FUNDAMENTALS– death in my hand

            Perhaps we remember those events that change everything we thought we knew. Ignorance and truth collide, shifting our reality into a foreign land. Images stare back at me from faded pages—a toddler clutching her father’s leg in one hand, an Easter egg in the other; waiting for the school bus, her knee socks falling short on impossibly long legs; posing by the fire with her brother in matching Christmas pajamas. I run my fingers over her face. Imposter. It’s holding Death in my palm that’s my entry into consciousness.

            Flying! I crouch over the handlebars, purple streamers flapping from rubber grips stained with dirt from digging worms and berries I pick along the river. Wind sucks the moisture from my eyes and flattens them. I am a pilot in the cockpit of a warplane. “Bombardier! Bombardier! 1 – 2 – 3. Do you read?” A blur of cornfields whip by, and I gulp air sweet with hay and Queen Anne’s lace. A flash of yellow catches my eye and I whip my head around. My tire skids on the gravel shoulder, and I barrel down the embankment toward a barbed-wire fence, my teeth clanking. “Eject! Eject!” The tall grass cushions my shoulder. I roll onto my back and catch my breath. Cottony cloud barges cut through a sea of blue. I limp up the bank.

            I squat over a small bird on its side, one black eye watching me. Ripples cut through its yellow breast feathers like wind stirring a wheat field. It’s the most beautiful bird I’ve seen up close. I poke it with a stick. It fits in my palm, still soft and supple. I slip it into my pocket and walk my bike home. The sun sets, a brilliant orange ball on the horizon. Two truths press on me. Death is more powerful than beauty. And hidden inside a perfect shell can be mortal damage. Bombs away.  

Hi and new writing

Hi everyone... well, it has been a long time. A quick update -- now living in Vermont, left the corporate world for a boarding school where I'm Director of Marketing and Communications. An interesting switch with its own challenges and rewards.

Still writing... working on a novel that feels manageable...Light Year 365. Quick synopsis: You meet a woman on the day she decides to kill herself. One unit of time is "That Day" and everything that happens. On that day, she decides she's going to recall every memory she has and determine why she remembers it. She hopes that her memories will shed light on the purpose of her life (hence light year.) Her memories are divided into three time periods and contained by a baseball term: Childhood = fundamentals, the lost middle years = Benched or Sacrifice (can't decide yet) and the previous year that leads up to the decision to kill herself = Full Count.  Every page is a self contained work. I love that I have to consider every word to make what I want to say fit...it's very disciplined. One challenge will be how to order the pages... for now, just writing as it comes.

And you guessed it... there will be 365 pages in the book. I'm trying to write a page a day (you'd think that wouldn't be so hard... LOL.)

I hope you enjoy the pages -- please feel free to leave feedback. This is the "first page" -- but by the time I get to the end I'm sure I'll write it differently. Thanks!!

Full Count – how memories work

            Life breaks away in pieces, shooting us to a distant place until we’re a glimmer in the darkness. Memories wash over my legs, stomach, and chest, lapping against my throat. I tilt my head back on the pillow. My chest rises and falls, heart thumping inside my head. I heave a panicked breath over the hummingbird flutter in my chest, fearing that focusing on the fist-size muscle pumping five quarts of blood a minute through my body may cause it to just as suddenly give out.  

            Being lost is cold and bleak like one of those grainy films from the first moon landing. There is nothing that can help you. You’re on your own. Tears hover, pressing beneath my eyes like stones. In those middle years between then and now, I felt nothing—devoid—every messy realization pushed down so I wouldn’t unravel.  Now, every feeling is magnified. Tears come at will. I see a therapist. She says I’m grieving, that it will take time. I gaze into her comforting brown eyes and resist the urge to take her hand. She has no idea. Time is the great Houdini. We lean in and watch closely for the trick, but its slight of hand is untraceable by mortal man.

            The moon streams through the window and illuminates my dresser; Castle Freeman’s novel, All That I Have, intensive therapy hand lotion, a vanilla bean candle, a pill bottle cast in amber glow. Together, the small blue pills have the power to transport me beyond the stars.

            I clasp my hands across my chest and close my eyes. What if everything we remember—what our brains choose to brand into our memory’s flesh—reveal the reason for our existence?

Will power

There are life markers where we shed our skins and become someone else.  A moment catapults us from being one person to another; our lives from this way to that. We look back relentlessly and imagine the ways things could have turned out differently; what we’d be like if they had.

Our will’s power is immeasurable.

Take it Personally

I take things personally. It's not just business. Nice counts. Business is done between men and women. People. Everything is personal. Don't fool yourself. Don't take the cop out of thinking you can treat people shabbily and pawn it off on the business. You are as you do.

Enough said.

P.S. I do want to design a T-shirt that says 'All about the nice' -- I am tired of the masses that think that being nice is overrated. What's happened to the world?

North Wilmot Road

Every year we go on vacation for a week to a family camp in Wilmot, NH. It's mostly with the same families, so we've really created a bond. On the Thursday of the week is the camp talent show. Each year, I write a poem that centers around the camp. The below poem depicts driving down North Wilmot Road and arriving at camp.

North Wilmot Road

We arrive in a caravan of SUVs, the metalic shine cooled by the dust of North Wilmot Road.

Around the last bend, we are welcomed by yawning tiger lillies and a crooked farm house, nodding 'You're home."

We unfold from our cars and hug the hugs of comrades re-united.

The breeze stirs the spicey pine and we break into blossom.

In single file, we shoulder our loads; flip flops crunching in the gravel path. Artists, bankers, students and missionaries.

We are young and old, rich and poor, tendon and bone.

We are pieces searching for a whole.

For precious days, we swim and sing and run farther than we thought we could.

We walk together in dawn's dew-kissed grass and under the stars wonder at the heart-broken loon that wakes the night.

We peer at our children who look different in ways that we cannot yet name.

It is only later we understand that we witnessed our children seeing us differently and a journey just begun.

Time runs away and our hearts fill with sweet longing.

Around the fire, eyes meet and speak what words cannot; of spaces in between.


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The problem with vacation is that it ends... now I can only long for the next time. Hope all is well. Write more soon. No work on the novel -- so hard to find time...