Six Years Baby!

Yep, that's how long I've been writing. I mean the creative stuff, the novels and poems and short stories. Six years today I rested my laptop on my knees and began BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, a story that took my character Benjamin and I longer and further than I ever imagined.

Writing back then, I felt a tad insane--I had never felt so compelled to do something. But writing then was a compulsion, one that kept me writing 3, 4, 5 hours after my children and husband went to sleep. I think of those first 4 months as a manic rush to get Benjamin's story down, before the words dried up. That first very naive draft ended up at 183,000 words. Since then, the story has taken many turns, adding the second perspective of Phoebe, murdering a handful of secondary characters, interweaving multiple subplots, hacking out more than 80,000 words. The novel is finished--for now--though I contemplate yet another drastic surgery.

Six years is a long time. I figure since then I have written more than half-a-million new words. And probably three times more words rewritten in the revisions. These words find form in 2 full novel, 1 partially-completed novel, 72 micro-fictions, a dozen short stories, and 135 poems. Oh, and 505 blog posts on this blog. Them's a lot of words. A lot of hours. In OUTLIERS, his ground-breaking book about the exceptional, Malcolm Gladwell says to become good at something you need to practice it for 10,000 hours. By my own estimates, I figure I write between 1,500 and 2,000 hours a year. I am good writer, certainly better than I was this day six years ago, but I still have a long way to travel to great.

And that's okay. My heart trills when I see the progress I've made as a novelist, a short story writer, a poet. Writing still brings me joy--joy in the product but more, joy in the process. I love the challenge each new idea brings me. I like to think it keeps me young in my soul if not in the body.

Thank you for following my writing journey, for sharing your words and thoughts. Here's to another six years, baby!

And for those of you looking for my second small stone, please go==>HERE.

Peace...

IDES OF MARCH

Today Ben, my favorite character, turns 31. So young, though I feel I have known him for a long, long time. A bit of sadness with this birthday -- I sense him leaving me, I sense myself leaving him, thinking of new characters, like Kay, who will leave all that's good for a pipe-dream, and Jesse and Luke, two high school kids trying to fool the neighbors and the social workers into thinking their parents are still alive. Below, an excerpt from Ben's 20th birthday, definitely in the vein of the March of Ides after a humiliating morning in front of his love interest...

***

Passing headlights make the gnarled branches look like hungry fingers reaching down for me. It’s late, past seven, I’ve been running up and down Mem Drive, over the Longfellow and back for two hours, trying to lose this morning’s demons, but Phoebe’s hurt eyes keep chasing me down the streets. Jesus, one lousy card and it’s over.

My feet make soft, slapping sounds on the brick pathways. At the campus perimeter, I veer left through the Quadrangle, past the chemistry building, and hit black ice. My knee wrenches, it hurts like hell, and I almost cry, this day is such a goddamn disaster and, for a nanosecond, I toy with the idea of heading to Dunster, to score some Vicodin. For the pain, of course. But I banish the idea, I’ve been good, so good these last three years.

I sprint up the landing and into the foyer, dig in my back pocket and find the forgotten mood charts folded in a wad of ones. Three bucks buys me dinner: Hostess Ho-Hos, nacho Doritos, and a can of full-octane Coke.

In the animal facility, it’s warm, humid; the sweetish scent of rodent piss and cedar shavings calms me. My six subjects swarm my hand when I reach into the glass cage. I pick up number 43, a black, brown-eyed male identical to his thousands of siblings populating this lab.

“Hey you.” My thumb strokes his neck. “Hope you had a better day than me.” He snuffs my wrist, wriggles up my sleeve. I pull him back by the tail and drop him into the cage.

I pull down the plastic feed container from the upper cabinet, refill the water, then lean against the wall to observe my subjects eat their dinner. My ‘practice’ mice, the animals I feed, inject with placebo, watch for reactions, then inject with three different anticonvulsants. One day, soon I hope, I’ll remove them, unsuspecting, from their glass house, guillotine them, and make carpaccio-thin brain slices to view under the ‘scope. Then I’ll puree the rest of the grey matter, chromatograph the mess, and write up the experiment. If my technique satisfies Tien and Doctor L, they’ll give me the expensive guys - six identical rodents genetically-modified to lack the glutamate-inhibiting protein – and I’ll repeat the laborious process again, this time for real.

My stomach rumbles, reminding me I haven’t eaten since this morning’s cupcakes. I leave the animal room and ascend the stairs. The burnt-match smell of propane and acid fills the lab. A couple of pre-docs stand humped over their benches, extracting compounds in huge Pyrex beakers. They nod as I pass through and down the hall to the closet of an office I share with four other undergrads.

No one’s here. The single computer whirs and the bald fluorescent tube strobes an irritating ice-blue on the ceiling. The flickering intensifies my lithium headache. God, I hate these headaches, they last all day and nothing touches them. I crumple in the wood chair, tilt back with my feet on the desk, and down the now-warm Coke in three swallows. A thought pricks at me - I’m forgetting something - but it flits away, so I open my neuro text and start to read about antipsychotics. The cake dissolves in my mouth, too sweet, the disgusting faux chocolate waxes my tongue, and as I chew I sing ‘Happy Birthday to Me’ in my head, over and over again.

I hate my goddamn birthday.

I return to the chapter. Thioridazine, prochlorperazine, perphenazine, all these fucking ‘zines. Nasty names. Nasty drugs, numb the fuck out of you. Thank God I’m not schizo. The chemical structures blur, so I try to remember them by pharmacologic class – phenothiazines, thioxanthenes, butyrophenones – but my eyes start twitching from the headache. Jesus, I’ll never get these blasted drugs straight. Wish I could ask Phoebe, she’s a whiz at the drugs.

