Spindle Spun Yarns

Short I wrote on Ficly.com

2009-07-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

Pieced

It was the mole beneath the left nostril that clued her in. The little brown spot with two dark hairs springing from its center was the catalyst to her frightening discovery. Evelyn had seen this face before-not as it was, but as it had been in thirty-something separate instances. Her hands froze above it, the recognizable nose, eyebrows, chin glistening under a thin layer of lemongrass salve.

“Have I met you before?” Evelyn asked, her voice flickery as the flames of the lavender tea candles lining her studio window. The man’s face did not change, but remained calm, relaxed. Had she not possessed the eyes of one who spends days pouring over the pores and wrinkles and fine lines of faces, she wouldn’t have noticed the corners of his mouth (or rather those of her Thursday morning client’s mouth) twitch at this query.

The man breathed in deeply through Mrs. Quinn’s nostrils and exhaled a response. “In a way, yes.” He paused, “Evelyn, I am not here merely for a facial; I have come to negotiate.”

Sugar granules

2007-12-05T11:38:00.000-08:00

11/14/07
Bookstore Café with Gwen
Writing exercise: A poem/story beginning with an object on our (café) table.

There were a few granules that had fallen from the tear in the corner of the sugar packet haphazardly placed next to a cup and saucer. He licked the soft pad of his finger and pushed it down upon them, brought the miniscule specks of sweetness to his tongue, and then looked at her again. She had her elbow propped up on the table, her head rested lightly upon a closed fist, and face turned to receive the mid-afternoon sun streaming through the diner window.

He just watched her, wishing that her thoughts would seep out of her ears the same way the steam was escaping the surface of the hot coffee she hadn’t touched.

Eyes still closed, a soft “Mmmm” rose from deep inside and danced through her slightly parted lips—she had a tendency when relaxed to let loose quiet purrs like these—and he reached out a hand across the table to grasp the one that wasn’t rested against her head. But after letting it hover timidly above hers a few seconds, he brought it back to his lap. She opened her eyes, smiled, glanced at the clock and passed her full cup to him to finish because it was high time she left. Her break was over.

Her eyes said goodbye, she got up and a minute later he heard the chiming of bells as she shut the door behind her.

There was a lot going on around him—behind the counter two cooks flipped burgers and made grilled cheese and dropped battered onions and strips of potatoes into a vat of sizzling oil. One of them hummed a refrain from some Beatles song; the other contemplated not going home for the night because his heart loved someone else. Two button-down sweater-clad men with weathered skin and too many memories to know what to do with were seated in the booth behind him playing a game of chess, and now and again the clinking of exchanged pieces could be heard. But all he knew was the warm cup held tightly between gentle hands, one of his pointer fingers rested in the loop of the handle. He looked into the liquid blackness—just felt the heat leave the beverage like the gentle escape of a soul during a peaceful death—and said no louder than a whisper but with the heaviness and harrowing sorrow that accompanies the recognition of utter defeat:

“She doesn’t love me.”

La Recoleta

2007-11-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

La Recoleta

A third time entered,
The sepulcher and remains of souls
With their visions and intentions rested upon infinity
Cannot reach me.

The first two visits to this coveted square
Housing the remains of those blessed
With a convincing self importance during their lifetime,
Found me peering with rapt attention through
Twisted iron gates,
Watching slumbering death
Softly inhale, exhale
The seconds of time.

But not now.
Now what twice over intrigued—
Twice over prompted whispering to those who cannot reply—
Is nothing more than a burial ground for dead Quixotes,
Decaying faces turned toward a windmill clad sky.

Walking through lanes of gray and white,
I will not be distracted by their stories of the past;
I am the lone ghost
Unaffected by the macabre reality, the impending loss that surrounds.
Today thoughts are captured by
The body and soul of one more elusive
Than those lingering betwixt these aged boards
And marble walls.

Nashville

2007-10-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

11 October 2007
Sullivan’s Pub, Palermo Viejo

Writing exercise: We did not bring Moni’s Pocket Muse book, so I’ve been left to my own devices for coming up with a writing exercise. I am going to ask her to give me a list of five random words and then write a short story incorporating them.

