Awash in them

Words.

They seem to be tumbling out. Writing two things at the same time. One a new short story, the tenth and I believe the last in this collection. And a blog post about my best friend from high school and most of my twenties who I traveled all over the country with and who I just learned died a couple of weeks ago. Pieces of those travels have turned up in my stories. I hope I did them justice.

Bones

Miracles run out. There's an allotment. How many times can you roll a seven. An eleven. Roll it anyway. Maybe there's one left.

The Way I Heard It

This isn't about me. But it might have been, the way I heard it.
She said, You fell in love with me, didn’t you?
He didn't want to own up to any of it. No matter what his answer. If he had an answer.
That was stupid, she said. Just plain stupid. I'd always suspected your decision making skills.
It's more of an art, he wanted to tell her. A black art . Except he didn’t tell her anything. Not yet.

The Home Team w/comments by Sideways

I don’t cheer for the home team. I haven’t for a long time. When I was a boy I rooted for the teams I was expected to – the Packers – Green and Gold gods to be bowed down to. But something turned for me – it all seemed so arbitrary, so without thought. You happen to be born in a certain place, to a particular set of people and because of that happenstance you are a member of the tribe. The tribe that says we are the best, we are the chosen.

The logic of it embarrassed me. Really?,  I wanted to ask. Really?   What if you had been born one hundred miles away? The more I thought about it the crazier it seemed.  I wanted to meet the other team. Then another and another. 

Some – or most – of any tribe are needed to root for the home team. Without them, I think stadiums would be empty as importing loyalty is harder than growing your own. Call us brainwashed robots or not, this mindless adherence might seem arbitrary but it is necessary to preserve culture and customs. But then we have to decide what is really worth preserving and why we are afraid of change.

Do we need stadiums? Do we need the Bread and Circuses?  But you hit the right spot – what is worth preserving. It seems it is often the wrong things – the superficial things that get preserved until a culture becomes a thin shell of its former self.

Recently I had a discussion with a friend about being attracted to what my friend D calls “the other”.  It’s been, if not an issue then a theme, a thread I’ve tugged at trying to understand.  I thought that perhaps my friend S could help me. I’m white – she’s, of course, not. Except I’ve come to the conclusion that it really doesn’t have much to do with appearance but more with character – more with the heart, one that hasn’t been completely  blinded by the chance of culture.

I don’t have that much of an insight on why some seek out the other. I’ve imagined it’s a desire for life to be a little more complicated, stepping away from cookie cutters and boxes and all those clichés we feel trapped in everyday. Perhaps it’s a desire to control your own destiny. I do understand why we don’t seek out the other. When the world is spinning - a collision of culture, language, morals, even color - you have to hold on to something. Is there anything wrong with that? Except it’s mostly a losing battle.

Yes, Sideways, I think that is right – but I would substitute rich for complicated.  I am currently writing a story where one character tells another that believing we are holding onto something is simply how we get through the day.

I have had strong friendships with Spanish men, Native Americans, Asians, but really it’s been women. They have let me in easily and deeply. With men there are other obstacles – power maybe. Maybe I try harder with women. Maybe I am more myself with women.

Don’t women only give half the story?

No, they are at least 75% of the story.

Or maybe I wanted to prove something to myself and to them. Prove that if you open the heart the rest of it comes along. It doesn’t matter if the heart is from Argentina or Iran or Vietnam or India, or even the high Hopi mesas of northern Arizona. If you stay open to the hum, it can come from anywhere. Be grateful when it does. 

The ABCs

Two of my oldest friends are gay. They are a bit older than me, and for some New Year's reason I was thinking of them. B is the one I've tried to stay connected to. And A, too - because what's a B without an A.

When I met B at DePaul it was pretty clear she did not like men very much. I couldn't blame her. I guess I decided to show her it didn't need to be an absolute. I'm not sure why that was so important to me, but it was. I guess my plan was to enter every window she opened.

And I did. Sentences again.

Sentences were the first window. She seemed to approve of what I read. I think we talked about that, but it was a long time ago. Maybe what we talked about was other people - people we worked with - we both liked M, our boss at the library.

I started writing and she approved of the first writer who took me under her wing - this writer, C, (I swear the A and the B and C are really these women's first initials) was also gay. The world only seems like it is rich with coincidences. I think it is something much more mysterious than that.

B started editing my stories - pushing me to say what I mean and not to just sound pretty. It's still something I struggle with. When C arranged for me and a couple of other writers she had under her generous wings to give a reading at a local bookstore it was at B's house where I sat nervously waiting to head over to Women and Children First, the bookstore where I was to read. B gave me a half of a Xanax which I took but I'm not sure if it made any difference. I was still anxious. But we went and I read and it was okay as the things we fear mostly are.

That led to a fellowship at Sewanee and more readings and a lot more stories. B is still one of the first to read a finished story. She still encourages me. So many years. Such a good person.

I'm not sure where this has led me except to be thankful for the people who have pushed me to be honest in what I write and how not to be afraid to say what's in the heart. Say it on the page. Say it in life.

Sometimes this gets me in trouble - sometimes it has me saying things to people that they might be surprised to hear. Sometimes it surprises me. I admit I like to see the surprise.

The other night I wrote to S, a new friend. I told her some things that had happened a long time ago. I had never told anyone these things before. But I wasn't thinking about that. I guess I wasn't thinking. And that's okay even if now I am slightly embarrassed for sharing these things. But that will have to be okay too.

The heart doesn't often lead to trouble - that's more of a mind thing.

Shooting Sparks

Recently I have been thinking about the brain and how synapses fire and what throws the spark. And a bit ago I sent someone a story I wrote and that someone knew exactly why the last sentence needed to be there. That's unusual. Trust me, it is.

There are billions of brains in the world but only some of them connect, fire at the same frequency. It's probably tied to a theory of mine - see: The Hum of Invisible Wires.  It may seem like I spend way too much time thinking about this. I might. But the fact is it is rare to spark - or at least it is for me. Admittedly my receptors may have been altered over the years - maybe they now require more to fire. But I don't think that's even half of it.

It may be sentences. It may be as simple as that. 

I have met a bunch of really smart people. Interesting people, people I have loved and in some cases still do. But there is this other quality that may be rarer than smart or even love. It's this simpatico - how sentences -  what they say, how they say it find their way to their perfect receptors. Mesh like gears. Their sentence might be just the perfect length, the mot juste perfectly placed. Whatever. But it rings the perfect bell, the bell you thought only you heard and then it rings all the way across the country. Maryland say, or DC. It rings all the way from there and you don't even like the East coast. 

It's just good to say hello.

Motion and at rest

Others count sheep. I count bodies. Eighteen year old body falling from a hotel window. Twenty-three year old body twitching on a bathroom floor. Body through windshield. Body stopped by bullet. As the poet/mortician said, bodies in motion and at rest.

Counting doesn't help. It's a construct that belies the lie. What helps is to say the names: Camille. Michael. Steven. John. It only helps a little. Say a prayer for the living. What remains.