Thanks to Jimski for unwittingly suggesting this one.
The expression "OK" is known around the planet. I've never heard anyone give a convincing explanation of where it came from, what it originally meant. Your challenge is to come up with a theory that I'd buy. You can repeat what you've heard, if you've heard a theory that works for you, or just tell me any fool lie. Up to you.
Me and Tim Ford stole a car once in San Bernardino. One of those early Austin Healeys with red leather tuck and roll and wire wheels. It was just sitting there with the keys in it behind an A and W Root Beer Stand.
At first we were just going to drive it around for a while then leave it on the other side of town but we ended up heading for Mexico instead. Tim had this idea that we needed to get some false I.D. so we could drink in bars and buy beer in liquor stores without getting hassled. He said he knew about this guy in Tijuana who forged the date of birth on your driver's license and that there was no way of telling it from the real thing. He said it was cheap too.
I can't remember a car that was as much fun to drive as that Austin Healey. It growled. It responded like an animal to every cue. It flashed through down-shifts, double-clutching, speed-shifts--anything you could throw at it. It cornered like a Panther. There was no way you could turn it over.
The two of us began taking on the personalities of Austin Healey owners. We opened our shirts and let the wind beat our chests. We traded off using the pair of dark glasses we found in the glove compartment. (They were red-rimmed with little green rhinestones on the corners.) We slip-streamed women on the highway and pulled up close enough to grab their door handles and hear them scream. When we stopped at a restaurant we'd get a booth by the window so we could stare out at the car. The cat-mouth grill work. We dreamed of racing it across Europe and started using jargon like "Pit Stop" and "Team Rally" for those within earshot. We loved that Healey like we were its true owners.
We spent all day in Tijuana waiting for the guy to develop the pictures he took of us for the phony I.D. He was a silent, sullen little man in a stained grey sweater. We kept wandering around town and returning to his office every half hour. He would crack his door open and wave us away with quick flicks of his hands, like we were beggars or something. I had the feeling that false I.D. was the least of his illegal operations. It turned out to be worth the wait though. The new licenses were impeccable and passed the test at the border when the cops asked us to take them out of our wallets.
We drank up a storm in San Diego, flaunting our new cards at every bartender in town. We bought four bottles of Ripple Wine for the trip back home. We didn't even stop to get sick, we just puked into the wind and turned the radio up.
--Sam Shepard, Motel Chronicles
St. Louis hot is the donÌt-leave-your-house kind of hot, but some things are important enough to risk temporary physical discomfort. HereÌs one: the last concert of a group you love.
Random Access performed one final time last Sunday in the air-conditioned luxury of the First Unitarian Church at Waterman and Kingshighway. This was a local, mostly a cappella band of ten voicesÛboth men and womenÛwho after almost ten years and 160 performances decided to call it quits. (I never quite found out why. One member, Clay Cromley, was moving to Pennsylvania, but there have been lineup changes in Random Access in the past, so his departure may not have been the only motivation.)
ItÌs rare to see a Ïfinal concert.Ó Bands break up, implode, drift apart, but most of the time they donÌt say goodbye. Random Access said goodbye, to us and to each other, with 24 songs and little speeches by the band members between performances. They talked about rehearsing every week and the food theyÌd always eat afterward; about one having a baby and making all nine other Random Accessers the collective godparents; about how much they appreciated their families understanding the time demands of rehearsals and performances; about how they loved everything about singing these songs for us.
The program listed the 116 songs of their Ïplaylist.Ó Surely the toughest part of preparing for this concert was choosing which to sing. They started with ÏO Come All Ye FaithfulÓÛhey, Christmas songs were an important part of their repertoire, it only made sense to include them on the hottest day in June! They sang socially conscious Sweet Honey in the Rock, swinging jazz, and a madrigal setting of The DoorsÌ ÏLight My Fire.Ó There were originals by alto Melinda Ohlemiller and baritone/arranger Ken Dodds. Four alums of the group who had traveled from across the country to attend came up at one point to sing and strum guitars, and afterwards they, too, took the mikes to say it had all been a joy and a privilege and an experience of abiding friendship.
Early in the concert they sang a setting of the ÏAve MariaÓ whose ending is a heaven-reaching ÏAmen.Ó As they sang there came a moment where it all came togetherÛthe exquisite harmony, the talent and hard work of the singers, their love for each other and what they were doing, our love for them.
Their penultimate song was ÏLean on Me,Ó and here the emotion was almost too overwhelming. The man next to me, who had spontaneously gifted me with two butterscotch candies at the start of the show, hummed along like the tune was bubbling up out of him and had to escape. ÏOne more little one,Ó the singers begged at the end, as unwilling to leave the stage as we were to let them go. Random Access ended with a ÏHearty AmenÓ and walked out through the crowd to the church hall. We all became like bandmembers then, because just like at their rehearsals there was food for everyone.
He dared me to go where he had been. He had me stand in front of a pillar on a ledge with nothing but empty space in front and on either side. "Stay there one minute," he commanded. And so, because he said I should, I did, though I hate precarious perches. I was not afraid as long as I had secure footing, but for caution's sake I warned, "Don't do anything to tease me, now."
Of course he took the challenge. "What, like this?" He pushed his hands at me like they were bulldozers, stopping inches in front of me (or rather, inches from my knees--I was high up).
"Quit! Quit!" I squeaked. He started to laugh, saying something about how helium-filled my voice had gotten, but something made him stop abruptly. I followed his gaze to my hands. They were white as bone from clutching the pillar behind me. They were shaking, too. Now that my first wave of shock was gone, I could feel pain in them. As I shook I scraped skin off on the rough rock.
"You really are scared," he said quietly. "Come on down."
"I-I haven't been up here the whole time," I reminded him.
"That doesn't matter." He reached his hands out and I took them, clutching them tighter than I'd clutched the pillar as I walked very slowly off the ledge. He supported me until I was safely on the ground, then put his arm around me like it might be a comfort, telling me over and over: "I'm sorry; I shouldn't have done that."
It would have been sweet and nice, and it was--except that I couldn't forget this man had caused my fright, even if he hadn't meant to. It colored my relief with a little anger. That anger stood between us from then on. I knew I'd never stand on that particular ledge again, but as long as he was around there'd be others. And if I fell I needed to know whether or not he'd catch me. I thought I knew the answer already--he wouldn't. But I thought I would fall anyway. All I ever did was wonder what would become of me if I fell. When I fell.
(another old article. It was supposed to be published but I'm not sure it ever was, so here it is.)
I occupy a strange position not exactly inside and not exactly outside the a cappella "scene." I discovered the art of vocal music when I became a Nylons fan in '89; later I was an early subscriber to the CAN (Contemporary A Cappella Newsletter) and listened religiously to KDHX's "Lotsa A Cappella" program. But I've never sung in a group, collegiate or otherwise, and my CD collection is hardly a completist's. I haven't even been to an a cappella concert in years.
So I was surprised by how at home I felt at the recent East Coast A Cappella Summit at Boston University. Folk here were speaking my language. It reminded me of what drew me to a cappella in the first place.