Words she came up with: Belligerent, Social, Cheese, Grill, Tennessee

I can’t remember the capital of Tennessee. I am eleven and seated at the desk in the second row from the chalkboard and three in from the left and I am panicking because I can’t remember the capital of Tennessee. My pencil hovers over the empty space waiting to be filled with the right answer, but it won’t come to me. I bob my knee up and down, up and down, and it makes the desk shake and I can tell Susan is glaring at me because of it, so I stop. I make fast circles with the lead tip, hoping my hand will just write the answer if I do it enough times or fast enough. But it doesn’t. So I play the alphabet game—the one where you go through the alphabet “A...no. B…no. C…no” until you come across the first letter of the word you’re looking for, and once you find it you do it again for the second letter and until you’ve sounded it out. But it’s not working.

I don’t know what to do because I am the kid who doesn’t get answers wrong on tests. I can’t get answers wrong because I get a lot of life wrong. Like anything related to being social. I’m the kid who stupidly makes the mistake of using big words like “Belligerent” when answering a history question in class, when no one else uses words like that. Knowing words can separate a person from other people who don’t know those same words faster than you might think. I’m the kid who when we take class pictures and the cameraman says, “Say cheese!” actually says it, which I guess isn’t allowed in fifth grade when you’re a boy. Colin and Billy and Jim thought it was so funny that for a few weeks afterwards they’d take turns saying, “Say cheese, Jared” in a tone of voice that implied “Or else.” So I complied and would say “Cheese,” because I didn’t want to find out what “Or else” was.

I glance at the clock. I have two more minutes to come up with this last one and I’ll be done. I have to get it. Or else.

I not bad at being with my family. I’m pretty good there. Mom and Dad and Bobby and Erin love me, and I think it’s not just because they have to, but because they want to. With them I’m not nervous or nerdy and just feel good. Today is Friday, which means tonight Dad will grill burgers and corn on the cob and we’ll watch the football game on T.V. I’m not so great at following the game or sports—I mostly read—but I like spending that time with Dad and Bobby and being one of the guys. I can’t even remember who’s playing tonight. I think it might be Notre Dame.

Notre. N. Yes…yes! It begins with N. Nooo—no. Neee—no, Niiii—no. Naaaa…yes! Nab…no. Nac…no. Nad…no. Naf…no. Nag…no. Nah…no. Naj…no. Nak…no. Twenty seconds left. Nal…no. Nam…no. Nan…no. Nap…no. Ten. Naq…no. Nar…no. Nas—yes! Nassss. Nasssshh. Nashville.

Hallelujah.

Good and Used

2007-10-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

7 October 2007
Inspiration: Bookstore visit in San Telmo
(Potentially Unfinished)

It came as a bit of a shock to her, the discovery that he wasn’t real. It happened in an instant—the moment he ducked down to take a look at some collection of tales lining the lower shelves of a bookstore on Estados Unidos whose sign promised only “Good Used Books in English” (‘It’s a good thing they told us that, lest there be any confusion between it and that lot that house only bad used books,’ he commented the first time they passed). He lowered himself onto his haunches and in doing so disappeared from her vantage point behind the discounted books table. She turned around to show him a collection of cummings (secretly hoping he would ask her to read him her favorite) and he vanished on the spot. It was no optical illusion. No; a few strides around the table heavy-laden with the words of men and it became clear that he was no longer there. With a slightly open mouth and brows aloft like a pair of startled birds, her eyes fell upon Herman Melville and she muttered to herself “Perhaps he’s been swallowed by Moby Dick. Foolish man, prying open the paperback jaws of a monster.” And it was at this precise moment she remembered that he wasn’t real and never had been; he hadn’t ever entered the bookstore in the first place, and therefore the series of events described in this paragraph never actually transpired.

