Blind Date

“Always wear clean, normal underwear,” my mother says. And yet
Before I leave my home, the last thing on my mind is
‘check your panties’. No–I’m channeling
Darcy, as my mind is definitely more agreeably
engaged.  And that’s probably why I can’t
find my keys. Dammit, damn it all to–
good grief, there they are. Alright..keys, directions to the
hotel, obligatory gift for the couple who are the
idealized version of happiness that everyone else will
judge their own relationship by, and find lacking. I wonder if I’ll get to
keep the centerpiece, or if I’ll have to
look around it just to
make conversation with my devastatingly single
new date,
oh so helpfully acquired in a fit of
pique — not my fit, my boss’s fit — at my seemingly
quaint little notion that it would be perfectly acceptable for me to
run along to a wedding without a date, to go
stag as it were, and that’s just not going
to happen at her pretty princess’s nuptials. You have to
understand, the date she picked for me was delicious,
very goal-oriented and not
without a sense of humor. I know this because as I tripped on the raised
‘XXVIII’ inlay on the hotel floor, he helped me to my feet and said with a smile,
“You’re wearing
zebra satin underwear.”

Many thanks to Writer’s Digest’s Writing Prompts for the exercise.

Unpacking is going along as expected. One box after another spilling it’s guts out, and me attempting to make sure that things are put in places where they look like they ought to belong. I don’t want to be the only one who knows where everything is, but then that’s just tough shit, innit?

I feel like there’s poetry inside bubbling up, but there’s not enough fizz to get it out. I want to write, but have nothing to say.  That’s why I’m simply typing words now, listening to my fingers tap out letters that grow into sentences with no meaning whatsoever but exist simply because there is a medium for me to ramble onto.

Something’s coming on the wind, sure enough.  I wish it would just get the fuck here.

I don’t think I even want to see the movie at this point.

You’re adapting a novel, you want to respect the writer and all that. But at the same time — perhaps it’s different with Harry Potter or something, where it seems like every child has read it — but when you’re looking at a book that was written a long time ago, that quite a lot of people have not read, then your duty is to the film, not to the author.”

Or the story, for that matter.

The one thing keeping me sane is the friendship I have developed with a few coworkers. More and more I’m seeing the ‘it’s not what you know,but who you know and how hard you’ve sucked his dick’ that’s going to get me out of that place.

My god, I’d love to get ahead on merit. On my brilliance, whether you agree it’s there or not!

Of course, this whine fest would not be complete without the, “I need to start writing again,” mantra, or everyone’s favorite, “I have so many ideas, and no ability to flesh them out.”

Time for me to shit or get off the pot, really.

x-posted to myspace/blog.

I’m going back as far as I can remember.

I”m with a group, and we’re competing against another group…. something about doing yard work, fixing the house we’re all stuck living in until the end of the contest. I’m told by my team leader ( a very handsome guy ) that our mext ‘mission’ is going to involve us digging in a /lot lot lot/ of mud and water and grime. I’m not too pleased with this notion, but I shrug and accept my fate.

The scene shifts to a wading pool, and there is this four headed monster that we’ve got to tame that keeps slithering out of the pool and trying to run away. We’re all going nuts trying to hold onto this thrashing animal when one of my teammates picks up one of it’s ‘cast off heads’ and realizes that it’s an otter.

We all recoil in distaste, we thought we were fighting something horrible, only to find that it’s just otters that have been tied together. We’re all disgusted, and yell at our ‘team leader’, he tells us that the show did it for ratings.

The scene fades… I’m at the side of a huge station wagon, and this tall black man approaches me, tells me that I won’t get away with it this time, my cheating days are over. He reaches into the wagon from the driver’s side and takes the keys out of the ignition. I’m frightened, but he’s familiar, and I don’t know why. Finally I ask him, “Are you _______?” ( I can’t remember the name he used in the dream. It was very login-name-ish ) He nods and smiles, almost swaggering, “Yeah, I am…wait…you’re Liakela, aren’t you?” I say, “No–no, I’m not!” And then laugh weakly, “Ok, yes I am…” I admit finally, after feeling stupid for denying it. “You’re like…the best driver in the world….” I tell him in awe. He shrugs and grins, “You’re in the top ten, girlie,” he says. I shrug his compliment off too, “Yeah, but I don’t really go anywhere. Not like you.

The scene fades again, and I’m standing on a wooden platform, inside a huge tree. Looking around, there are pretty railings and stairs and things everywhere, it’s a puzzle tree house, of sorts.

