Tag Archives: on writing

Day of the Dead Sets the Scene — An Excerpt from Human Slices, a Love Story

Español: tradicional ofrenda del dia de los mu...

Photo credit: Wikipedia

On a rainy first of November many years ago, my friend Anne took me to Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art for its Dia de los Muertos celebration. I was immediately smitten by the altars, those skeletons, the offerings, the colors. That first Day of the Dead experience still dances in my bones. (Thank you, Annie!)

When I was working on the closing scenes of my novel Human Slices, I imagined my female protagonist heartbroken and numb at Halloween. Then she went off and created a Day of the Dead altar.

Whenever this day comes around, I think of this scene with Salm — which is her odd little nickname for her longer nickname, Little Salmon. Here’s an excerpt from the last chapter of Human Slices.

Happy Dia de los Muertos!


As the wet autumn leaves squeaked underfoot, Salm lugged four small pumpkins up the stairs to her apartment. She spread several Sunday papers onto the kitchen floor and sat down, putting the pumpkins between her legs. She cut deep wounds around their stems, and after pulling off the tops, she settled in for the best part of the job—digging her hands into the cold slime and separating the stringy innards from the seeds.

She spent the early evening washing the pumpkin seeds, salting them, and baking them in her oven. She was going to take the seeds to Sylvia and Reed’s tomorrow. They had just moved in together, and they were having a Day of the Dead celebration in conjunction with their housewarming party. Reed had told her he had a mild addiction to pumpkin seeds. While the seeds cooked, Salm sliced unhappy geometric expressions into the pumpkins’ faces.

Sylvia had introduced Salm to the Day of the Dead rituals—Dia de los Muertos—years ago. It was the day the dead came back to visit the earth. Creating an altar with candles was essential. The altar honored their memory, and the candles guided their way. 

After the pumpkins were carved, Salm lined them on top of her kitchen table. She went into her pantry and dug out the voodoo candles she bought at Maxwell Street last year—thick, round candles encased in sparkling glass. Her cats followed Salm from room to room as she roamed her apartment, picking up assorted mementos—photographs, bits of memorabilia, postcards, souvenirs, a book of poetry, letters, holy cards.

On her bureau, she found Luke’s dog magnets. She arranged and rearranged everything until the memories were in their right places. Then she sprinkled the entire creation with glitter. Satisfied with the altar’s look, she rummaged through the cabinet under her sink to find an old bottle of mescal and poured herself a double shot. She lit the candles and turned off the overhead light. 

She sat at the kitchen table and watched the candles flicker. “To the dead,” she began, lifting the shot glass to her eyes and squinting through it. She threw the fiery liquid down her throat. 

Salm toasted to the pumpkins. “To Dad.”  She sighed. 

“Aunt Elaine, Grandma and Grandpa Collins, Big Fred, Grandma Penszak.”  She sat in silence. 

“To Sandy, my guardian angel, Bobby Kennedy, Uncle Walt, Theresa, Peter.  Jennifer, Cal, Les, Stuart, Rick, Terrence.”

As always, Luke was on her mind. “To Luke’s parents, his Uncle Jerry, Greg, Anne Marie and all the rest.”  She felt a certain numbness from the mescal overtaking her fingers and toes. 

“To all of the lovers and friends who are dead…really dead…and the ones who are dead to me from absence.”  She felt tears burn in her eyes. 

“And, of course, to Luke.” She spoke quietly and solemnly. 

The candle flames quivered and swayed, catching and reflecting the light of the raindrops on the window.

Salm sat still for a long, long time. 

She thought she heard a knock at the back door, but it must have been a branch, or a tipped garbage can being blown down the alley.   

“It’s open,” she thought to herself. She remembered saying that to Luke so many times.

There was another knock. She looked up to the back door and thought she saw Luke’s image through the screen.  She wondered if the mescal could cause such a hallucination. 

“Salm?” Luke said quietly. 

Human Slices is available for Kindle and in print on Amazon.

Related articles

The Grand Poobahs Speak — Who’s Right?

English: Stephen of England Česky: Štěpán z Blois

English: Stephen of England Česky: Štěpán z Blois (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was chatting with a writer friend the other day, and we got on the subject of adverbs. Exciting, right?

During our conversation, I tried to remember something clever I read about adverbs — about not using adverbs, that is — in Stephen King’s memoir On Writing.

I found the book on my shelf and flipped through it until I found the bit where King opined, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” I can imagine King writing a story one day about a demon road in a battle with evil…in the form of words ending in -ly.

While I was searching through the book looking for King’s adverbial wisdom (with which I mostly agree), I ran across this statement: “Informal essays are, by and large, silly and insubstantial things; unless you get a job as a columnist at your local newspaper, writing such fluffery is a skill you’ll never use in the actual mall-and-filling station world.”

“Informal essays are, by and large, silly and insubstantial things.” — Stephen King, 2000

Tell that to the gazillion bloggers in the world.

King’s On Writing came out in 2000. According to Wikipedia, the word blog was coined in by “Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.”

King missed the boat on that one. What’s “fluffery” to some can be brilliance to many.

Thinking of King’s non-prophetic statement, I recalled when I read The Icarus Deception by bestselling author and super-blogger Seth Godin. Godin wrote in his 2012 book that analysis is what we need to write for the ether world. “Do it every day,” Godin opined. “Every single day. Not a diary, not fiction, but analysis.”

I remember when I read that, and how sad it made me. I was late to the blog party, but I was envisioning my blog as a place for me to experiment with short fiction. Godin’s statement took the wind out of my sails.

Nonetheless, contrary to Godin’s rule, I have posted some micro fiction here on this blog in the form of my 259-word stories, and these little bits of story usually get some traction.

The Lesson Learned: You can’t believe everyone all the time, even the Grand Poobahs. And absolutely, that’s the truth.

Related articles

Seizing the Solstice

solsticeI have the grand luxury of being able to watch the sun rise over Lake Michigan.

It’s quite astounding to me  — and I never get tired of noticing — the way the sun appears at a different point on the horizon each and every morning. There were 20,000 revelers gathered at Stonehenge to celebrate the longest day of the year. I sat in my living room and drank coffee.

Hail, Great Hot Pink Ball of Fire! Today’s sunrise was a stunner. Happy Summer Solstice!

From where I sit, our Constant Sun rises every June 21 at a point on the horizon at Montrose Harbor, a spot north of downtown Chicago. Starting tomorrow, the sun will appear just a little south of that point and move a little farther south every day until, at the end of summer, it will show up on the horizon around Fullerton Beach. By the Winter Solstice on December 21, it will look to me as if it’s rising downtown near Navy Pier.

And so it goes. The sun travels up and down the horizon, making its way back and forth, step by step, day by day, inch by inch, over and over and over again. It does what it needs to do. It seems like such a relentless trooper. How crazy the spinning Earth must look to the Sun.

Sometimes I try to tilt my body the same way I imagine Mother Earth is tilting so I can better understand where I am in the universe. And then the realization sets in that I am spinning around really fast in the solar system. It’s too big of a concept for me to get my head around. I feel both painfully inconsequential and absolutely thrilled to be part of such a vast space-time continuum.

Nonetheless, welcoming the longest day of the year is always fun, especially when there’s a little ritual thrown in.

At dawn, I paid tribute to the sun with a made-up pagan prayer and my own extremely awkward version of a yoga Sun Salute.

Tonight I’m hoping to dance around a Maypole or a bonfire — someone will have something going on in the park tonight if it only stops raining. If it doesn’t, I may have to settle for  an indoor spin around a collection of burning candles. But yes, a dance is absolutely in order for the Summer Solstice….and a sunset cocktail, too, a summery one with fizz and fruit.

Frivolity aside, the reality of the Solstice is this: We’re already six months into the year.

And the Giant Shining Life Source in the Sky seems to be asking, “What’s left on your TO DO list? Tomorrow I start setting a little bit later every day. Time’s a’wastin’!”

Yes, Mr. Sun, you’re right. It’s time to seize the day.

_________________________

Related articles:

Yoga Sun Salute: http://www.wikihow.com/Do-the-Sun-Salute

Stonehenge Party:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345638/Summer-Solstice-2013-Revellers-rise-dawn-celebrate-drumming-dancing.html

Solstice Cocktails:  http://www.ahistoryofdrinking.com/wordpress/2012/06/20/an-excuse-to-drink-summer-solstice-cocktails/

When the Picture Tells the Story

Photo by Christopher Methven (c) All rights reserved

Photo by Christopher Methven
(c) All rights reserved

I am working on a story about a woman named Rita. I imagine her as a small woman with salt-and-pepper hair, who, on most days, wears a cardigan around her shoulders. She never leaves the house without a little powder on her nose and her favorite light pink lipstick on her lips.

I write a sad scene where Rita sits next to Martin, her dying husband, who is lying in a hospice bed. When I reach this part of the drama, I intently watch Rita in my mind’s eye: She holds Martin’s hand, occasionally stroking his thin fingers, watching him breathe, slower and slower, it seems. Rita wonders which breath will end up being his last.

I know that Martin is going to die, but I don’t know what is going to happen after that. Rita and I wait.

While the death scene lingers, I get up and make a cup of tea, take a Facebook diversion, and see that Christopher Methven has posted a stunning black-and-white photo of hands at work at a sewing machine. The hands, I assume, are the hands of his girlfriend, Pat Langford.  I look at this picture for a long time. It is riveting. I show my appreciation by “liking” it.

My break complete and my tea cup empty, I go back to work on my story.

When I return, Rita is still sitting there next to Martin, but she has scooted her chair closer to him so that she can rest her hand more easily on his forearm. She continues to stare at her husband, unable to imagine that there is a new reality patiently standing outside of the hospice room, waiting to accompany her home.

When Martin takes his last breath, his mouth is hanging open, and it suddenly turns into a gaping black hole. Rita realizes that the man with whom she has shared 34 years of her life is no longer a man. He is gone now, replaced by body that looks like Martin, but it’s not really Martin. Rita and I sit there and look at him, unable to leave.

The same way that life changes in an instant, my brain goes to black, a quick cut, and then the story moves to Rita at home, in her brick bungalow. She sits at the window, watching her neighbor shovel snow from her sidewalk. I am not sure if this is the same day that Martin dies, or maybe it’s months later. I know that I have to go back in time and figure that out at some point, but now I am just watching where she goes, what she does. While I watch Rita, quick flashes of Chris’s photograph appear in my mind.

I am surprised when Rita gets up, adjusts her cardigan, and walks into a little room in the back of the house. Ah ha! She has a sewing room, a tidy little cove with striped wallpaper. She sits down at the machine and removes its cover. Although she feels somewhat numb, moving as if she’s in a trance, she methodically arranges her fabric, assesses where she left off, and readies to catch up on the pillow covers she started before her husband’s downward spiral.

Rita aligns the fabric and starts the machine, slowly at first. She presses down firmly on the foot pedal. As soon as the needle punctures the fabric, she flinches, feeling pain stab at her heart. As she ramps up the pressure on the machine, the thump thump thump of the needle gets faster and stronger. With each stitch, Rita accepts the needle’s relentless puncturing. The faster the speed, the more excruciating her pain. But she doesn’t stop, she doesn’t make a sound. She keeps sewing. Her tears drip onto the fabric.

But the image of the photo keeps popping into my imagination, telling me that something is off kilter in this moment with my main character. I am compelled to go back to Facebook and look at the picture again.

The problem is suddenly obvious. The photograph is not at all about pain, especially not about harrowing pain.

There isn’t one bit of distress apparent in this photo, even though those fingertips might get pinched. In one simple, beautiful, and clear image, we see the grace and power of action, intensity, concentration, commitment, and creation.

I realize then that I have to change the story. Rita isn’t pierced with pain when she sews.

When she takes up her project, she finds solace, purpose, perseverance. With each turn of the wheel, she is crafting a new beginning.

Seeking the Unsought: The Mystery of the Bolts

Marine & Bittersweet

Marine & Bittersweet

I don’t know if a variety of bolts mounted on to a  4′ x  3′ piece of plywood would be categorized as outsider art or folk art or found art or plain old bolt art.

Many years ago, I saw such an art piece displayed on the wall of a lovely stationery store where the proprietor was hosting a benefit auction. I  don’t remember who or what was going to benefit from the raised money, but I do remember that the cartoonist Nicole Hollander was there.

But the bolts. I think there were about 20 of them displayed. And underneath each bolt, there was a printed notation indicating the Chicago intersections where each bolt had been found. Western & Lawrence. Hoyne and Le Moyne. Clark & Ohio.

I put on my skeptical hat. I certainly had never seen one bolt, let alone several, haphazardly lying in the street. The universe was out to teach me a lesson.

A few days later, my friend and co-worker Pat and I were waiting at a traffic light on lower Michigan Avenue, right outside of Chicago’s famous Billy Goat’s Tavern. It was a rainy day, and we were taking the underpass to dodge as much of the downpour as we could.

While the underground traffic whooshed past in front of us, above us the iron bridge works rumbled and shook from the weight of the buses, cars, and trucks speeding by on the upper level.

Then a bang, a clank, a clang. Something fell, splashing into a puddle, landing right at my feet. You guessed it. A bolt. It was a gigantic bolt, partially rusted and partially oxidized green. I displayed that big bolt on my bookcase for years.

Ever since that event a decade ago, I regularly see bolts in the street, sometimes in intersections, sometimes kicked to the curb, in my hometown or on vacation, on country roads and on the highway.

Just the other day, Pat, who was with me that fateful day on lower Michigan Avenue, texted “ps — found a bolt.”

She and I are probably doomed to experience such bolt encounters for the rest of our lives. I’ve always been curious about the meaning of synchronicities, but this one has me stumped.

I recently came across a Sophocles quote: “Look and you will find it—What is unsought will go undetected.”

What does it mean though, Mr. Sophocles, when one constantly detects what is totally unsought?


POSTSCRIPT, February 7, 2013:  The night after posting this blog entry, I had some sort of fuzzy recollection of a dream or a revelation, if you will, that the bolt sightings happen when something is missing from my life. I don’t know  what’s missing, my chassis hasn’t stopped running, but something in the mechanism is gone, fallen out, worn and rusty, so I just might want to check under my hood. It seems plausible, but I’m still wondering…