What is this music's power? It is something so elemental that perhaps it can never be fully quantified. I remember a few years back I was in a foreign city and happened in on coffee and donuts after a church service. As I sat and ate a man next to me sang a scrap of hymn, presumably to practice. Then a woman next to him joined in with a harmony, and just that quickly I felt that old elemental power again, the same as I've felt hearing Pieces of 8 or singing Linda Thompson duets with a friend.
The people attending and running the Summit all had experienced that wild energy created by harmony. Friday night at the Mouth of the Charles concert, I heard stories from past members of collegiate groups. They reminisced about parties after their own shows, climbing out to apartment balconies, singing at full voice into the night. At the showcase in the lunch hour of Saturday's seminars, when different groups performed songs by Journey and the Ladies of the Moulin Rouge and their own compositions, folk at the merchandise tables boogied to the beat. They wore smiles that showed they were lost in the music.
That said, it is always possible for enthusiasm to be lost. Part of a cappella's initial appeal is how startling it is to hear only voices when you expect instruments. Once the shock wears off and you've heard many, many performances, it may take more and more to impress you; you might even become jaded about the very thing you once loved. That is why I was somewhat glad to be an "outsider"; I heard everything with fresher ears. I was as charmed by the enthusiasm and nerve of the up and coming groups I heard as I was by the skill and proficiency of the established groups.
But I am not a true outsider, as I have explained. For that perspective, I relied on the testimony of friends who came with me to the Saturday night concert featuring So Rare!, La Bande Magnetik and Five O'Clock Shadow. They had never atteneded an a cappella show. They were knocked out by what they heard. (I could go on and on about all the performances and how my friends reacted to them, but I must mention one in particular--"Pomper," an ode to pushups, rapped in French with manic gestures and much crowd participation. The joyful absurdity of it all had us in hysterics.) When we got home my friends insisted I compile a list of recommended a cappella albums and groups to watch out for. They could talk of nothing but seeing another show like that, and soon.
That's what a cappella does to people. That's what the East Coast A Cappella Summit did for me.
The doors of the club would open at 8; it was now 6. She had gotten to the London suburb of Harlesden purposefully early with the intent of getting acquainted with the area: the bus line, the route to the club. She was a very long way from home and not all that close to where she was staying, either, and didn't want to get lost in such alien territory.
But she had two hours to kill before the concert. She walked in and out of the only interesting shop--a record store with prominent displays of Menudo album--five times. Now it was closing, as everything else was. She did have a book with her, though. The trick was finding an inconspicuous place to read it.
Reading this book had gotten her in trouble earlier in the day in Hyde Park. She'd been sitting in a garden area by a trellis covered in roses when she noticed a man with white and red sneakers passing by and grinning. He passed by and grinned several times. She left the park; he followed her out. "Excuse me?" he called.
She turned and glared, more annoyed than frightened. "What? What do you want?"
"I want to ask you something."
"About what?" she barked at him.
"Sex," he replied.
His matter-of-fact manner caught her off-guard. She managed to say "Sorry, not interested," and walk away without being accosted further. But now she was leery of finding another bench and attempting again to read her Roald Dahl book.
In the end, her aching feet made the decision for her. She sat where benches circled the Harlesden Jubilee Clock, this suburb's idea of a town square. An old wino sat on the bench opposite. "Old winos are better than young winos" had been her reasoning when choosing this location. Maybe with him sitting there, no one else would bother her. She flipped open the book. Its cover was black with a large eyeball painted in psychedelic colors.
"Excuse me, sweetheart," said a voice a short time later. Lo and behold, the old wino had been joined by a young one, a sturdy fellow with short cropped hair trying to beg money for a pint from her in a brogue so thick she could barely understand him. She turned him down--several times, he was quite persistent as well as incomprehensible--and tried to get back to her book.
"Are ye lost?"
"No, I'm seeing a show at the Mean Fiddler."
"That's just up the road! Can ye get me in, too, love?"
"No."
"C'mere," he said, patting the bench beside him. The old wino was still at the other end, looking zoned; she wondered if he'd heard any of this exchange or would come to her aid in a time of trouble. She balked about moving for a long time, than finally thought, oh, whatever. As she sat he leaned in conspiratorially. "In exchange for getting me in to the Mean Fiddler, I'll give you an ipener."
"Sorry?"
"Look." He pointed to the cover of the Roald Dahl book. "There's an eye, right? I'll give you an eye op'ner."
She got it. He grinned. What's the deal with this city? she wondered. "Sorry, not interested." She went to sit on her bench again.
He let her sit in peace a few minutes. "What's yer given name, sweetheart?"
She told him.
"My name's Paddy."
She had to laugh. "Could've guessed that."
He laughed, too. "It's me red face that does it, isn't it? Look, today's me birthday, so how 'bout a pound to buy me a drink for it?"
"You win points for trying, Paddy, you really do, but I'm a mean, nasty person, and the answer's no."
A few more minutes passed in silence while she tried picking up the thread of the short story again--something about a woman and a husband and an elevator.
"Know what you remind me of?" Paddy said suddenly. "A turneyose."
"A what?"
"Ever been in a rose garden? A turney rose."
"Oh! Thorny! I get it." Successful conversation was beginning to seem like victory. "I take that as a compliment."
"I meant it as one."
An old lady came and hailed Paddy. He left for a while as she introduced herself--her name was Mary, and she had the filthiest mouth imaginable for a grandmotherly type. Paddy came back with two beers--one for himself, one for Mary--and a cigarette which he tried to give the old woman. "Stick it up yer hole," she grumbled.
"I would, but it's lit. I'm not as kinky as you, Mary."
Paddy was somehow less threatening with someone else there. The girl put down Roald Dahl and engaged him in conversation. "I've been divorced, separated from my children, I lost my job, my dog got run over," he told her. And as random pedestrians passed he called out to them. "Sugar Ray Leonard!" he yelled as a skinny black man passed.
"I'm beginning to understand your strategy," she remarked.
He winked and grinned. A blonde lady walked by next; he yelled, "Michelle Pfeiffer!" She turned with a laugh but kept on. "If they laugh you've won half the battle," he said seriously, like sharing a trade secret.
So the evening passed in a mix of deep but incomprehensible monologues from Mary, who gripped the girl's shoulder like she was her long-lost granddaughter, and dark jokes from Paddy. "See that over there?" He pointed to the Harlesden Jubilee Clock; at its base was a little sign, "DO NOT FEED THE PIGEONS." "Back when I had a job I added a sign o'me own: DO NOT FEED THE TOSSERS. Drunks, y'know. Now look where I am!" He laughed. He had a great laugh, she thought. He used it often.
"Things always come back to you, don't they?"
"That's the truth, sweetheart. That's the very truth."
Concert time. She got a kiss from Mary in farewell. Paddy wanted to walk her to the club. "Stay!" she ordered. "Mary?" The old lady grabbed his arm and the girl left.
But Paddy followed. "Just let me walk you over. Let me walk down the street with a pretty girl. You're wily as a fox, you know? I think you're a few roads ahead of me, and that's saying somethin'. Didn't we have a good time? Don't I get a birthday kiss? Here we are at the Mean Fiddler." He turned his head away like a protest. "If I get a kiss you better give it to me now."