I’m with a younger, more aggressive man, though he’s still black. He’s holding a piece of paper in his hands, and reading off ‘clues’ of how to climb into the tree house. There is one clue that says something about ‘the blue walk’, and I look down, and one corner of a platform is painted a vibrant blue. There is another, something about ‘a citrus moon’, and in a crevice ahead, is a very large yellow grapefruit, just beside the next level we’ll need to reach. We get to the end finally, and we’re in a house…very posh.

My mother ( played by someone who’s not familiar to me, but in the dream, she was ‘mother’ ) walks in, sees me and says something mundane about my chores for the day. She sees the black man I’m with and goes ballistic. She freaks out majorly, dropping the grocery bag that’s in her arms, begging him not to hurt her, until she can run upstairs. Alarms start to go off, lights are flashing. The man I’m with takes it in stride, taking a little paint bottle from one of his side pockets and tossing it up into the shelf of a nearby closet and saying, “Don’t let the doggie eat that…” before the police arrive, and cameras and there is some sort of news feed coming in from our telephone as the police are taking my friend into custody. Meanwhile, I’m screaming at my mother, calling her a stupid middle class morality whore who doesn’t know the meaning of a real life, pointing this newsfeed phone at her, exposing her prejudices to the world. My friend is let go.

By this time, I’m mostly waking up, and I’m thinking now about a play that I want to write. It will consist of only four players, two women and two men. But the two women and the two men need to be identical twins, and the women need to be white, and the men black. The play would open with one of the women lying on her back, as though she were at a picnic, reading a letter aloud. Another light would gently rise to show one of the men, listening, and commenting.

Once we know these two characters, their subconscious thoughts will be brought forward, talking to their conscious selves at first… then at some point, the two unconscious selves will start undressing each other, as unrepressed about being together as the conscious selves /are/ repressed. Half-lit upstage, the uncon selves will engage in intercourse while the conscious two will discuss mundane things– topics that hint at what they both wish they were doing, but that neither is brave enough to do.

At some point, the four will have to merge… I dunno. That’s as far as I got with the thought, but phew. Wanted to make sure I got it down somewhere.

FAIRY TALE

nce upon a time there has a young PEN SALESMAN named JOEY BAGGADONUTS. He was OVERLY CLUBBING in the CAREFUL forest when he met LOVELY HARVEY, a run-away METER MAID from the BESTEST Queen MAYA.

JOEY BAGGADONUTS could see that LOVELY HARVEY was hungry so he reached into his SHOE BOX and give him his LARGE HUMMUS. LOVELY HARVEY was thankful for JOEY BAGGADONUTS‘s HUMMUS, so he told JOEY BAGGADONUTS a very UNWIELDY story about Queen MAYA‘s daughter KAREN. How her mother, the BESTEST Queen MAYA, kept her locked away in a GARAGE protected by a gigantic KITTY CAT, because KAREN was so TERRIBLE.

JOEY BAGGADONUTS WROTE. He vowed to LOVELY HARVEY the METER MAID that he would save the TERRIBLE KAREN. He would WANT the KITTY CAT, and take KAREN far away from her eveil mother, the BESTEST Queen MAYA, and KICK her.

Then, all of the sudden, there was a PERFECT TORNADO and LOVELY HARVEY the METER MAID began to laugh. With a puff of smoke he turned into the gigantic KITTY CAT from his story. BESTEST Queen MAYA CROWED out from behind a SPATULA and struck JOEY BAGGADONUTS dead. In the far off GARAGE you could hear a BANG!.

THE END.

Make your own Fairy Tale at fuali.com

Haven’t written a bit.

Will try and write more later.

Slowly but surely. And I think I actually know where the story is going now. Oy.

Hard to write when you’ve got someone sitting right there, pleased to hate you.

Anyway, with that unpleasantness out of the way, and no I haven’t heard anything since that last posting, life goes on, as it were.

7 days until the Foreign Service Oral Assessment.

I’ve started a novel. Yes, a novel. No, I won’t be sharing chapters.

Take a look at http://www.nanowrimo.org/index.php for what’s going on and why I’m writing.

After three years of knowing about it, I’m finally stepping into the fray. Yes, I know I’ve got 7 days to make up for–I’m 1,300 words into it. Funny how that sounds like a lot (to me anyway) but isn’t really that many when you look at the pages.

Anyway, if I feel good about what’s being written, perhaps I’ll share a little. We’ll see.