When I rip the bag of chips, tiny brown balls bounce along the desktop. Mice turds. Disgusted, I sweep them off with the back of my hand and remember seeing similar pellets yesterday on my kitchen counter, near the half-eaten loaf of stale bread. I gotta clean up my place, it’s been a shambles since finals. Like me.

Then, it hits me, a miracle, all these disparate threads on antipsychotics and cleaning and winning back Phoebe converge. Time to purge my house. My self. Time to clean up.

Heartened, I jump up and brush the rodent shit and phosphorescent orange shards from my lap. My cell buzzes. I’m so excited about my new course of action I ignore it, but then I think maybe it’s Mother telling me she deposited the money today, that she paid the tuition. And happy birthday, son. So I grab the phone, glance at caller ID but it’s not New York, it’s local. Althea. And then I remember what I’m forgetting - my birthday party.

***

And please take a moment to comment HERE. Your words will send a buck of relief to help those suffering in Japan. Peace...

c(u)ore

c(u)ore

transfixed i watch your hands

strong quiet efficient

shape this humble offering

of mud into something pure

lyrical a form so flawless

it seems a miracle

later when the body yields

before the glassy burn

i cradle the leathered urn

and peer into eternity

ossified hollow of earth

primordial essence of you

Inspired by the 52-250 Flash a Year theme: to the core.

Cuore is Italian for heart. What is more central, more core, than the heart, our strongest and yet most tender vessel?

Btw, I did not write this poem. No, no, no, I do not write such sappy stuff. Ben wrote it, one of several he collated into a book of handmade papers to celebrate Phoebe's birthday. Who is Ben? Phoebe?

Ah, you'll have to read my novel to find out more. Peace, Linda

LIGHTER

The sign across the street winked neon: Walk-ins Welcome. Bells jingled when I pushed the glass door. A sleepy-looking woman looked up from a magazine.

“Is it too late for a haircut?”

“I can take you now,” she said.

I followed her to the back. Chairs reclined against industrial sinks. She lowered the heft of my hair into the tub. Warm water pulsed over my scalp and her gentle hands worked soap into lather. Head wrapped in terry, I trailed her to the front window and perched in a chair before the large mirror. She unwound the towel and my hair, au-lait brown from the shampooing, cascaded down my back.

“Just a trim?”

“Cut it off.”

“All of it?”

“To my shoulders.”

“But you have beautiful hair,” she said.

I shrugged; time for something new. She combed with care, starting from the bottom. Shears rasped through the strands. I closed my eyes. With each snip, I remembered: Ben slowly unbraiding my hair, kissing my bared neck, sending shivers down my spine.

But he was gone. The blow-dryer seared my cheeks, scattering small bristles down my neckline. On the radio Elton John wailed about yellow brick roads. She swiveled me around to face my reflection.

Long clumps of gold covered the scuffed linoleum floor, my lap, the tips of my shoes peeking beneath the nylon smock. Piles and piles of my hair. My chest filled with unexpected pressure.

For some reason, I thought I would feel lighter.

***
Inspired by the 52-250 Flash-A-Year Challenge theme -- 'bad haircut'.

I admit; I cheated a bit. This is an extension of a scene from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, which is undergoing major surgery. So the words are only semi-fresh.

Peace y'all! Linda

Between the Black

We were blackening pages, all of us, covering them with charcoal, leaving no traces of white showing, turning them black as Con Edison smoke, as abandoned subway station platforms and third rail rats. As black as vacuum-packed blackness between stars. (LIFE GOES TO THe MOVIES, Peter Selgin)

I think of my friends doing NaNoWriMo this month, of the frenzy of blackening their pages with words, a rabble of courier and times roman and georgia fonts. The beauty of the first draft of anything, be it a novel or poem, a song or a script, is the building up. The thrill of mounting word count, of sentences bleeding into paragraphs, and paragraphs seeping into pages.

I miss the blackness.

My quest these grey November days is to create white space. To cut wide swathes through my story and leave scenes that make the reader fill in between words. When you cross a river, do you remember the water or the stones? I think of each scene as a river rock, the water raging below the page, full of unwritten tension.

I am committing surgery, rather drastic cutting that might qualify for an episode of Nip and Tuck, on BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. My first novel, one I thought 'finished' over a year ago. I have murdered many darlings, including the opening scene which won me a very nice monetary prize two years ago. But the opening was cliche, dwelled overmuch in backstory, and, as one esteemed small press who actually read the first 50 pages put it, "tried to create empathy for Ben before he had earned it."

Only in hindsight. And yes, the best rejection I have ever received, as it came 16 months after I'd submitted and the house noted emphatically in it's submission guidelines that it does not respond to manuscripts it is not interested in.

So my quest is to create more white space. I have parsed 2,800 words from the first 77 pages. I have miles to go.

Peace, Linda

Spent

Stars pepper the sky. The solemn swells of the orchestra fuse with the crowd’s low drone and the gentle slap of water against the boats. A breeze passes over the darkened river and stirs in the flaccid sails. I lace my fingers through Phoebe’s, and wait.

A light flickers on the picnic table and levitates towards us. Althea cradles the sparkling cupcake, singing “happy birthday” in her breathy voice. She totters over the boat, holding the cake for Phoebe.

“Make a wish, girlfriend!”

Phoebe concentrates, and blows; the flame splutters out.

“Happy birthday, Phoebe.” Althea weaves on the dock’s edge. “I’m glad you’re with Ben, he’s good folk, deserves the best. And you’re the best too, girl, cuz you make him happy, keep him outta trouble. He’s one crazy guy, but good as gold as long as he takes his lith--”

“Shut up, Al.” The boat pitches when I stand. My hands draw into tight fists. “Just shut the fuck up. You’re drunk.”