She took his hand and kissed it. They walked to the very door of the club. "Don't I get a proper kiss? How can I go without a proper kiss?" She let him kiss her cheek; she kissed his scruffy cheek in return.
"Now go away, Paddy," she said with a stern laugh and a push.
He took her hand with a warm smile, almost wistful. "God bless. Listen..." His eyes were unsure now, an unusual expression for such a seemingly practiced con artist. "I'm a bum and a tosser, but I'm pretty all right anyway, right?"
She shook his hand, holding the fingers tight and holding his gaze. "That's right. God bless, Paddy."
He walked off and she never saw him again.
Just another scene, not connected chronologically with the one I put up last week--in fact, if anything, this one takes place before that one.
Thanks to the Twin for the new hardware which makes all of this possible.
----
I followed Peter to the back of the boat, where he was passing the idle time by untangling some nets. "No one's told you what he did to the storm?" he asked.
I wasn't sure I heard right. "To the storm?"
"To the storm. We were in my father's boat, and a windstorm blew up suddenly. I thought we would die. I hadn't caulked the boat in a while, the waves were breaking off bits, and such waves were hitting us that every man aboard had to bail water. Somebody finally noticed Jesus wasn't on deck. Can you believe--he was sleeping below! I was terrifically mad. I yelled, 'We're all going to die, Rabbi. Do you care?' down the hatch. He came up the ladder, looked out over the sea, and shouted 'Quiet!'--the way you might rebuke a child."
"He yelled at the sea to behave?" I asked.
Peter nodded with a grim expression. He lowered his voice, speaking as if he would rather not finish the story. "And the wind stopped. Died down to nothing--not even a breeze in the sails."
I stared at him. Peter laughed, but the laugh was hollow. "That expression on your face is what all of us were wearing, looking at Jesus. No one said a word. Jesus turned from the sea, looked back at us, and said, 'What's wrong?'"
I opened my mouth, but nothing could come out. "Coincidence," I finally said. "It had to be. No man can order the sea around and have it obey him."
"That's what Thaddeus said. Andrew and I just turned to each other and spoke in unison, 'Who is this in the boat with us!?' And some who had been very faithful to Jesus snuck away after that. I heard one man say, 'I don't want to be in the company of a man who can order the wind and sea around. Think of what could happen if he gets angry at us! Best to leave now, before we find out.'"
Peter grew quiet. He looked back over his shoulder at the wake we left in the water. "I don't think it was coincidence," he said after a time, "but I wish I could think it was. I'm very scared. Over the last few months I've seen some incredible things, but--to command the sea. My whole life has been the sea. I know it so well. And for him to..."
"God in heaven, would you look at this."
I turned around. Mary was closer to the middle of the boat, pointing toward the shore. "I thought you said nobody lived near here."
"Nobody does!" Peter said, running to the prow. "Somebody found out where we were headed and told all his friends!"
Whoever it was must have had about five thousand friends. The shore was overrun by people, pointing at our boat, shouting, shoving at each other apparently to secure better positions. More were arriving as we watched.
"This is what's so frustrating--wherever Jesus goes, he's surrounded by mobs. It's easy to talk with a few people at a time, but a crowd like this--you don't know what they will do. They can turn violent extremely quickly."
"Shall we turn back?"
"There'd be no point. Every other place where it's safe to land is much closer to the big towns. As soon as we hit the shore there'd be as big a crowd there. Perhaps we can just tell them to leave. Jesus didn't come here to preach or heal--they might as well go home."
We landed, and Jesus climbed out from belowdecks. His face fell when he saw the crowd. Peter sidled up to him and, though I couldn't hear, I guessed he was telling Jesus his plan to disperse the people. Jesus let his gaze travel across the crowd slowly, as though trying to see every face. He let out a resigned sigh. "How could I do that, Peter? If they've taken the trouble to come to me, I can't just tell them to leave."
So we disembarked. Jesus was mobbed at once, but he managed to push through and find a rocky ledge. There he sat and talked so long he nearly went hoarse. The sun came close to setting and Peter got fidgety again. He interrupted Jesus at last. "Master, it's late. There aren't any shops around here. Let's let these good people go back to the towns to get something to eat." I was glad he said it--my stomach was rumbling too. Some people at the back of the crowd took that as their invitation and left, but most waited to see what Jesus would say.
He had a mischievous glint in his eye. "No," he called back down to Peter. "I think I'll put you in charge of feeding them."
"What?!" The whole crowd laughed as the two men argued, the fisherman waving a sack with the only food we had--some bread and leftover cooked fish. When everyone had quieted down, including Peter, Jesus said, "I grew up in a wonderful family--my father, my mother, lots of cousins and aunts and uncles."
Mary and I exchanged puzzled glances, as did almost everyone.
"I remember the meals I had back then, particularly at festival times--everyone eating together and laughing, telling old jokes to the youngest cousins, enjoying everyone's company. I'd never want it to end. Have you ever had meals like that? Where there were lots of people around, maybe not your family, but friends, people you loved and were delighted to be with."
Almost everyone was smiling now. Some had tears in their eyes. A few people were smiling and crying at once, as I was, which was strange because I'm not usually sentimental.
"I think the kingdom of God must be like that," Jesus said. "A party where everyone respects you so much you can be yourself. Where there's nothing you could do or say that couldn't be forgiven..." His voice was almost too soft to hear. Then he yelled, "SHALL WE HAVE A PARTY?" and first we jumped, and then we laughed and cheered. "YES!"
"All right!" he answered, gesturing and pacing on his ledge. "Group yourselves together, now, in big groups. We're all friends! Invite your neighbors!" He waved at Mary and Peter and Andrew and the rest of us. At his signal we moved through the crowd getting everyone to sit in clutches of fifty or so. "We have about a hundred groups of fifty," Mary told me.
"A good strategy," I remarked. "That seems more manageable than a mob of five thousand."
"We're not here to manage them," John said, frowning.
At last everyone was sorted. Jesus hopped from the ledge and relieved Peter of the sack of bread and fish, brandishing it in the air like a war prize. We laughed and cheered some more. Then he picked his way to the group sitting in the very center of the gathering. He shook a few hands before straightening up and addressing all assembled:
"At my house, we said a blessing at every meal. We never forgot how God has blessed us by giving us a fertile land and seas teeming with fish. The abundance we have and share, we owe to Him." He took one of the loaves from the sack. He bowed his head--we all did likewise--and whispered a prayer as he broke it. I came in closer because he was getting hard to see in the dusk. I watched him pass hunks of bread round, saying, "Don't judge this party on the food, but on the company." He saw me coming nearer and handed me one of the fish. "Can you divide this up and give pieces to people in other groups? Start at the back." Strange--I didn't feel embarrassed about offering such meager provisions. No--it felt good to give away all I had. I even remembered I had some dried figs in my satchel, and gave those out when I'd run out of fish pieces. An old man offered me a little oatcake in return, which I accepted. Mary and John and the rest were moving through the crowd with the rest of the loaves and fish. When these were exhausted they still went from this group to the next, exchanging other morsels. No one ate any of their own food, and no one went hungry. Everyone was talking and laughing and telling silly jokes.