In earnest, this is not entirely true. A very real man existed with the same name and the same height and the same placement of features upon his face as the man she had believed journeyed down with her to the city of Borges and Peron and Yerba-Mate-sipping, lilty-Spanish-speaking men and women and babies and children who knew what it was like to bathe in one’s own sweat on a summer’s day or watch savings sizzle and then evaporate like a drink spilt on pavement in one hundred degree heat. But this man, Caleb Godfrey, resided in a city leagues and days and giant strides up North where buildings were the color of the sky; this man, Caleb Godfrey, knew nothing of sidewalks only half put together like some forsaken jigsaw puzzle, or exhaust-covered buildings that looked as though some gargantuan, overzealous artist had taken an equally gargantuan charcoal pencil to them. This man, Caleb Godfrey, certainly knew nothing of a back alley bookstore in San Telmo that at this very moment held a woman aged twenty-four amidst truths and untruths that found themselves printed in Times New Roman and Didot and Helvetica. No, Caleb Godfrey, knew nothing of the comings and goings of the past year he had spent with her (but in truth hadn’t), including this set. And if we are to be completely earnest about the situation (which we might as well be), Caleb Godfrey hardly knew Eva Wagner at all.

A thought occurred to Eva as she placed the book she held back in the place it had previously sat, snuggling between the obras poeticas de Neruda and the cantos of Ezra Pound. The thought was this: “Why then, that conversation never took place. “

The conversation she was alluding to involved herself and Godfrey, and happened one Sunday afternoon while the two strolled through a park bedecked with newly budding branches, flighty pigeons, and wrinkled men whose focus upon wooden game pieces with edges softened by the pads of thumbs and pointer fingers was so intense Eva imagined, if directed otherwise, it had the potential to defy space-time.

She shook her head and smiled at this thought, and then directed her attention elsewhere and the following conversation was born. She began it, prompted by tufts of new grass and a memory of past sentimentalisms. Eva had already shared with Godfrey plenty of stories concerning the young man she had been fond of prior to meeting him, and here was yet another:

“There was a spot—“
“A spot?”
“Yes, that’s what I said, a spot. A spot on the grass where we were meant to lay, with 1,276 blades per square foot and daisies here and there, ready to lose their heads to anxious hands.”
“So did you sit?”
“No, we did not sit. We looked at the spot—were too afraid to leave the path and instead talked of de-planetificaiton.”
“Ah, yes, what a shame about Pluto.”
“Indeed.”
“So it was not done then?”
“No it was never completed.”
“It was not said?”
“Not a single word, except for the ‘I’ part, popping up in all the wrong places like ‘I do enjoy walking in parks’ and ‘I would like it if you would be frank’.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I see that you are a terrified fool.”
“Isn’t that a bit harsh?”
“Life is harsh; I am honest.”

It had stopped there; their conversations usually came in spurts and were quite non-sensical to people who did not know the two intimately.

Recalling this conversation—one of the ones Eva kept pocketed in the part of her brain reserved for fond memories in the instance that it was true that heaven was no more than the mind locking itself into a pattern of eternal recollection of the sweet things of one’s life—she now wondered if this (along with myriad other conversations and memories) weren’t doubly false, with the story embedded in the conversation completely fabricated as well. Then she considered the possibility of this double negativity, as it were, possessing the potential to produce one truth (like a negative sign outside of a negative number encapsulated in a set of parentheses). And then she couldn’t be bothered with the conversation and its trueness or falsity because the delayed pain of realization was upon her.

It came like the cracking of a whip and left her stunned and scared and jumpy. She quickly left the bookstore, not even bothering to shut the door (much to the chagrin of the forty-something Argentine whose favorite part of owning a bookstore was hardly ever having to avert ones eyes from the beloved pages and words.) Hasty steps at a near-run pace brought her to the wooden doors of the building she was living in; keys were pulled out of a pocket, a door was opened, steps were climbed, another door was unlocked, and Eva was inside an apartment with half the amount of things she had believed it to contain.

Spilled Milk

2007-10-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

14 September 2007
Location: 931 Bolivar Apt. 2, San Telmo, BsAs
Writing Exercise

Create a set of circumstances in which a reasonable person would indeed cry over spilled milk.

A single tear made its way down her blanched cheek like a child tobogganing down a hill covered in the softest and purest of winter’s first snow. Reckless, joyful it took off from the light pink fleshy part of the inner corner of her eye, slid along the natural path that existed between the apple of her cheek and the bridge of her nose, slowed down as it approached the place where, if she were smiling, a dimple existed; then, prompted by the inescapable drag of gravity but as delicately as the sleeping breath of a young child, it slipped off the corner of her chin and disappeared completely.