“Oh shit.” She covers her face, her giggles. “So sorry.”

A low whistle screams overhead. The sky erupts in red and orange, incandescent streamers shower into the river, fizzing into smoke. In the light-splattered night, Phoebe’s eyes glitter, questioning me.

“She’s toasted,” I say. Her fingers squeeze mine, seeking more, but I look away, into the shivering sky, and breathe, just breathe, until the only noise is my pulse thumping through my brain and all I see are smoky-white trails of spent fireworks echoing against my closed eyelids.

***

This week's theme from 52/250 -- corrected vision. Spent Fireworks launches off a scene from my novel BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. Here, I intend to show how one word almost uttered with carelessness -- lithium -- can change one's view of another, indeed, can shift an entire world, when saying it reveals harbored secrets.

And hey, I had to work in the Fourth of July somehow! It's Phoebe's birthday, after all, and both my real kids are born this week. Happy 4th! Peace, Linda

The Cutting Edge

Today my head’s at war: good versus bad, logic versus emotion, high versus low. I’m in the middle of my raging melodrama when Patty opens our session with a cheery hello.

The others squeak back, reminding me of those sunny Happy Face stickers. Everyone “checks in” with what they’re feeling, doing, thinking. I slouch in my chair, transport myself to some other place, any place but here. I conjure up my kitchen, my trusty Wusthof. An excellent knife, an eight inch, ten/twelve carbon steel forged blade. Perfectly balanced. In my mind, the blade flashes bright and swift, decimating whatever lies underneath.

“Earth to Ben.” Patty interrupts my daydream. I open my eyes. “How are you today?”

I dismiss her with a wave of my hand. Laurel someone yammers about her depression. Everyone offers support. They’re so freaking chipper it makes me sadder, lonelier. Isolated in my melancholy. I continue rambling through my apartment to the bathroom, an ideator’s paradise: the hard surfaces, the mirror, the razor blades, the scalding water. The medicine cabinet: Motrin, aspirin, antihistamines, cough syrup, and lithium. If you take enough of it, lithium will kill you, though not very nicely. Inside the box of Trojans, a stash of benzodiazepines. Not enough to do me in, but taken with a glass or two of Dolce d’Alba, a hot bath, some Mahler, and the knife, they’ll make for a pleasant evening.

My dark mood lifts. Yes, I think to myself, this is how I will do it.

***

Response to the theme = The Balance of Terror, and a modified excerpt from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT.

Peace, Linda

Motherless Child

I hate this day.

Mother’s Day.

On my back, my legs and arms stretch to the bed corners, the sheet shrouding me. I hear Ben banging around in the kitchen, singing off-key. Lying still in the pale dark, all I remember is how her final hours unfurled with slow-motion precision, each second forever seared in my memory: how I perched beside her on the narrow hospital bed set up in the dining room, how the feeble May sun flickered through the sheers, casting her face into yellow shadow, how that morning was strangely quiet.

That Mother’s Day, ten years ago.

An odd, sad noise had woken me up, it sounded like Pumpkin meowing to come in. When I snuck from bed, the plaintive cry circled up. Crouching behind the railing, I heard my father’s voice soothe, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow, darling… I promise.” I remember wondering what would happen the next day, what promise he was making to Mom. I crept back to my too large bed, too excited to sleep – maybe tomorrow she’d be better.

But she wasn’t better. Daddy hovered, tucking cool, pink sheets around her wasted body, fingering the IV line for kinks, injecting medicines into the drip, his eyes strangely glassy. I clasped her hand, the skin stretched parchment-thin over bird-like bones. My stomach felt leaden. That hushed morning was an instant that seemed like forever. She gazed at me, her eyes half-open, narcotic glazed slits.

“Phoebe,” she rasped, a hoarse whisper, “Live.”

Those were her last words. I try to honor her wish, to give life shape and purpose, but her absence left a gaping hole which only grows larger and more painful, much like the cancer that consumed her. Resentment wells, smothering the good memories. I flip onto my stomach and cry in the warm, flanneled dark.

The bed sags. Hands travel my shoulders and neck, hot through the sheet, stroking my hair smooth against my head. Ben lies on top, hugging me from behind.

“I’m sorry.” He holds me close, trembling with me, his fingers erasing my salty tears. “Hey, you need to get ready. Time to go to church.”

“I don’t want to go.” My voice quakes, laced with petulance. I know I’m being churlish wallowing in self-pity, and all I want to do is hurl my body to the floor and pound, pound, pound my hands and feet. But I don’t; I have no idea how to throw a proper tantrum.

“Up,” he says, tugging my hands. “We’re going.”

“You’re coming with me?” I struggle up. “But you don’t like to go to church.”

Ben rolls the blanket down to my feet and cool air rushes over my legs.

“I want to be with you,” he says. “All day.”

He pulls me from the bed. The cold lump that seems to always settle in my chest melts a little. With a soft “thank you,” I kiss him and shuffle to the bathroom.

After toast, we make our way to the Unitarian Universalist church and sit in my usual spot, four pews from the front. The sun peeks through grey scudding clouds, brightening, then darkening, the austere white sanctuary. Ben holds my hand and looks over the order of service. I feel strangely calm. I squeeze his fingers; he squeezes back. The organ’s sighs fill the open space.

When we rise for the opening hymn, apprehension crowds my throat. His hand settles in the small of my back, steadying me. We sit back in the rigid pews and the minister reads a poem on the difficulty of a mother relating to her daughter but loving her all the same. My heart trembles again and he knows; his hand caresses the top of mine with his thumb in time to the metered cadence.