Full night was on us when Jesus stood up. "Thank you for a wonderful party," he said, and the crowd roared its gratitude back. "Now for the cleanup. We should give what we couldn't eat to the poor of the neighboring villages. Does anyone have any baskets for the leftovers?"
Some baskets were waved. Those of us who had come in the boat were again drafted to walk among the groups collecting any extra food. We filled twelve wicker baskets.
Much later I met a man who, when he found out I had spent some time with Jesus, asked me, "Did he really feed five thousand men with five loaves and two fish?"
"Yes," I said. "He really did."
"Scripture says Elisha fed one hundred men with twenty barley loaves made from the first fruits, and fresh grain in the ear. Are you saying Jesus worked a greater miracle than Elisha?"
"I don't know who worked the greater miracle," I answered, "but perhaps I know now how Elisha did it."
"What do you mean, 'How Elisha did it'?" the man exclaimed. "Elisha performed that miracle through the grace of God!"
"And so did Jesus," I said.
People came to think Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish into food enough for an army. Perhaps he worked that miracle alongside the one I saw; I wasn't watching that closely. But I think I saw that night a greater miracle--a man moving the human heart to goodness.
So you're getting to interview someone. What would you really like to ask?
For the writers among us, this can be a good exercise for getting to know your characters. Take a few of the questions people suggest and ask them of your characters.
If you're having difficulty thinking of questions in a generic sense, imagine a specific person you'd like to ask a specific question of. You don't need to tell us who you have in mind.
Here's a couple questions to get you started:
What's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done?
In what ways are you like your mother? In what ways are you like your father?
On what the author dubs "profound" ads:
"Advertising of this sort is more like Renaissance art than modern art. In the Renaissanace, painters like Michelangelo, Leonardo and Giotto did not paint what they wanted to paint...Their clients were the mendicant orders of the Roman Catholic church. Although the corporate headqarters was in Rome, the individual orders had some say in how they chose their advertising (what we now call art). Competition among these orders produced some of the greatest creations of the Western imagination, in part because they never forgot (or never were allowed to forget) the necessity of drawing an audience by addressing its deepest needs."
"...What we really crave is not just material, but material with meaning...Religions tend to make this world meaningful by creating value in the next...Commercialism, more specifically advertising, does precisely that to the fungible [interchangeable, homogenous] objects of the here and now...Much of the Protestant Reformation was geared toward denying the holiness of many things that the church had endowed with meanings. From the inviolable priesthood to the sacrificial holy water, this secularizing movement systematically unloaded meaning. Soon the marketplace would capture this offloaded meaning and apply it to machine-made things."
--"Twenty Ads That Shook the World," James B. Twitchell
I have a large unfinished work based on the Gospels. The narrator is Nicodemus, whom I've imagined as an outsider type, someone who can comment on the action from a fairly objective standpoint. Please note: it's fiction. Don't string me up for heresy or think I'm trying to impart some Received Wisdom.
---
It was a hot day. Peter and I volunteered to go to the wine merchant's, as much to get ourselves to a shady spot as to get everyone a little something to drink (and little was right--we counted up our denarii and found we had enough to buy maybe two flagons to pass around).
Inside the shop were two other customers. Both of their faces lit up when they saw Peter. The bigger and burlier of the two, round as a water jar, clapped my companion on the shoulder. "Look who we have!" He didn't need to yell quite so loud; his friend was just a step away. "It's Simon the Baptist! Still running with those strange folk?"
The other man dropped down and hugged Peter's knees, saying in a mocking whine, "Leave me, leave me, great lord and master! I am a sinful man!"
The two men laughed loudly. Peter's arm started twitching. I turned my head; I didn't want him to resist giving the punch just because I was there. The water-jar-shaped man thumped Peter's back again. "Best we not tease him too much, Archippus," he boomed. There certainly was a lot of room for words to resonate in him. "The man has a temper! Just teasin' ya, Simon. No harm done." They left, still laughing. Peter's lips were tight. He knew I was curious though I hadn't said a thing--I had barely even turned to glance at him. He said, "Not here. Later," and we paid for our wine.
The later came as promised as we sat with the dregs left in the flagons after everyone had taken their share. We were in the courtyard of the little house near the shore, Peter and I sitting just apart from the rest of the company. Jesus had already gone inside. The others had noted Peter was in a black mood and seemed more than willing to keep their distance. The sun was retreating from view behind the houses and walls of Capernaum. I began to think it was a pretty city, in its way. Nothing could be as vibrant and colorful as Jerusalem, but the plain, spare buildings here reflected the practical mindset of the people, who would have scoffed at decoration as distraction. They are not far wrong, I thought.
"I was married," Peter said. He took another swallow. "She died." That was typical for Capernaum, too. No talk for the sake of talk.
"How long ago?"
"Two years." He gave one of his humorless laughs. Sometimes it seemed the world was all a dark joke to Simon Peter. "We were dead to each other, though, long before she got shut up in the tomb. Dead flesh next to dead flesh. She was not happy being the wife of a fisherman. I had to work all the time--we'd be out all night often, Andrew and I, and James and John, who were partners with us, lowering nets, bringing them back in with little or nothing to show for it." He gestured over his shoulder to the sea. "The fish in there aren't waiting for nets to jump into. At least..." He snorted. "Well, that's my predominant experience of it, anyway. Out in the boats all night, then back to the shore to wash out and untangle the nets in the hot sun, that is, if a storm doesn't blow up out of nowhere and you have to fight just to stay afloat, much less get anywhere near home. If you do catch anything, it's got to be made ready for the fishmongers, and that's work that will leave you stinking so bad, people will get out of your path like you're a leper. If you don't catch anything, you have to go home to your wife and tell her you can't afford to get the roof patched right though the rain's been getting in all the time..." He tipped the flagon back all the way, touched his fingers to the lip and sucked the last drops off of them. "Look at that," he said, regarding the bottle. "Dry as old Sinai. That's another thing. You'll drink up any money you make that day as often as not, knowing full well the wife will set on you like a harpy for it, but wanting to drink rather than go home to her. The Lord God made some curious creatures when He made men, didn't He? Ah--women are no better. The wife I wanted was sympathetic, a support in my home, a keeper of peace when I'd battled with the world all night and half the day. The wife I got just screeched at me."
I stayed quiet. I had heard this story from many men, though I couldn't relate to it. My wife was a woman of all the virtues--patient, thrifty, hard-working, devout. I said a quick, silent prayer of thanksgiving even as I felt a pang of homesickness. It had been some time since I had seen her.
"Ah, but don't think I blame her. I wouldn't want to be married to me either." He lowered his head. "I met this woman in Tiberias one day when Andrew and I were separated from the other boat by a storm. She brought us wine and blankets and--I kept going back to see her, any time I could. Her husband was gone all the time too. I didn't mean it to become...what it became. It was only because she was kind and sympathetic and practical minded, like me. I know I'm no ruddy handsome youth like they sing about, the one with hair black as a raven and milk-white teeth set like jewels, the one who always smells like myrrh. She didn't mind. And I didn't mind her eyes weren't like doves and her cheek wasn't like a half-pomegranate. We got along. We'd been lonely, and we...