The series of events leading up to the puddle of milk that had spread itself out to the size of a Sunday morning flap-jack on the linoleum kitchen table culminated in only one salty teardrop; but it was a full one, and as it parted from her face, she felt as though the weight of the very universe had been released from her being.

Finally light enough, she stood up, walked across the checkerboard tiles to the sink, picked up a grayish dishrag, squeezed it out, and then went back to the table and laid it flat upon the two percent milkfat mess. The cloth soaked it up—absorbed it completely—and she figured that her insides must be made out of the same stuff the way that she absorbed messes, left and right until they dragged her down, got old and made her smell and feel like rottenness. And then she would have to squeeze herself out.

This time it had begun with a chipped tooth. This tooth was broken when her younger brother—too drunk to remain vertical—had passed out upon the front steps of her apartment in the unfortunate direction of mouth-first, only to wake up to dried blood and pure pain in addition the regular feeling of hungoverness. So she took him to the dentist, paid for the repair and lost all hope for his recovery. After taking him home and having one more piece of her heart crumble off as he said with little boy eyes that sat in the sockets of a thirty-five year old man “Sarah, is this really my life?”, the tire of her 1992 Honda—worn thin as she was—finally went flat. With a sigh of exhaustion it let loose a last breath and was gone. But there wasn’t money for tires at the moment, so she pulled over, parked, and walked home, only to find that there was a message from her friend. The baby was lost.

But she was too tired to call back; and she was too weak to push back thoughts of rent and lost jobs and lost persons and what might have been. So she poured a glass of milk and picked out a few cookies, sat at the table, closed her eyes and imagined her mother stroking her hair as she dipped, sucked, and let the sweet paste produced from this procedure smooth over her tongue and upper mouth, filling in the chinks between her teeth like sugary mortar. But her closed eyes made her spill the milk and her open eyes made her admit that her mother was dead, she was no longer seven, and a hard day at school was nothing compared to a hard day in life. A few seconds of feelings of everything and nothingness intermingling, wrapping themselves in each other and squeezing, guts churning, brain, heart, blood burning, and the tear was born, and all was well, for now.

Opposite of Fence

2007-10-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

13 September 2007
Location: Il Forno Cafe, San Telmo
Writing Exercise:
What is the opposite of “fence”? Incorporate whatever you believe it to be into a story, poem, etc.

They started digging one day, though they didn’t really know why. Perhaps it was because they had stumbled upon two shovels in the back shed, and, as that is what shovels are for and there was nothing better to do, they put them to use. Perhaps it was because digging meant not staying indoors, where the smoke of their mother’s everlasting cigarettes hung low in the air and clouded the brain, taking up what little space was not occupied with the hollow crying of the baby. Or maybe it was because they both could sense that in doing this—digging a continuous, two-foot deep ditch encircling the one tree at all worth looking at in their backyard—with each shovelful they got a bit closer to something right.
When the sun was directly overhead, Tom stopped, propped his left foot on the side of the shovel’s half-submerged head, brought the back of a brown hand with soil-filled crevices and lifelines and fingernails to his brow, and wiped a collection of small beads of perspiration off his forehead—which had deeper wrinkles than most children have developed after twelve years of living. He looked up, squinting at the rays that leaked through the places where the leaves didn’t quite overlap, and said very matter of fact to the younger version of himself working next to him: “You know what I think, Sam? I think a person needs a job just as much as he needs a shadow. Without shadows and without work, well, you just might start to wonder if you’re even here at all.”
Sam stopped digging, wrapped both hands around the rounded end of the wooden handle. He jutted his lower lip out and blew up at a few strands of straight blond hair dancing at his lashes, smiled at his older brother, and then went back to work. Tom joined him. Sometimes their shovels would regularly alternate, sometimes it sounded like one was following the other like the clip-clopping of hooves, and every once in a while they would strike together; and though neither boy said anything (not even silently to himself) a state of contentedness swept over each when this happened.
An hour or so passed and the space between the two ends of the ditch reached a point where it was too small for both to work on connecting them without banging elbows and getting in each other’s way. So, while one worked on finishing the ring, the other smoothed out the inside of the ditch, making sure it was level on the bottom. The two ends inevitably met, and with a final shovelful of loose dirt it was complete. The boys rested their shovels like two tired, overworked creatures in the shade against the trunk of the willow and sat down on the inside area of their creation—Sam with his legs out in front of him, bare shins flat on the ground and heels flush with the edge of the inner wall, Tom with his feet inside the ditch itself, which was just wide enough to put both feet in, one in front of the other.
And they couldn’t remember which of them had suggested they do this. But this didn’t matter. They had marked this place as their own, called it theirs and this time theirs and this tree theirs and this world theirs. And in doing this, regardless of whether or not their lives ever came to anything, at this moment they felt alive—really alive. For the first time they were not fenced out from the world, but rather theirs was the real world and the rest that lay outside of the demarcated area didn’t even know that it wished it could be so lucky. This was life, from the prickly grass, to the gray bark, to their sweaty backs, and it was good.