A hush follows. My fingers relax from his grip and he cocks his head at me, surprised when I join the choir at the front of the sanctuary. The hymnal shivers in my hands. It is time. Can I do this? Can I? I’ve practiced this for weeks. The director clears her throat and lifts her eyebrows, questioning. I nod and she signals with her right hand. I breathe.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
A long way from home,
A long, long way from home.

My voice quavers, then steadies and strengthens. Ben’s intent eyes glisten in the stippled light. I look away; I can’t break down, not now. I focus on the music, staying on pitch, and when the choir joins in on the second verse, the tension leaves. My eyes fill and the faces in the pews smudge into my mother’s.

My life has accelerated towards this moment for months, maybe even years. The heaviness persists – perhaps it always will – but here, now, it seems thinner, more a bittersweet ribbon flowing through me. Shadows dance over Ben. He gently smiles at me. For the first time in what seems forever, I feel a little less alone.



For my mother and all mothers.


(Excerpted from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, a love story). Peace, Linda

The High Before the Crash

Friday Two-fer. Poetry prompt: and suddenly. Interesting prompt. My birthday today made me consider how fast life flies past. The prose piece, excerpted from Brighter than Bright, reflects the heady feeling of youthful limerance.


and suddenly the bed shrank

along with your cleats,
your jeans,the Hard
Rock café tee
bought in Boston;
everything smaller
but the reach of your arm,
the length of your stride,
the burgeoning pile of
diaper bags, board books,
Pokemon cards, and other
childhood detritus, never
again retrievable.

***

The High Before the Crash

The pathos-ridden notes of Mahler flow through earphones, reverberating at the cellular level. Words zip from my brain to my fingertips and onto the computer screen. Already, two poems knocked off. I crank in my journal in the darkened living room, recounting the past few glorious days at the beach with Phoebe. All we did was eat, sleep, make love; my skin still titillates.

Seeking inspiration, I pull up my sex_p folder, my catalogued memories of all my romances. The last dozen poems recall when I lost my virginity to Gloria. So many years ago. I close my eyes, remember the tall Tuscan grass, the sky anointing us, and for the first time I don’t feel sad remembering. Gloria’s face morphs into Phoebe’s, black hair melting in the sun turning to gold, and new words rush out… Amidst silvered sheaves we lie, hidden from all but God’s eyes and bees… My groin starts to ache.

A ding. Email. Who else is up at this infernal hour? Ah… Kevin, former Andover buddy, an ass - but one with disposable income interested in buying my car.

Ran that little black Maserati of yours down Route 1 and popped 70 in six. Superb. Can’t believe you want to sell her. Thanks - check’s in the mail. K

BTW, man, your sister’s HOT – when did she grow up?

My fingers hammer back.

Excellent! Enjoy – take good care of my baby. B
And keep your diseased dick away from Izzy – you can’t afford for me to chop off the last two inches.

Yes! I swivel in the chair, pumping my arms in victory. Kev’s always coveted my 420S, ever since a bunch of us dragged her down 128 one crazy August night, hammered out of our gourds after winning lacrosse regionals. We’d crashed some RISD party, I still don’t remember how we ended up in Providence. Kev might as well enjoy the car, she’s languished lonely and neglected in that hole of a garage back home. Yes! Last Fall semester’s paid off, only Spring and Summer tuition left to figure out, then financial aid kicks in. Finally.

I return to the computer, too excited to process words. Der Abschied concludes. Enough lieder already, too heavy. I shuffle over to La Sonnambula, the elegiac notes waft through my ears. My head turns meditative, the page fills… Time slows, time stops, clouds drape the azure canvas. I’m deep into the poem when I sense someone watching me.

“Sweetie.” Phoebe stands in the bedroom door, the nightstand lamp illuminating her from behind. In her long, white cotton gown, right fist rubbing her eyes, she reminds me of a little girl at the foot of her parents’ bed after a bad dream. “It’s almost two. When are you coming to bed?”

I pull out my ear buds. “Soon, baby, soon.”

She patters over in bare feet. I swivel in my chair, blocking the screen.

“What are you writing?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Just poems. Journaling.”

“What about?” She balances on her toes, trying to peek over my shoulder.

“Uh, the past week. Our trip to the Cape. Sex. Love. God. Death.” I bounce in my chair, impatient, wishing she’d go back to bed. “My usual existential stuff.”

“Are you okay?” She peers down at me, her eyes sleepy and suspicious.

“Okay?” I jerk back against my seat. “Of course I’m okay. I’m great.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Ideas in my head need to get out.” I fidget, pass the MP3 from my right hand to my left, then tuck it in my lap, between my thighs. “Phebes, baby, go back to bed.”

“Only if you do.” She rests her hands on her hips.

“Promise,” I say. “Just five more minutes.”

She sighs, then slowly shuffles to bed. The lamp clicks off. Back to the poem. The words look unfamiliar, aseptic, and for a second I panic – the flow’s abandoned me – but I reinsert the earphones, the music fills me again… Ah, yes… the wind sighs low…

The opera ends. Pleased, I gaze at my new masterpiece, then save the file and creep into bed. The red 3:00 of the clock glares at me, an evil eye. Phoebe sleeps with her back to me, swaddled in blankets, an almost indiscernible hump. Except for her soft purring, it is eerily quiet, the time of morning when all the world’s noises cease. I ease myself under the sheet, tug on the bunched-up blankets and cradle her from behind. When I cup her breasts with my left hand, she makes little sounds. I nuzzle the back of her neck. She turns to me, drowsy, spearmint on her breath.

“It’s late,” she murmurs.

My hand trails to her waist and under the gown, between her legs. Her thighs part, warm and soft, and I lose myself between them as she moves under me, half-asleep.