"I know it was wrong. I know I put her into terrible danger. After my wife got sick I never saw the woman in Tiberias again. I thought about her all the time, but then I would see my wife in the bed with the fever, and think, this is God's judgement on me.
"Not long after my wife died I was out in the boat with Andrew. We were back from a night so frustrating, I was ready to toss myself overboard, but instead I cleaned the nets 'til there was barely any net to clean. James and John were working beside their boat. I think old Zebedee was with them; I don't remember.
"There was a crowd at the shore listening to one of those itinterant preachers. Now, Andrew had gotten mixed up with the Baptizer, so he was curious about this fellow. I would have just as soon picked another dock. I did notice there were a lot of people, a crushing sort of crowd. I remember wishing something could be done about these sort of self-anointed prophets attracting such swarms of people around them. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: a mob is dangerous. Tempers get hot, people get trampled.
"The preacher seemed to see the danger to his own skin. He came right up and jumped into our boat without so much as a hello. He said to me, 'Pull away from the shore.'"
I frowned. "You kicked him out, I suppose, for being so presumptious?"
Peter laughed, showing his teeth, which were rather straight and white after all. "You don't have much experience with prophets or mobs, do you? Let me explain something. A preacher who is merely interesting doesn't attract the sort of people who are willing to risk being trampled to death to hear him. No, a crowd like that has more than a few true believers. The true believers see their leader forcibly ejected from my boat, do you know what they do to me? Do you know what they do to my boat?"
"Go on."
He sighed. "It wasn't like that. At the time I was thinking he had said something to make them all angry, and wild-eyed prophet or not I hated to see him torn up by that lot.
"We pulled away from the shore. This preacher--you've figured out who it is by now, of course it's Jesus--Jesus did all his talking from the boat. Not even standing, so as to give those who'd travelled all day for him something to see. Sitting down, mind you, like he owned the boat. And then he turned to me and said, 'Get into deeper water. Lower your nets for a catch.'
"I calmly explained how we had been trawling through every damn gallon of deep water in the Sea of Galilee for the last twelve hours. But I did it. You know why? Fishermen are gambling men at heart--and what gambler can resist one more throw of the dice? He was acting so cocksure, too, that there'd be something down there to catch--it would be pleasing to prove him wrong, even as that meant we'd still be going home with nothing."
"So you lowered the nets," I said.
"So I lowered the nets," Peter said. "With help from Andrew and those two men we met in the wine merchant's shop--no friends of ours. Old Zebedee hired them. We lowered the nets, and--" Tears welled up in Peter's eyes, but he looked me straight in the face, even as the twilight was making it harder for us to see each other. "You can't know. You just can't know. All those years of going out with the prayer we'd just catch enough to live on, to repair the boats when we needed to, to finally fix that cursed roof. I never wanted to be rich. I only ever wanted not to have to worry." He took a deep breath and started again. "We lowered the nets, and when we hauled the first one up again, the ropes were snapping. I thought we must have snagged some rock at the bottom of the sea, but no--they couldn't take the weight of the fish. We got them on board and the boat nearly sank. We waved frantically to James and John--they came and opened the second net on their deck; their boat nearly sank too. And this strange preacher--Jesus--was just looking at me. Next thing, I had my arms wrapped around his knees--he was still sitting--and I was blubbering, 'Depart from me, Lord. I'm a sinful man.' As I said, I hardly knew what I was doing. I can be a bit impetuous at times."
I coughed. I tried to be discreet about it, but Peter waved his hand.
"I'm not so blind I don't see myself as I am, Nicodemus. I know my faults. I just can't help it. The moment comes and suddenly I'm the bearer of drama. But I'm not crazy. Those fellows at the wine merchant's think I've utterly lost my wits. But I think they lost their wits. Why aren't they here tonight? They were in the boat too. They saw what happened! There's never been a catch like that!"
Peter was railing now. He jumped up and confronted the others in the courtyard, shouting in each one's face. "I know what you say about me! I'm that crazy, impulsive Simon Peter. Never thinking, only acting. What would you do if you were me, if you lost your marriage--and forsook your lover--and lost your wife--and then someone comes along and nearly drowns you in the only thing you thought you ever really wanted?"
Some of the company gaped at him, some just avoided his wild eyes. He huffed like he was struggling to get his breath, shaking his head so his hair flew in every direction. "Right," Peter announced. "I'm going to bed." And he turned and walked into the house.
You scrape the music from my skin
You noonday summer till I am sweat
Unsavor any food I'm in
Crack the sound, throb the light, take my get.
I lash in heat-drenched rain
Roil still in dark-wrapped silk
Take kindness under pain
Soak up, drink up, vanilla milk.
We will travel road from road
Meet again, dire consequence.
You will migraine overload.
I will migraine. Once more. Wreck sense.
She, the haunter of battlefields, she,
Whose cries are harsh music, she,
Fatal wind-lover,
Lover of shadows scorched in the ground.
In the country called Krohn there is a territory known as the Dragon-Lands. The Dragon-Lands are both a vast, largely unexplored, self-contained area ringed with cliffs as well as any high place, any mountain. Krohnian dragons are winged cliff-dwellers, possessed of the surefootedness of goats or--to give a better visual image--salamanders. And one of the chief salient features of the dragons we know, that they hoard treasure, has an interesting counterpart in Krohnian dragon society. There are vast stores of wealth in the caves of the Dragon-Lands, not just the stereotypical mounds of gold crowns and rubies and pearls, but anything that anyone might consider treasure--piles of nuts amassed by squirrels, say. (It is human-centric to consider valuable only such baubles as gold crowns and rubies and pearls.) The land itself is rich--plant wheat and see your crop yield a hundred-fold, sift your fingers in the gravel of the streams and find diamonds.
All of this belongs only to the dragons, though they will be the first to admit they weren't the ones who went out and gathered the treasures blanketing their cave floors. Some may tell you the dragons have conquered the territory and fight to keep it for its wealth, but this seems to me a simplistic answer. What are gold and jewels anyway, to dragons? Or squirrel-gathered nuts, for that matter? Ask a dragon why they have such a massive stockpile, and they will say that their task is to guard it.
Indeed, they are the only ones who can keep it. Plant that wheat in the Dragon-Lands, prospect for gold, hunt for gems--if you aren't a dragon, it will enrich no one but yourself. For though the land is rich, any non-dragon living in it will become barren. So it remains unexplored.
She called me "little one."
She was so small herself, twisted and deformed like the those unfortunates men stare at after paying their money. Yet when she called me "little one" she was exactly right. I was a child to her, a beloved child, and this was a name my mother might have called me. Might have, only she didn't. My mother, as extraordinary a woman as she was, always wanted--needed--something in return for her love. She could not have helped that. But she who was my queen never seemed to demand anything from me. I don't know how or why.
I cannot imagine that I could hear "little one" from anyone else and be so glad it referred to me. It is my private name, reserved for her use alone, nothing like the name I toss about in all directions in the marketplace.
Her name was one thing I never learned.
