself to be carried along with it. He was always able to end up in a decent position, nothing to complain about.

Heavy rain just before dawn woke him from dreams he forgot almost immediately. The large drops pounded on the Balcony and metal roof of the shanty inn.

Tatters of cloud shredded in front of the scattering wind were set aflame by the lowering sun. In his mind he could hear a requiem mass with thundering bass and piercing soprano altogether in clamorous harmony with the sky. Here and there notes of vivid blue opened and closed in the higher dark gray blanket untouched by the sun’s fire. The city was sodden, weighed down under constant rain, drooping and sullen, but the sky and mind music lifted Derek’s spirit as he walked hopping over puddles with shoulders hunched down in the collar of his drab green coat, and hands pushed deep in its pockets. He knew in other places nearby houses were under water, rivers were raging at the top of their levees and people were frantically filling sandbags that other people heaved into place to forestall the inevitable overflow. Derek, who had nothing to keep dry but himself, was not worried.

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