I come quickly. I roll onto my back, breathing hard. Phoebe curls onto her side and returns to nirvanic slumber. I stare at the ceiling, body throbbing, and watch the fringes of the walls begin to glow grey. Still wired. Still hard. I want to make love again. But Phoebe dreams, motionless. She’ll be pissed if I wake her again.

I shimmy off the blanket. Too hot. Strings of words dance before my open eyes, phrases of poems written or yet to be, strobing in stark black and white, the light fluttering with my pulse and melting from one image into the next, an infinite slide show.

***

Wonderful birthday -- thank you for reading and dropping notes on fb, gmail, everywhere. I am so blessed. Peace, Linda
Peace, Linda

EARTH

Today's poetry prompt -- earth. Haiku is a form that celebrates nature, and what is more natural than earth herself? Cemeteries also celebrate earth, the plantings sprung beautiful from decay. I present my Friday Two-Fer -- enjoy!


EARTH

Algae-blue marble
spinning through time – mere dust mote
in the eye of god.


***


In the Cemetery On the Tenth Year of Her Death

The hum of Memorial Drive traffic filters down the side streets. We walk for a long time, but instead of feeling tired my legs seem to strengthen and feel energized.

Brattle Street branches into another, busier avenue. A sea of traffic idles at the stop light. Ben grabs my hand and we race across the street, giggling as the light changes and cars honk. We find ourselves facing the entrance to Mount Auburn cemetery. I stop laughing; I have no desire to go to a graveyard. Not today.

“Hey, it’s beautiful here,” he says. “Trust me.”

He guides me past the wrought iron gates buttressed by granite pediments. Several paved lanes converge off the semi-circular paved entrance. Ben chooses the middle path.

The outside world peels away. Dazzling pink and white crabapples and magnolias cover the hilly terrain. Headstones and monuments pucker the grounds, large marble affairs that swell with importance next to more humble limestone markers. Birds warble, and something sweet, maybe viburnum or lilac, scents the air. We walk the road in silence. Several cars pass us in slow procession, black and shiny. After they disappear around a corner, Ben takes my hand and skirts to the right down a pea gravel path. The air cools as we descend through a dark grove of rhododendrons, their waxy leaves highlighting fuchsia flowers. The floral smell thickens.

We emerge in a clearing. A marble bench faces a small hill dotted with dogwood. Ben walks to the largest grave. Golden lichen flecks the pearly white of the rounded headstone, pitted from a century in the elements. Etched doves, carrying leaves, flank the epitaph: Johanna Nilsson. Mother, Wife, Beloved Angel. 1856 – 1897.

My mother's name.

A reverent lilac stands behind the headstone. Beside her, in matching alabaster, rests the husband. Smaller grave markers scatter at their footstones, children and grandchildren and their progeny. But my gaze stays with her headstone.

Johanna.

I sink to the bench. Ben settles beside me.

“If there was a single present I could give you, it would be to peel back time so you could be with your mother,” he says. “Do you ever talk to her?”

Tears well in my eyes. I shake my head. He reaches for my hand.

“You should. You keep her memory alive in your mind,” he says. “Keep her in your heart - talk to her.”

But she’s dead, I want to say. I edge back; his eyes gleam with a strange intensity. I must look as skeptical as I feel because he squeezes my hand.

“Here, I’ll do it with you.” He closes his eyes.

I close mine, too. Something rustles in the underbrush, a squirrel or bird, then silences. The wind passes through the tree tops, a low howl, and limbs scrape against each other. Ben breathes in a slow quiet rhythm. I feel his body soften into the hard bench but mine stays rigid. Talk to her. I try to envision my mother, her face, her eyes, but only can see the mound of dirt that covered her, the blackness of it keeping the light from her, the muffled voice of the priest intoning May Johanna Miller forever rest in peace.

Peace. This is all I want. I squirm, frustrated, my legs crossing and uncrossing. I try to see my mother, remember her. Ben’s arm snakes around my back and he pulls me close so my head rests on his shoulder. I squeeze back tears and silver lines tangle the back of my eyelids, like her hair streaming in the breeze rushing through the car’s rolled-down windows and then I hear her laugh and she turns to me in the back seat and asks, “Is this too much air?” I giggle back at our shared glee and reach toward her and she takes my hand and we laugh and laugh as daddy drives us down the mountain, the cool air pummeling us with joy. There is something I want to tell her, but the car slows, her hair collapses around the back of her head and she turns to my father.

The silver streaks fade. A mockingbird chortles over my head. A small sob loosens in my chest but I swallow it down.

“Hey,” he whispers. “Did you talk to her?”

I shake my head, my face rubbing against his sweater. The wool smells good, like him. “Almost, though.” I look up and try to smile. “We laughed.”

“Laughing’s even better.” He traces my eyebrows with his finger. “You know I can’t bring your mother back, but I can always be here to help you remember her.”

We rise and stand by the grave for a few silent moments. I don’t want to leave and tell him this, and he assures me he’ll come back here with me whenever I want. I wonder about this Johanna, wonder if maybe there is a heaven after all, and that maybe all the Johanna’s of the world watch over their children still left on earth. I want to believe this, just as, for the first time, I want to believe Ben could be my home.


(Excerpted from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, a love story)


Peace, Linda

Ides of March

In the passing headlights, gnarled branches look like hungry fingers reaching down for me. It’s late, past seven, I’ve been running along Mem Drive, over the Longfellow and back but Phoebe’s hurt eyes chase me down the streets. Jesus, one lousy birthday card and it’s over.

