Sometimes I don’t make the smartest of decisions. Take last Friday for example. There I was enjoying a perfectly lovely dinner comprised of two perfectly charbroiled breasts of chicken and one scrumptious baked potato at a fancy restaurant with perfectly dim lighting, when I decided to act perfectly stupid, and shove a brimming spoonful of leftover horse radish sauce into my mouth, and swallow it. (Note: There is a GOOD reason horse radish sauce is served in SMALL quantities, and consumed in likewise MINUTE portions.) Why? Because I was dared to. Because, really, sometimes I am not smart. And because, in the shadows cast by the perfectly dim lighting of the fancy restaurant, twenty dollars sure looked a fine trade for the “meager” spoonful of horse radish.
The look I was attempting to procure with my ridiculous horse radish consumption: fearless, impulsive, fun, and of course, iron-stomached. The look I succeeded in rapidly obtaining and sporting for the remainder of the evening: nauseous.
After swallowing the contents of the spoon I spent the next fifteen minutes in the perfectly vacant bathroom of the fancy restaurant with perfectly dim lighting, attempting to make my perfectly stupid self be sick, and, hopefully, thereby alleviate the strong cramping sensation overwhelming my stomach, and the painful burning sensation now taking residence in my throat and nasal cavities. But alas, I have never been able to pay homage to the porcelain king, unless forced by circumstances beyond my control. So, try as I might, the horse radish stayed comfy cozy in my tummy, and I, I stayed clammy pale, burp-ridden and generally ill for hours afterward.
On the up side, I was extremely appreciative that our waitress, after refilling three glasses of water I rapidly guzzled in a desperate attempt to dilute the sauce, didn’t give me a strange look, and in fact, acted as if it was a perfectly normal request when, after she asked if any one of us would like to order from the dessert menu, I fought back the gurgling in my throat and asked, not for dessert, but for a large piece of plain bread.
Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.
Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.
I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?
(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)
(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...
This week I’ve been finding pieces of writing long lost and forgotten. Unearthing words belonging to me, and words penned by some of my favorite of all literary voices, collected and saved and scrawled excitedly on pages littered with foggy memories of past lives, obscured now in light of all that was and is and is to come.
Of the words not belonging to me, Lucille Clifton’s were the ones I found most often, recounted in notebook after notebook, or inked → Read more...
They say water changes stone, carving it over time to angles and dimensions in harmony with water’s need to reach the sea; but sometimes, stones change the watercourse instead.
-The lovely and eclectic Shari
I’m collecting my favorite corners, like the one with the stunning oak tree on display for an entire neighborhood to see, its limbs shading a bustling crosswalk shooting confidence into pedestrians like electric currents of white light, fresh graffiti on a nearby curb: an infinity symbol, black and simple.
I’m collecting stories about the apartment window filled with small elephant figurines along one of my favorite walking routes. So many trunks standing side-by-side and none of them alive.
I’m collecting the surprisingly → Read more...