The volume went up as the Guest of Honor stepped into the party. Then the lights went down. Scarves found their way to the banisters. Layers found their way to the floor. Buttons were undone. Belts were unbuckled. The Guest of Honor peered into the coat room. His was the coat that made the pile spill to the floor.
When he ambled down the hall, heads peered up. People watched from their blind spots. Arms uncrossed. Footing shift. The guests repositioned themselves to stand full front to him. Their guards went down. Heads began to nod. Eyes began tracking movement. The guests started to promenade from social click to social click. Everybody was open for business.
Wheels turn. Gravel pops. It takes a while for it to come to a complete stop. Something has been delivered to the main gates of your Imagination. Its snout casts a long shadow over your Ideas. Its wooden mange creaks in the breeze. It’s a three-story stallion looming over the birth place of your fiction. Guards report whispers from its nostril. They report the sounds of footfalls and metal unsheathing. Suddenly the horse, is all that your Ideas can focus on. Continue reading Compartmentalize→
When I was in my mid-twenties, I wrote a lot of pieces like this. Positive affirmations that came from very dark places. Leave it to me to find cobwebs in the arch of a rainbow. There was a sincerity to being insincere. An acknowledgement of how I ought to think, had I not been governed by fear.
I’ve always been an introvert playing at extravert. This circa-2004 piece must have been written hung over, on the day after a party. I can only imagine what I had done to inspire it. Continue reading A Part I Was Conceived To Play→
You clock out of work. The punch card weighs heavy in your hand. You go straight home. Your Story has been waiting up, pacing the apartment, peering through the blinds. There’s a pair of empty wine bottles in the sink. Incense sticks line the coffee table. They’ve been ashed all the way down. Candle wax has dripped across the varnish. Three empty sleeves of Girl scout cookies lay crinkled on the couch.
In just a few days Minnesotans will be given the choice to amend their constitution to deny gay people the right to marry (a right they didn’t already have). Civil rights issues don’t usually get put to a vote. Imagine what would have happened if Brown vs. The Board of Education had been put to a vote. Do you think we’d have integrated schools today? What about if Affirmative Action had been put to a vote? I didn’t think so.
I’m trying to find the name for a very particular faux pas. One that I’ve had far more experience with than I care to admit (I might have to switch perspectives from first to second just to distance myself from it).
This faux pas happens when you’re trying to impress new people with your sparkling whit. You decide to play stand up comedian and shine a spotlight on some unspoken truth, a universal thought that only you have the charisma to articulate. Then you realize you’re the only person in the room that this thought has ever occurred to. Continue reading A New Faux Pas→
As a writing exercise, I thought I’d explore some projects that almost came to light. I’ve got a laundry list of false starts and half hearted finishes. They’re worth exploring to see just how far the flame of inspiration got me when it died out. This is a graveyard for all those brilliant ideas that didn’t survive the test of time. Continue reading Orphan Projects→
The dream always sets me in the middle of the building, far from a source of natural light. The space yearns for windows, for a skylight, for a glass panel above the doorways, something. Instead there are miles of low hanging ceiling tiles, oppressive fluorescent lights, industrial air-conditioning vents. There are a few scant variations in the terrain. Dips in the carpet. Steps that lead to lounging parlors. The seats are chiseled into the floor. There are plants drooping over the edges. They starve for photosynthesis. For all I know, I’m deep underground. Continue reading In the Halls of Sleep→
The volume went up as the Guest of Honor stepped into the party. Then the lights went down. Scarves found their way to the banisters. Layers found their way to the floor. Buttons were undone. Belts were unbuckled. The Guest of Honor peered into the coat room. His was the coat that made the pile spill to the floor.