My feet make soft, slapping sounds on the brick pathways. At the campus perimeter, I veer left through the Quadrangle past the chemistry building and hit black ice. My knee wrenches, it hurts like hell, and I almost cry, this day is such a goddamn disaster and, for a nanosecond, I toy with the idea of heading to Dunster, to score some Vicodin. For the pain, of course. But I banish the idea, I’ve been good, so good these last three years.

I sprint up the landing and into the foyer, dig in my back pocket and find the forgotten mood charts folded in the wad of ones. Three bucks buys me dinner: Hostess Ho-Hos, nacho Doritos, and a can of full-octane Coke.

In the animal facility, it’s humid but the sweetish scent of rodent piss and cedar shavings calms me. My six subjects swarm my hand when I reach into the glass cage. I pick up number 43, a black, brown-eyed male identical to thousands of his siblings populating this lab.

“Hey you.” My thumb strokes his neck. “Hope you had a better day than me.”

The mouse snuffs my wrist, wriggles up my sleeve. I pull him back by the tail and drop him into the cage.

I pull down the plastic feed container from the upper cabinet, refill the water, then lean against the wall to observe my subjects eat their dinner. My ‘practice’ mice, the animals I feed, inject with placebo, watch for reactions, then inject with three different anticonvulsants, giving them the maximum exposure to the study agent. One day, soon I hope, I’ll remove them, unsuspecting, from their glass house, guillotine them, and make carpaccio-thin brain slices to view under the ‘scope, and puree the rest of the grey matter, chromatograph the mess, and write up the experiment. Then, Tien and Doctor L will give me the expensive guys - six identical rodents genetically-modified to lack the glutamate-inhibiting protein – and I’ll repeat the laborious process again, this time for real.

My stomach rumbles. I haven’t eaten since the morning cupcakes. I leave the animal room and ascend the stairs. The burnt-match smell of propane fills the lab. A couple of pre-docs slump over their benches, extracting compounds in gallon-sized Pyrex beakers. They nod as I pass through and down the hall to the closet of an office I share with four other undergrads.

No one’s here, even though the single computer whirs and the bald fluorescent tube strobes an irritating ice-blue. The flickering intensifies my caffeine-withdrawal headache. God, I hate these headaches, they last all day and nothing touches them. I crumple in the wood chair, tilt back with my feet on the desk, and down the now-warm Coke in three swallows. A thought pricks - I’m forgetting something - but it flits away, so I open my neuro text and flip to Chapter Five. Antipsychotics. The cake dissolves in my mouth, too sweet, the disgusting faux chocolate waxes my tongue, and as I chew I sing ‘Happy Birthday to Me’ in my head, over and over again.

I hate my goddamn birthday.

Thioridazine, prochlorperazine, perphenazine, olanzapine. All these fucking ‘zines. Nasty names. Nasty drugs, these mind numbers. Thank God I’m not schizo. The chemical structures blur, so I try to remember them by pharmacologic class – phenothiazines, thioxanthenes, butyrophenones – but my eyes twitch from the headache. Jesus, I’ll never get these blasted drugs straight. Wish I could ask Phoebe, she’s a whiz at the drugs.

When I rip the bag of chips, tiny brown balls bounce along the desktop. Mice turds. Disgusted, I sweep them off with the back of my hand and remember seeing similar pellets yesterday on the kitchen counter, near the half-eaten loaf of stale bread. I gotta clean up my place, it’s been a shambles since finals. Like me.

Then, it hits me, a miracle; all these disparate threads on antipsychotics and cleaning and winning back Phoebe converge. Time to purge my house. My self. Time to clean up.

I jump up, brush rodent shit and phosphorescent orange shards from my lap. My cell buzzes. I’m so excited about my new course of action I ignore it, but then I think maybe it’s Mother telling me she deposited the tuition money today, oh, and happy birthday son. So I grab the phone, glance at caller ID but it’s not New York, it’s local. Althea. And then I remember what I’m forgetting - my own birthday party.

***

The Ides of March is a big day for me, bigger than green beer day. It's the day I defended my dissertation, the day I got engaged, the day medical students get matched to residencies. The Ides is also my character Ben's birthday, a day almost as lousy as Julius': betrayed by a friend, dumped by Phoebe, and a head session so angst-filled he fires his shrink. This, the hereafter...

Excerpted from Brighter than Bright, a novel of loss and love and taking your meds -- or not.

Peace, Linda

(Yeah, yeah, I miss you flashers... the mountain top gets lonely...)

Waiting for Love

It’s way past midnight, I should go home, but I’m not tired – my crazy lovesickness keeps me up. This, and my lithium holiday. But Jesus, I feel great, less zonked out. Wired. I keep staring at my watch, distracted Phoebe’s not back from studio, imagining all sorts of horrible things: punks lurking behind bushes, kilns exploding, or, worse, her in a bar, holding hands with some other guy. Sleeping in his bed.

I try to squelch the catastrophizing. At least I’m in her house, watching this stupid psycho-slasher movie with her roomies. In the dark, their faces glow an eerie bluish-white from the flickering screen. Scrunched on the couch beside me, Sarah sits so close we might as well meld. Her hand rests in her lap inches away, a magnet willing me to hold it in mine. Across the room, Bethany’s glasses seem to laser holes through me. I feel guilty preferring Phoebe, but not guilty enough to stop my attention from flitting to the front door.

Bored with the gore, my head drifts to sex. Unwinding Phoebe from her layers of skirts and sweaters, sucking on perfect pink lips, mouthing soft, ivory breasts. Undoing her glorious hair, whipped honey strands draping over me, trailing down my chest, my face, my thighs. Licking her until she screams. I slouch deeper into the sofa, grateful for the dark.

Sarah shrieks.

“Jesus, Sarah. Not in my ear. Please.”