Note: in a naked grasp for more publicity, I have created a "notifications" list of people who I'm guessing would like to know when this weblog is updated. If you start receiving notifications and do not wish to, let me know and I will remove your email address from the list. If you do wish to know when I update this site and you are not getting notifications, submit a comment with your email addy or write me at apancella@hotmail.com.
On to the game.
This was suggested at a recent writer's group meeting. What I'm going to do is give you a paragraph. What I want you to do is to rewrite the paragraph in your own words. Imagine that you are translating it from one language to another--you want to get the meaning of the words across, but you want to say it in a way different from how it was originally said.
The paragraph I'm going to use comes from the 4000-year-old "Epic of Gilgamesh," from the translation by N. K. Sandars. Some things don't change much in 4000 years:
"Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man."
Something a little different, and something I'd like to see contributions to.
I had this thought recently after waking up with a couple of odd quotes in my head: just what do we have stored in our memories? What are the words that are hard-wired in our brain, either because we purposely memorized them or because we have heard them so many times they are inescapable now? For writers, it's a particularly important question because these words provide the template for so many of the words we write; we choose a particular turn of phrase because "it sounds good" when that really means it sounds like a phrase we have in our heads. So here's a few of the things that are entrenched in my memory. Note: a few won't be exact quotes; some things get lodged in my head wrong.
Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.
--Shakespeare
Seesaw/knock on the door/Who's there?/Grampa/What do you want?/A glass of beer/Where's your money?/In my pocket/Where's your pocket?/In my pants/Where's your pants?/I left them at home/What's your number?/Cucumber/...GET OUT OF HERE, YOU DIRTY BUM!
--something our grandfather taught us as kids
I am a stag of seven tines
I am a wind on a deep lake
I am a tear the sun lets fall
I am a hawk above the cliff
I am a thorn beneath the nail
I am an infant; who but I
Peeps from the unhewn dolmen arch?
--Robert Graves' translation of old Celtic "alphabet" poem
On the day of the dead, when the year too dies
Must the youngest open the oldest hills
Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.
There fire shall fly from the raven boy
And the silver eyes that see the wind
And the Light will have the harp of gold.
--Susan Cooper, "The Grey King"
For I will not reveal your secret to your enemies,
Nor will I give you a kiss as did Judas,
But like the thief I say to you:
Remember me, O Lord, when you shall come into your kingdom.
--from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
Miss Lucy had a baby, she named him Tiny Tim
She put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim.
He drank up all the water, he ate up all the soap
He tried to eat the bathtub but it wouldn't fit down his throat.
--schoolyard rhyme
Well-meaning little therapists
Goose-stepping, twelve-stepping teetotalitarianists
--Nick Cave, "God is in the House"
I will bless the Lord at all times,
His praise shall be ever in my mouth;
Let my soul glory in the Lord,
The lowly will hear me and be glad.
--one of the Psalms; 34 maybe
Don't let me stop your great self-destruction!
Die if you want to, you misguided martyr!
I wash my hands of your demolition!
Die if you want to, you innocent puppet!
--Jesus Christ Superstar
I don't believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts
While bullets rape the night of the merciful
I'll see you again when the stars fall from the sky
And the moon has turned red over One Tree Hill
--U2, "One Tree Hill"
So--what rattles around in your head?
Stale air
Air that goes
Nowhere
Hot night
Heavy sky
Hot and damp
Cloud-muffled sky
And me
Laying still
Head aching still
Waiting for one
Just one
Breeze touch
Cool as chocolate shakes
Cool as first snowflakes
To brace against
Burrowed deep
In quilt-warmth
Snug in my May bed.
Lazy waves on the water in the fountain, not appearing to be moving forward so much as forward and back, like the surface of a banged-up metal tray which can be bent first one direction and then the other.
Fighter planes passing overhead. They rend the air with sound. The clouds above them military, gunmetal gray.
The tower, the tallest of its kind, all bricks and peeling white paint. The street arcing around it, the girl right beneath, craning her neck to take it in.
A man waving flyers in the road, coming to the car window: "Don't you have a dollar for Jesus?" A woman shouting in her microphone in the parking lot: "My children hated me!"
(This is background info on a character in a fantasy story I wrote a few years ago.)
I used to write with water on stone, the waters beginning to dry before the word was complete. My finger formed every curve and slash and if there was too much water and the surface was tilted, the letters would bleed a little but you could still make them out.
I wrote, too, with a charred stick. Letters of ash, words of dead fire.
I always loved writing. It is no wonder, then, that I teach the skill now to a class of students sometimes as enthusiastic as I was at their age. We have to make our own paper, of course, but that is no hardship. I have a fine grove of trees with peeling bark. We throw bark into the hand-crank pulpers in a shed in the yard, mixing it with water and bits of rag from old clothes. I reach in and pull the pulp out on screens, shaking the screens like IÌm sifting for gold in a streamÛmy students all beg me for this job, but I say no, not yet, soon IÌll teach you how to keep the pulp from being all lumpy, but not yet. I push the screen pulp-down on felt pads the wool-woman gave me. It will dry well there and in two days a new paper crop will be ready for our words.
We donÌt manufacture our own ink, though I know how to make a low quality sort in case something happens to our supplier at market. Quills we make ourselves. My first lesson was how to cut a quill properly, so I could send home the students careless enough to forget their knives.
We also have block printing, a letter at one touch. A word at one touch if we string letters together, and also if we consolidate what we have to say. We are economical with our language. I tell all of my students the fewest words are best. The most profound thing I ever read was written with one letter. Strive for that, I tell them.
They write their own pieces, most of which get shredded so the paper can return to the pulper. And then we read, because I give two trainings in writingÛI teach the basics of book construction and I teach the basics of thought construction.
To be self-sufficient, we have to spend a good portion of the day copying worksÛpoems and legends and political tracts. I do not treat this as a mindless task either. I tell my students the dissemination of information is critical for our survival and prosperity. Ideas must be exchanged, else they may never go from ideas to reality.
"What's the farthest place you've gone to?"
She leaned back and took a hesitating sip of tea. The cup chimed like a tiny bell when she set it back on its saucer. "My husband and I drove to California for our honeymoon. I saw the ocean for the first time on that trip. I remember being on the coastal road and pushing my face against the window to get it all in. And then we were at the beach, and I was standing there with the surf beating my ankles, and my husband--he was always the poetical sort, you know--he started talking about that water going back out to Hawaii and Samoa and on and on. To Australia maybe, or Japan. That same water lapping against my feet.
"'Up into the air, too,' he told me. 'It will touch you and then disappear, come back as a cloud up as high as the air can get.' I've gone to some far places, but the things I've touched have gone farther than I'll ever go." She exhaled in a murmuring sigh, fiddling with the handle of the cup. "I wish they wouldn't go quite so far. Or if they did, I wish that afterward they'd come back to me."
I feel like I have to know things as deeply as I can, from every possible angle, before investigating something else. And since there is always more to learn where I have started, the investigating-something-else bit never happens.
So I live in the house where I was born, and I go to the church where I was baptized. I have gone to other cities but I always come home; I have gone to Mass at other churches but I am never gone from my little church for long.