Index Card Series No. 1

2007-10-07T16:08:00.000-07:00

10.7.2007
Location: Bazaar Cafe, SF
Inspiration: Lamp on table
Time to write: approx. 3 minutes

The lamp is on
In the corner
Like some child,
Put there because he did wrong.
The lack of furnishing
In this nearly empty room
I find myself in
Makes the few pieces—like
This brass-based floor lamp
With a cream canvas shade—
Seem more like creatures
Than objects made
For the accommodation of man.
This is the room I have
Imagined, curled up
Alone in bed, eyes closed
Mind active
Weaving together a vision of
The near future out of the
Fibers of ambiguity, chance,
Hope for an inevitable destiny.

Doing Right

2007-01-22T16:46:00.000-08:00

Somehow I was on Michael’s couch again. Sarah had kicked me out for another night. It was the third time this week. I wasn’t really sure what to do. She said enough was enough and slammed the door in my face. I only had the clothes I was wearing and an old toothbrush I grabbed on my way out.
The couch was too small, but by now I was used to being scrunched up this way and that like a twisted pipe-cleaner too bent out of shape to ever be straight again. I was used to the same old pillow and the ends of feathers scratching my cheek as they tried to poke their way free. I was used to the sleeping bag that smelled like it had been in storage for the past fifteen years.
In the nearly pitch black room I could only make out the shadows of a few objects in it. There was the box of the TV, the leather chair, and the coffee table with stains in the shapes of perfect circles from the bottoms of coffee cups.
I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, despite the awkward position of my body. But I couldn’t. I tried to think back on the day and what Sarah had said, but I found that I didn’t really care. I didn’t care about much anymore. So I just laid there.
The siding of the house creaked. The ceiling above me moaned under the footsteps of the man in the apartment above. It’s funny how a building kind of breathes and can’t stay still. You think it doesn’t move because you move too fast. You can’t really tell until it’s nighttime and you’re too tired to fall asleep.
Then it began to rain. It started out soft first, like those rain sticks made out of cactus that you can buy in places like Arizona and Mexico—a kind of swish, swish. Then it began to get harder. I could hear individual raindrops like a bag of rice spilled upon a hardwood floor. The rain came and went through my ears to my brain and cleaned it out—washed it all away.
And then I don’t know why, but I got up and walked over to the window. I put my hand up against its cool surface, palm forward, and felt the gentle vibrations of the glass from the rain.
I was only in my boxers, but I did it anyway. It was like I couldn’t stop myself—I was mesmerized by the rhythm. I opened the window—with two hands slid the left panel along the tracks about three feet—and stepped out onto the thin grate of the metal fire escape. In a few seconds the wetness had soaked through me, but I kept going. I unlatched the lock on the ladder and let it fall to the ground.
Then I descended it in bare feet, and the cold of the metal and the rain and the late night air was beautifully numbing—so much so that I just let go. Too soon though, and I fell to the cement below. With a thud I was on my back, lost my breath for a minute, and couldn’t get up.
But I didn’t cry for help. I just lay there and thought how strange it was that the cement was more comfortable than the couch. The rain made little pools in the corners of my eyes near the bridge of my nose; it massaged the skin of my stomach and slicked back my hair. And then I couldn’t remember life before lying in the rain.