“Sorry, hon,” she says. But her hand wedges between our legs. I kind of wish she wouldn’t but don’t stop her. Accompanied by sense-surround, my erection grows with my fantasies.

Sudden light from the hallway seeps under my closed lids. The front door sighs shut; a shadow passes. Missed her. Damn. I scrabble up from the cushions, tugging out my shirt to cover my tented crotch. Sarah’s feet tangle in mine.

“Where you going?” She pulls on the back of my sweater.

“Water,” I whisper. “And the can.”

She releases me. Pulse thudding, I rush from the warm, dark room. The kitchen’s bright fluorescence makes me blink. “Hey,” I call softly, but no one answers. I poke around back to the glassed-in porch. Empty. Leaning against the counter, I down the obligatory glass. I open a door; jars of peanut butter, cans of Campbell’s, and a year’s worth of Grape-nuts line the shelves. Turning from the pantry, I pull on another doorknob, find the bathroom. I lock the door, flip on the faucet. Water burbles. I lean against the closed door. Unzipped, I concentrate on Phoebe moving under me, fingernails digging into my back, her--

“Bennnnnnn. Oh honnnnnn.”

Oh Jesus. Sarah. Still hard, now aching, I zip up. The water ices my trembling hands.

The kitchen’s still deserted. A purple backpack hangs from one of the chairs. Hers. The rough canvas smells musty, like turned earth in early spring. A single golden hair, at least eighteen inches long, spirals there, a shimmering nautilus. I pluck the strand, wind it carefully around my fingers.

In the hallway, at the foot of the stairs, I pause. The water-stained ceiling rebukes me, but soft footsteps above reassure me of her presence. I waver, hoping she’ll need something, anything – a drink, a snack, a book from her bag – and float down the steps. To me. Longing thwacks against my ribs like a crazed bird fluttering at a window pane. One foot lands on the first step, then the next, I have no idea what I’ll say when I reach her garret--

“Hon.” Sarah’s voice snakes around the corner. “The movie’s almost over.”

I stop breathing. Upstairs goes silent. Sudden, deep heaviness descends, echoing down the stairwell. I drag myself back to the living room to a possibly surer thing, fingers deep in my pocket, twisting and turning the solitary strand.

***

Excerpted from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, a novel about crazy love and choosing too much feeling over sanity. A finished novel looking for a home. To read more about Ben after his life goes to scheiße, read AFTER THE LEAP.

***

My essay The Week Before My Father Died, an entry in the EDITOR UNLEASHED "Why I Write" contest*, sums up best why I write. *Essays are open to popular voting through February. You must be a registered member of the EDITOR UNLEASHED forums. I appreciate your honest vote. Please take some time to read all the other, often passionate pieces about the writing life.

Peace, Linda

Small White Pill

The gentle cooing of a mourning dove signals the dawn; I waken to the whir of highway traffic and, more distant, the lonesome wail of a train. The sky radiates a softer black, the ashen sheen it takes on just before the sun inches over the curve of the world. Somewhere, someone moans, and the night workers shush and rustle, prepare for the next group of caretakers. These are the only sounds; my mind is quiet; there is no noise, no morbid, florid thoughts, no whooshing or thrumming or humming, no lingering nightmares or images or memories. Normal? Is this what normal feels like?

***

Excerpted from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT and originally published in Six Sentences (2008). To read more from this story about insanity-tinged love, head to AT THE BIJOU for After The Leap.

And don't forget to read and vote in the #FridayFlash Reader's Choice Awards. My humble entry is SILVER BULLET.

Peace, Linda

AFTER THE LEAP up at The Bijou

Excerpted from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT.

Hang out and read the other double features, including Inevitable Encounters by fellow Harbinger ERIN COLE.

Read and enjoy.

Oh, and don't forget to VOTE for SILVER BULLET in the #fridayflash Readers' Choice Awards!



Peace, Linda

Another Kodacolor Moment

My eyes land on the photo: the two of us at Nantucket harbor, the sunset glowing behind us, a gaudy Mai Tai, while I stare into the camera, serious as the wind whips my hair, but he looks at me, eyes soft, mouth curved in a small smile. I pull the picture from its Lucite frame, gaze at it nestled in my opened hands, and tear it; the rip cleaves his face in two, a jag of white interrupts his smiling mouth, but then I shred the pieces in half again, and again, until my hand fills with ragged-edged papers. For a reason unfathomable to me, I blow; the soft shards float in the air like dandelion seeds parachuting on a gentle spring breeze, scattering and drifting downward, covering the bed, my slippers, the cracks between floor boards, scores of pieces reflecting his hair and mouth and shirt and hands and eyes. I fall on my knees, scramble to pick them up, but the small bits hover in the invisible drafts created by my outstretched hands, eluding me.

God, he’ll always be with me.

I sob again.



Excerpted from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. A similar version appeared in Six Sentences, Volume I, 2008.


Peace, Linda



[Don't mind me, I'm a Technorati verification tag SFKHCCNQP63W ]

High Flyer

My very atoms vibrate: from caffeine, from sleep deprivation, from the constant moving forward. From erratic consumption of my mood regulators. But my mind is sharp, focused; my dreams, Technicolor wonders. Everything I touch explodes from this magical sub-cellular energy surging within me. When I press on the closed hollow-wood door to my shrink's office, it flies open with a bang, the knob gouging the plaster wall. He sits at his desk, the room dim but for the green glow of a single lamp, head bowed, not noticing my tumult.


__

Originally published in Six Sentences, Volume I, 2008. Excerpted from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT.

Prayers today to: John, Franklin, Tracie, and so many others.

Peace, Linda

Pharming - #fridayflash

The small room reeks; yellow urine puddles by the john, streamers of toilet paper and clods of crap circle slowly in the bowl. I do my thing, then cling to the sink as white and grey dots skitter across my open eyes. A hot, heavy fullness bubbles up my throat; an urge to vomit up all the chemicals strikes me, but I swallow it down, blast the faucet and splash myself with water. Bloodshot eyes stare back from the glittering glass, the green of iris obscured by vacant, opaque cisterns. I shake my head, but nothing changes; the stranger gazes back at me. Someone bangs on the door, so I turn from the sink, stagger back to the ballroom.

--

(A rerun, originally published in Six Sentences: Volume 1, 2008, and an excerpt from BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT)


Peace, Linda

Leaves Whisper...

Writing a chunk of PURE, I realize I am writing in parallel time. In my story, it is October, in a book-filled cabin nestled high on a New Hampshire mountain, and Ben is finding his truths and pondering the decisions he needs to make. I walk and the wind whips up the ochre and crimson and gold leaves, and they eddy around my feet and I feel Ben.

I feel passings as well. Autumn conjures in me a melancholy...

The Reading... Still immersed in GRAVITY'S RAINBOW. Also close to finishing my October debut novel pick (I'm late, I know); it's a story that's taken me some time to get into. Have 3-4 other books in various nooks and crannies of my home/car/office, as well as reading BELLEVUE LITERARY and POETS and WRITERS. Good stuff...

The Writing... Focusing on PURE, preparing for the insanity that is National Novel Writing Month. But I've worked on several short stories, a poem, and even futzing with BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. Speaking of, this week I received a handwritten (!) postcard from one of my favorite Indy presses politely passing on BTB along with a reason why. Somehow this rejection made me feel good; perhaps it was that someone: 1/ read it; 2/ bothered to write me 18 months after I'd submitted (and their website is clear they don't respond unless interested); and 3/ they used their stamp. So.

I'll be scarce for the next month. Life, writing... both so time consuming.

Live well, write well, be true to your heart. Peace, Linda

What folks are saying...

About Beg, Borrow, Steal - a Writer's Life (Michael Greenberg, Other Press)

"Greenberg skillfully explores issues that range from the profoundly tragic to the delightfully funny." Kirkus Reviews

"Beg, Borrow, Steal is a writing memoir that belongs in the company of classics, such as Grace Paley's Just as I Thought, Annie Dillard's Living by Fiction, William Gass's Fiction and Figures of Life, and Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings..." Foreward Magazine

You can catch Michael Greenberg here:

October 16: Northshire Books, Manchester, VT
October 28: One Book, One Community, Danbury, CT
October 31: Texas Book Festival, Austin, TX
November 1: Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Taube Center for Jewish Life
November 3: Next Chapter Bookshop, Maquon, WI
November 4: Barbara's Bookstore, Chicago, IL
November 5: Magers and Quinn Bookstore, Minneapolis, MN

YOU CAN GET THE BOOK FOR FREE ===> Just leave a comment on this post or HERE. One lucky winner will be drawn from my magic hat at midnight this Thursday (10/15)

***

In other news... Nathan Bransford is having another FABULOUS FIRST PARAGRAPH CONTEST. The man's insane - already 500+ entries on day 1.

The Reading... Have I told you how much I love, love, love GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon? Amazing book. I don't 'get it' all the time, but it is an amazing work of art. Yes, I said art. Magnifico! I'll be at it for a few more weeks.

The Writing... Just finished METHOD WRITING short course by Jordan Rosenfeld. If you have a chance to take one of her courses, do - it is time and money well spent. NaNoWriMo starts in 19 days (!!!!!). I'm looking forward to 30 days of prose insanity. Buddy me (drwasy). Meanwhile, I'm mucking around with some shorts, some poems, BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, all distractions before I plunge again into PURE in a few days.

Life is full... outta here for a few days for basic training (the day job).

Peace, Linda

Butterfly

I've read - and written - quite a few poems these first 3 days of National Poetry Month, but the best thus far, this simple acrostic -

Beauty
Under a Rainbow
Tiny
Tickles
Earthly beauty
Rainbow
Flying Rainbows
Loveable Cuddleable
Yellow-winged
~Lea, Age 6


The Reading... Two new books: The Soul Thief (Charles Baxter) and Apologize, Apologize (Elizabeth Kelly). Finishing up Chuck Bock's Beautiful Children. Still reeling from Hamilton's exquisite A Map of the World.

The Writing... Three poems (Money, City of Believe, The Problem with the Time Travel machine). Sixty pages from the end of beta-reader edits in the never-ending BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. Working on PURE, getting ready to post the first 10k words with my writing group - nervous anticipation.

Outta here for a week visiting my family, so read hard, write harder. I leave you with an excerpt from City of Believe, in response to the prompt: outsider.

Here, in the City of Believe, everyone prays,
a fervor never noted in backwater Carolina
or stiff-backed Unitarian pews. Here, big black
women clamber on the metro clutching quilt
covered books close, apostalytic fingers
twitching to the glory of God,

amen child.

Two rows down yarmulked manchild, earlocks fuzzing
from wetfull morn, sways with prayer, holy
words dripping silent but heard, his mutter
murmur adding to an imam’s turban-tight
keening, sikh’s singing, Buddha’s koans… I break

through the throbbing throng, up stairs bloodstained,
carcassed with sweat and peanut shells, and blink; light
accosts a vision… Here, on the corner, the buttoned-
down, suited-up savior dude waves salvation tracts,
bullhorning oracles falling short of earbudded,
shelled-in selves, bobbing to suburban-fueled sturm.
Here, in the City of Believe, folks pray, earnest, more
fervid; my contempt for their desperate faith shorn
smooth, eclipsed only by my envy.






Peace, Linda