It is my growing up; my grade school was my parish grade school. Once a week in religion class we'd get a visit from the pastor, a tall, thin, cadaverous type who absolutely terrified us. He would ask us questions out of the Baltimore Catechism. Silence would descend on the class. He would sigh, shake his head, cluck sadly. Apparently the teachers either never let him know we didn't study the Baltimore Catechism or he always forgot.
"What is hope?" he asked once. Blank stares all round. There was one boy who usually knew the answers to things; he raised his hand and gave it a go. I did too. But neither of us could save the class' reputation in front of our pastor. To this day I freeze up if I try to define "hope" theologically.
In the church building back then, the altar had a canopy over it and different-colored curtains behind it that were changed for the occasion--green for Ordinary Time, red for a martyr's feast day, purple for Advent. There were candles arrayed on candelabras like men on stairs or like the upside-down Vs of flying geese. There was a marble-topped communion rail and statues entirely surrounded by flickering votives as though atop hills of fire. Mary was on one side, St. Joseph on the other, and they were flanked by St. Thomas and St. Theresa, the Infant of Prague, a Pieta.
I threw ten kinds of fits--the whole class did--when due to scaffolding in the church building we were forced to have our grade school graduation at the "rival" church down the road. The church was being renovated. The old pastor was gone and so was the communion rail, the canopy, curtains and candelabras.
Saturday I went to the funeral of the man who served as custodian at the church and the school when I was growing up. He lived right next to the church and would ring the Angelus bell at 6 in the morning, at noon, and six in the evening; the same bells I would try to race at lunchtime--could I make it home before they stopped clanging?
Sunday I was at the church for the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Vietnamese Catholic community in my city, who now share the church with the few English-speakers left in the parish, consider Mary their patroness under this title. We processed down the middle of the street: young girls in pastel silk dresses scattering rose petals, toddlers and older women carrying flowers, men in blue silk costumes with circular hats carrying a statue of Mary on a litter, the support beams of which were red dragons. We chanted the Rosary in Vietnamese. (Okay, everyone except me.) Every few hundred feet we'd stop and the loudspeaker being pushed on a cart would tinnily lead us in song. I was thinking of being in second grade, dressed again in First Communion dress and veil for Mary's May crowning, singing "Bring flowers of the fairest/bring flowers of the rarest" and forming a "living rosary" round the perimeter of the church pews. And then someone rang the church bells.
One of my favorite things to do is to come up with new slang. If it catches on, you win yourself some immortality. So here is a place to suggest words or phrases that we should all incorporate into our day-to-day speech.
Here are a couple of mine:
Ozzy! -- a subsitute for the f-word. A co-worker of mine and I thought this one up after watching "The Osbournes."
Miraculous garlic of kindness! -- an expression of incredulity, like "Great Caesar's ghost!" in the old "Superman" TV series. I saw this phrase on a votive candle dedicated to the garlic which purportedly grew on Calvary. It was the beginning of an intercessory prayer; something like "Miraculous garlic of kindness, please help me gain what I request."
I'm sure my father was the person on whom his friends relied to tell their stories, in school and college. I know for sure that he was later, in the town where he was raising his children. He could take major events or small episodes from daily life and shade or exaggerate things in such a way as to capture their shape and substance, capture what life felt like in the society in which he and his friends lived and worked and bred. People looked to him to put into words what was going on.
I suspect that he was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grownups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal. Throughout my childhood I believed that what I thought about was different from what other kids thought about. It was not necessarily more profound, but there was a struggle going on inside me to find some sort of creative or spiritual or aesthetic way of seeing the world and organizing it in my head. I read more than other kids; I luxuriated in books. Books were my refuge. I sat in corners with my little finger hooked over my bottom lip, reading, in a trance, lost in the places and times to which books took me. And there was a moment during my junior year in high school when I began to believe that I could do what other writers were doing. I came to believe that I might be able to put a pencil in my hand and make something magical happen.
Then I wrote some terrible, terrible stories.
--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
It would not have been a success if it hadn't been for the media.
The 'zine, of course, was its own media outlet. It was well regarded (thanks to its talented writers) and widely distributed (thousands were printed thanks to Cactus' employee discounts at CopyCopy, amended by monetary donations from the staff; Cactus had encouraged them at the outset to think of the 'zine in religious terms, which obligated them to tithe).
Besides this, the Fox had connections at radio stations and Natasha had connections to local TV. The public invitation to a wake for someone not actually dead proved too compelling to resist when the city was thus over-informed about it.
Puncshal lay in state on tables pushed together in the center of the room. Anna had thoughtfully provided plastic orchids, which were splayed about the body alternating with stuffed animals and Polaroid memories of happier times.
Cactus tapped at the microphone, set up just beyond the pool table (the pool table! Why hadn't he thought of plunking Puncshal down on that?). "Yes. Gathered mourners, I want to take this opportunity to welcome you and to open the evening up to the tributes."
Shy, Retiring Sort stepped forward, grabbed the microphone from its stand and commenced pacing. "Without Puncshal there is, erm, hmm." She cocked her head and blinked at Cactus. "Can I make stuff up?"
"Of course." Cactus leaned into the mike. "Everyone, don't worry if you've never met the deceased but still want to say something. You're free to improvise."
Shy took quivery steps forward to the tables of mourning. "Goodbye, Puncshal. Sorry I never told you I was carrying your lovechild."
Blondie perked up. "I want it next." He was handed the microphone. "Goodbye, old friend. I'll never forget our drug-smuggling runs, our code names, the barren wastes and endless lost weekends."
By the end of the night, when the guest of honor finally rose, it was to complain about how dull his life suddenly seemed after hearing testimonial after testimonial of his grand adventures from complete strangers and those who may once have been friends.
Cactus saw no downside. "Social consciousness essay for the next issue--the ridiculous costs of funerals. Why are we conditioned to want such elaborate events for the dead? And the coffins--what about decorating them? I read once about this city where the coffins are done as sharks or classic cars or airplanes..."
Shy shushed him. "They'll hear you."
"Who?"
"Mortuary spies. Keep this up, you'll put them out of business."
"No, no, no! Funeral homes are cool! They can change with the times, rent out space for banquets or dance parties or such--why waste such great decor on somber gatherings?"
They spilled out into the night past where news crews were stacking equipment back into their trucks. Cactus, Puncshal, Shy, Anna, Natasha, the Fox (taking more Polaroids for later--little did he know he was scheduled to "die" next) and Blondie walked on, taking in the nightlife. A man on the doorstep of a tattoo shop played with a little punching nun puppet. Men with hiker's backpacks windowshopped at a large display of salt and pepper shakers.
"Dunno why the newspeople were so interested in us," Cactus said after a while. "Seems to be enough stuff to capture their attention. But I hope they'll stay interested. This could be just the start. A trend! We're gonna be the cutting edge! It's the Death Revolution!"
It might well have been, too, but just as next month's wake rolled around rumors started flying about some amphibious monster purportedly living in the city's Botanical Gardens, and all the news crews were despatched there.
"See," Shy said glumly as they toasted Fox in a nearly deserted Media Vita. "I think the morticians started the rumors. You just don't mess with the death industry."
"Still, novel idea, big party when you're still alive," Blondie said. "Maybe we should just look for small successes, make it an underground movement, instead of going the big quasi-corporate 'Wakes "R" Us' route."
"Good point." Cactus clinked Blondie's tea mug. "Wanna be dead next?"
"Sure."
"So yeah," Puncshal was explaining to Anna in the coffeehouse's doorway, "first I had the sparkling cider adventure, then guess what happened when I actually managed to get out of the house? I opened the car door and a can of bug spray I had left on the seat fell out, but fell under my car--I couldn't reach it. I figured if I just drove forward a little it'd roll to the curb, but I ended up running over it, and so then of course I had to go find a dumpster for this crushed can of weird chemicals."
"So that's why you're late," Anna finished for him. She'd been elected to meet him before the rest so that she'd get the long story.
"I mean, it could happen to anyone." He glanced at the table where the rest of his fellow travellers--all but Cactus--were lounging. "What task has been handed to me in absentia tonight?"
Anna shot a quick look over to where Cactus was chatting animatedly with the coffeehouse's owner. "I think we want you to play dead, but our desert flower's going to have to explain why."
---
"Look. I swear we're not asking for much."
"You're asking to throw a party for a dead person in my coffeehouse." It seemed as Beth thought her customer hadn't heard what he was looking to get permission for.
"Someone not really dead! Honest!"
"Suit yourself."
Cactus felt she was missing the brilliance of the plan. "Don't you see? A living wake. A big party where the guest of honor is still around to enjoy it."
"But why do you want to hold this morbid little soiree here? Don't wakes usually involve alcohol? I don't serve alcohol; I never will."
"Oh, Media Vita is the perfect place. For one thing, we're all here on Wednesdays anyway. For another, you've got the decor." His gesture took in the church pews, the gargoyles, the lifesize avenging angel painting. "It's in your very name. I know where you got it--I own that Anuna CD too. 'Media vita something-something-in-Latin': "In the midst of life there is death.' See? The idea could really take off, and then Wednesdays, which are such dead nights for you--excuse the pun--could become huge."
She set her mouth like she'd just swallowed something unspeakably noxious. But Cactus had a look in his eyes he'd learned from his golden retriever. Not many could withstand this assault, and he knew Beth wasn't one of them.
"Fine. Next month, Wake Night. All yours. But it's still morbid. Who'll be the lucky stiff?"
Cactus waved cheerily at Puncshal who'd been staring at him for the last several minutes. "I've got it covered. For showing up at 9 when he was due here at 7, he was a dead man anyway."
At the end of how they are now
Someone will ask, what would you like to be?
They will answer: stars.
And they will be made twin stars.
A too-strong force will bind them;
They will circle
Slowly, slowly,
Every circuit an era,
Until each knows all about the other,
Until the other is all each knows.
Then the pace will quicken.
They will fall,
Collapse into one--
And explode.
As good as Cactus was with names, he'd never gotten round to naming his 'zine. He sat on the first issue as long as he could, maintaining his indecision by telling the staff, "Let's just give it a random new name every month." They explained to him calmly that this idea sucked. "Fine," he said, at the very last moment scrawling "THE 'ZINE" across the top of the first page. Then of course all other 'zine writers in the city smacked their heads--why hadn't they thought of that? Cactus was now publishing the definitive example of the genre.
The publisher and editor-in-chief of the 'zine above all 'zines drummed his fingers on his seat, which, Media Vita being heavily Goth, was a reclaimed church pew. He was campaigning for a social consciousness slant for the June issue. "Racism," he announced. "Black-white relations in this city. Let's take that on."
Shy, Retiring Sort rolled her eyes.
"What?" Cactus demanded.
"Look around this table. Are there any black people on this staff?"
He shifted uncomfortably in his pew.
"Have you ever even been to a black person's house?"
"Well, no."
She grinned with all her teeth. "You've just nominated yourself to write the cover story."
* * *
Puncshal had stuck the cork on too far. It was one of those horrid corks, too--plastic, thick. It was too thick to pierce with the corkscrew, an idea he had tried after he discovered he could gain no purchase trying to twist it off. There was, finally, only one option. He considered the task before him with more concentration than he'd given any physics exam. In fact, he would have felt more able to face this challenge had he paid more attention to those physics exams...
He set the bottle down and leaned forward in his chair, resting his chin on his palm and tapping his upper lip with his forefinger. Yes. It was his only option. Yes, he had to do it. He refused to leave that last third of sparkling apple cider left undrunk. There were things he could do to improve his odds. He fetched a strainer (to catch shards of glass before they could get into his cup) and some duct tape. He wrapped the duct tape around the bottle just below the neck, hoping this left less potential for disaster. Then he headed for the basement to find a hammer.
Puncshal had things he had to do. He absolutely had to do them before the 'zine meeting, even if it meant he would be late. But he wasn't looking forward to doing them.
It took all his mental energy to clean the kitchen--to throw out the dead orange juice and milk cartons, rinse out the empty tin of oysters and wash the dishes. So then when he was rewarding himself with a treat, when he pulled the foil top from the applesauce snack serving and reached for a spoon, he suddenly balked at the thought of dirtying even one utensil. He bit his lip in thought. It was a fairly shallow bowl. He shrugged to himself, tossed the spoon back in the drawer, and commenced lapping the applesauce up with his tongue like a cat.
This is a very easy game to play. Everyone is invited to contribute one or two sentences at a time to a growing story. You can add more as often as you wish, just as long as at least one other person has contributed between your visits.
I'm going to write the beginning of a story. Then you can add to it in whatever style you like, with any plot ideas you like. Don't worry about whether or not it makes sense. A story by committee wouldn't make sense anyway, so we might was well give ourselves permission to go weird.
Okay, here's the beginning:
Miriam said, "I want to be a black-haired fairy. With wings."
Schmendrick dreamed that the unicorn came and stood by him at moonrise. The thin night wind lifted and spilled her mane, and the moon shone on the snowflake crafting of her small head. He knew it was a dream, but he was happy to see her. "How beautiful you are," he said. "I never really told you."
...She said, "You are a true and mortal wizard now, as you always wished. Does it make you happy?"
"Yes," he replied with a quiet laugh. "...But there are wizards and wizards; there is black magic and white magic, and the infinite shades of gray between--and I see now that it is all the same. Whether I decide to be what men would call a wise and good magician--aiding heroes, thwarting witches, wicked lords and unreasonable parents; making rain, curing woolsorter's disease and the mad staggers, getting cats down from trees--or whether I choose the retorts full of elixirs and essences, the powders and herbs and banes, the padlocked books of gramarye bound in skins better left unnamed, the muddy mist darkening in the chamber and the sweet voice lisping therein--why, life is short, and how many can I help or harm? I have my power at last, but the world is still too heavy for me to move..."
The unicorn said, "That is true. You are a man, and men can do nothing that makes any difference." But her voice was strangely slow and burdened. She asked, "Which will you choose?"
The magician laughed for a third time. "Oh, it will be the kind magic, undoubtedly, because you would like it more. I do not think that I will ever see you again, but I will try to do what would please you if you knew."
--Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn