4.29.2008
Check out this picture of my friends Arjohn and James duking it out for the frisbee in this morning's game. That's hard core. (More pics on flkr)
Ultimate Frisbee fight to the death
What might be the first chapter
4.28.2008
I've made a lot of changes to my story this month for my novel writing class. Here's my most recent assignment.
Randy loved to watch the muddy brown waters of the Mississippi River. When he and Ava were first married, they took a trip to the coast, to the place where the river meets the Gulf of Mexico. She had seemed so beautiful to him then. Full, like a ripe plum. He loved to take parts of her between his fingers and squeeze as if he were expecting juice.
Their honeymoon had been short, as the wedding was rushed and somewhat unexpected. Ava’s pastor had insisted that the only way she could disobey her father’s command to move back to Tellico Plains was to transfer her headship from her father to a husband. Randy took pity on her. They had slept together outside of wedlock and he knew she’d never be able to marry another man. Besides, they got along well enough, and she seemed to think him worldly and wise. Everything was new to her, and he felt so strong and smart teaching her things. Her church put together a hasty, quiet wedding one weekend. Randy hadn’t been able to take much time off of work. Now, they had a week to spend together. To take in, at a leisurely place, the warm weather and the music. It was Ava’s first vacation.
“Where do you want me to put these?” Randy was holding Ava’s new yellow suitcases.
“Over there, by the dresser. I wanna unpack before we go out.”
Randy dropped the luggage on the floor. “Unpack? Baby, nobody unpacks on vacation.”
“Then why do they have the dresser?”
“That’s just to put the TV on.”
Ava nodded. She turned on the lamp by the bed and clapped her hands together. “Randy, they have Bibles here. Isn’t that wonderful? What a good way to witness to strangers.”
Randy closed the door and turned on the air conditioner. “People don’t read those. It seems to me like a stupid idea to put them in here. Nobody but Rock Raccoon has ever been saved by Gideon’s Bible.”
“Rocky Raccoon?”
Randy sighed. “I’ll play you the song sometime.”
Ava turned on the fluorescent light in the bathroom. It flickered before casting a pale blue sheen on the tub and toilet.
“Look at these!” Ava said. She walked out of the bathroom carrying two small bottles. “It’s shampoo. They give you your own shampoo here.”
Randy grinned and thickened his Southern accent, teasing her. “Yep. It’s fancy. We’ll wash our hair with it later and smell real purty.”
Ava cradled the small bottles. “Not these. Don’t use these. I wanna take them home.”
“We have shampoo there.”
“I know.” She slipped the bottles into the purse Randy had bought her at Walmart. “But these are cute. Maybe I’ll give them to somebody.”
“Baby, they have these shampoos at every hotel. If you use these tonight, they’ll bring you new ones in the morning.”
Randy stripped off his damp T-shirt and lay down onto the bed. He reached into Ava’s purse, ignoring the pained look on her face. He pulled out the bottles, breaking one of the seals.
“You’ll see. Tomorrow there’ll be two new ones just like these.”
Ava’s father had been very strict. When she was growing up, the only time they were allowed to leave her home town, Tellico Plains, was for occasional revivals at other churches. Her family would sleep in their car or at other people’s houses. When the mosquitoes weren’t too bad, they’d sleep outside in tents.
Ava had moved to Nashville soon after her mother’s funeral. She was twenty years old then. She had left without telling her father, boarding a greyhound bus early one morning. She stayed with a pastor who arranged for her to get a job at the Christian bookstore.
As soon as she saved up enough money, Ava got a place of her own. She wrote to her father then, telling him that she was safe and still going to church. She was following the ways of the Lord, she told him, just in a new city. He began driving to her small apartment every weekend, threatening to take her home by force.
Once, he came to her place when she wasn’t home. He kicked a hole in the door and banged his wiry fists on the wall. The neighbors called the police and it took several officers to restrain him. A tall man with no meat on him, he fought with all the viciousness of a praying mantis. The police held his face away from them, as if they were afraid he might spit. They put him in jail for two days and Ava did not visit him. He stopped coming to Nashville for a while then.
Randy didn’t know how Ava had gotten the courage to leave her father. She was a shy mystery to him. Round green eyes and a tight ass.
Ava put on her polka dotted blouse and a long, loose skirt. Randy had wanted her to start wearing tighter clothes, shorter skirts, so that other people could see what he got to see. She had refused, saying it was unseemly and invited men to think impure thoughts.
Randy looked his wife up and down and slid his hands onto her hips.
“Ready to go to the beach?” she said.
The air was full of ocean sweat. Ava could taste it when she licked her lips. And the beach smelled of fish left out in the sun too long. Randy and Ava held sticky hands and walked along the dull grey sand.
“Look at that!” Randy said. He took a few steps into the water not bothering to take off his shoes. “Ava, do you see that?”
Ava squinted and shaded her eyes with one hand. “What are we looking at?”
“You don’t see that? It’s a puffer fish. Pretty close to the shore. They’re supposed to live farther out, right?”
Ava shrugged. She slipped off her sandals and pulled her skirt up to one side, stepping out to where Randy was standing.
The puffer fish had inflated itself. Its brown and black quills stood out against its tan body.
“Hold on.” Randy splashed out of the water and ran up the beach. He returned with a white bucket borrowed from a fisherman. “Is it still there?”
Ava had not moved and neither had the puffer fish. Randy waded out to where she was, bucket in hand.
“Be careful,” Ava said. “I hear they’re poisonous.”
“Nah, that’s crazy.”
Randy dipped the bucket into the water, careful not to move too fast. When he had caught the puffer fish, he held the bucket up so that Ava could see it more clearly. Its spaced apart eyes stared blankly, as if it were all the same to him, Gulf or bucket.
“He’s not moving,” Ava said.
“Yeah it is, look at those little fins.”
“But he’s hardly moving. Do you think something’s wrong with him?”
Randy sloshed the water around in the bucket. “I don’t know. It does look a little confused.”
“Let him go.” Ava said, running her finger along the rim of the bucket. “I don’t think he likes this.”
“What are you talking about? Look at its face. I don’t think it gives a shit.”
Ava leaned over so that her lips almost touched the water in the bucket. “Are you ok, little guy?” She squeezed Randy’s arm. “Please let him go.”
“Fine,” he said, irritated. He drew the bucket back and launched the water into the air. The puffer fish flew at an arc and then smacked the surface of the water before sinking back into the Gulf.
“Randy!” Ava dropped the hem of her skirt. It soaked up the briny water. “That was terrible.”
Randy hoisted his wife over his shoulder and carried her to the shore. She was limp on his shoulder. “It’s just a fish. Don’t be mad at me.”
He let her down, lifted her shirt and blew on her stomach, hard. She didn’t laugh and pushed his face away from her. Randy righted himself and ran his fingers through his thin blonde hair. “Now come on, Ava. It’s your first vacation. You can’t be mad at me on your first vacation.”
Ava squeezed the water out of her skirt. She let Randy pull her close.
“I’m kind of hungry,” she said softly.
“Let’s go eat.” He kissed her nose. “I heard about a great seafood restaurant.”
They ate at Big Smiley’s Fish Fry. It was noon, but they were the only customers, as there were only fans and no air conditioning.
“Shrimp’s a little expensive here,” Randy said, eyeing the menu. “It’d better be good.”
He had taken off his shoes and socks. They stank a little under the table.
Ava put down her menu. “I think I may get grilled chicken.”
“Grilled chicken? Baby, nobody goes to the coast and gets grilled chicken. You gotta have shrimp or crawdads, hell, even catfish, but not grilled chicken.”
“I just want it, that’s all.”
The waiter came to their table. “You folks know what you’re going to have?”
Randy took charge. “She’ll have a half a pound of shrimp, on ice, and I’ll have...Say, do you have any puffer fish?”
The waiter pointed, “Well, we have one in a tank over there, but you can’t eat her. She’s a pet.”
Randy and the waiter walked over to the tank. Ava did not move.
“This is Katie May,” the waiter said. he dropped a bit of food into the water. The bumpy oval body wiggled up to the surface.
“So that’s what they look like normally. I’ve always wondered.” Randy tapped the side of the tank. “Hey, blow up.” He turned to the waiter, “Stick something in there so it puffs out.”
The waiter shook his head. “Don’t wanna hurt her. They can’t do that many times in their lives, you know. Too hard on their bodies. It’ll kill them.”
Randy looked back at Ava. She was staring down into her glass, using her straw to spin her sweet tea. He headed back to the table.
“I don’t know if you can eat those,” the waiter said, following him. “We don’t serve them, anyhow.”
Randy put his arm around the back of Ava’s chair. “Could you go ask the cook?”
The waiter pause. “You mean if you can eat them or if we serve them.”
“Well, both.”
The waiter yelled back into the kitchen. “Hey Dan. Can you eat puffer fish?”
“Only if you cook it right.” Dan yelled back. He came out of the kitchen, beer bottle in hand. “But it’s a damned Russian roulette. Kill you same as feed you.”
He took a sip of his beer and continued. “I don’t see why you’d want to eat them anyways. There’s too little meat.”
He looked over at Ava, “She ok?”
Ava did not appear to be breathing. She glanced up at Dan and then down again at her drink.
“Oh, she’s just giving me a hard time ‘cause we caught a puffer fish earlier and she didn’t like it,” Randy said.
Dan shrugged.
“Who do you think serves it?” the waiter asked.
“Well, they serve it over there in Japan, but I don’t know that you can eat it here.” Dan looked up and then to the side. “Go ask Arnold, he would know.”
The waiter started to walk away from the table when Randy called out, “It’s ok, fellas. I’ll eat puffer fish later.”
He winked at Ava, she did not notice.
“Bring her a grilled chicken sandwich and I’ll take a pound of shrimp, cocktail sauce and a wedge of lemon.”
The waiter and cook nodded and walked away. Randy squeezed Ava’s leg but she still would not look at him.
Tellico Plains
4.27.2008
And now something a little more serious. This is an excerpt from a project I've been working on. The assignment is to use dialog (as opposed to narrative) to further the plot.
Adelaide Brown
The drive up to Tellico Plains was beautiful. An Appalachian town, it was surrounded by small mountains and an overflow of trees.
“This area isn’t so bad,” Randy told Ava at a pit stop. “It’s pretty up here.”
She nodded. “At least it’s that.”
He had been driving a U-Haul and Ava followed in their Chevy. She hated driving and was still a little jittery. They sat on concrete picnic tables drinking the free Coca-Cola the tourist board handed out. Randy poked his head through the open door of the Chevy and looked at his daughter.
“How’s my girl?”
Ava pulled him back out by his belt with an intensity that started him. “Randy Cox,” she hissed. “Lenny started crying an hour into the trip and didn’t fall asleep until just now. If you wake her up, I will literally start ripping tufts of hair from my head.”
It was then that Randy noticed how drained Ava looked. How angry and wild.
“Are you ok?” He handed her the rest of his Coca-Cola. “Here, drink this. Do you need something to eat?”
Ava put her head between her legs and took several deep breaths. “I’m fine, just a little car sick.”
She righted herself and looked out of the parking lot to where someone had planted a Dogwood tree.
“You know Jesus died on a Dogwood tree.” She told him, pointing to it. It was spindly and bent over. One of its branches had been cut off so that it wouldn’t grow into the road.
“How could they have made a cross out of that tiny thing?”
Ava put her head between her legs again. Randy had to scoot close to her to hear.
“It used to be bigger. Then, when they used it to crucify Christ, the tree started growing all twisted and small. As if it was being punished or, I don’t know, sad about being used that way. You can see it on the flowers. They’re shaped like the cross with a crown of thorns in the middle.”
She took several more deep breaths. “My momma said you should never kill a Dogwood tree. God put it there as a reminder and it’s sacrilegious if it dies.”
Randy decided to not pursue the issue. “Not feeling any better?” He rubbed her back and was surprised to feel how damp it was.
Ava shook her head. She started crying. “I know that your will is God’s will for my life.” She spoke like she was reciting the catechism. “And that if I submit to what you say the Lord will bless me ten fold, but its just hard.” She took a short loud breath. Then, abruptly, sat up and looked into his eyes, “Moving back to Tellico Plains is just so hard.”
Randy put his arm around her and rocked back and forth. The other families in the parking lot were looking at them.
“We’re all ok, over here.” Randy called out to them. “She’s just tired.”
Ava righted herself and wiped around her eyes. “I’m fine,” she looked around. Her face was still red and shiny, but she managed a smile.
The families looked away, pretending that they had not been watching in the first place.
Crunchy the Hamster
4.21.2008
I told Kate that some day I would write a short in honor of her hamster. Here it is. My friend asked me how she should think about this story. I told her this, "I would like for you to think of it as one of the stupidest things you've ever read and also mildly amusing. "
Crunchy had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. His ball sack had been large before, but now it had swollen to the size of a peanut. He groaned and laid on his side to give it room.
“So, we might have to put him down?” I asked. Mom had bought me Crunchy two years earlier, when I was in seventh grade. Now, I was definitely too old for a hamster. The cancer seemed serendipitous.
“Of course not, Sarah Elizabeth” she told me, putting her arm around my shoulders. “We’re going to fix Crunchy right up.”
The vet performed the worlds smallest double orchiectomy on Crunchy, who soon began hormone therapy to compensate for his decreased testosterone levels. Mom fed him little bits of mush and water from a dropper as he recovered from his surgery. She made me wake up every four hours to give him Pedialite.
“I don’t think Crunchy would like for his life to be artificially prolonged like this,” I told her.
“Maybe we should let him rest in peace.”
“Are you kidding?” My Mom said. She reached her hand into his cage and petted Crunchy’s back. “He’s our miracle hamster! Don’t worry, baby, he’ll be just fine.”
The next morning I told my Mom that Crunchy had run away.
“But how?” she asked me. “He could barely move.”
“I guess he got better.”
“Oh, Sarah Elizabeth, you must be devastated.”
I told her I was, but that some ice cream might help. We could celebrate Crunchy’s brave recovery from testicular cancer.
-ade
You Can't Have Everything
4.19.2008
You Can't Have Everything-
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize the foam's twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man's legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can't bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another toward joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd,
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
and you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bannanas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's,
it will always whisper, you can't have it all,
but there is this.
-Barbara Ras
In which my housemates go "ultra" green
4.11.2008
My housemates, Garrett and Dustin Moon, are being featured on the front page of The Oregonian for their green home building initiatives. They have designed a house that lives almost entirely off the grid, while being incredibly functional and flexible. Their plans surpass the efforts of most professional architectural companies. What makes them different is that they are largely self taught and entirely grassroots.
Dustin and Garrett bought a house that they planned to rehab. Unfortunately, the house was poorly situated on the lot and badly constructed. They switched their plans to deconstruct the house and build a new one on the site.
Originally, Griff and I lived alone in our apartment, which is a few blocks from Garrett and Dustin's home. Their house is badly insulated and very cold in the winter, but, hey, so is our apartment. When it was freezing outside, we would huddle around the wood stove in their kitchen, sheets of plastic covering the windows to keep the heat in and heavy blankets to stop drafts. It was a wonderfully cozy nook that we all dreaded leaving. Now that the deconstruction process has begun, the Moon brothers (and Alisha) live with us while they complete their project, which makes Dustin and Garrett the only people to have our apartment be "a step up."
There will be some ongoing coverage of their building process in the Oregonian. I will keep you posted.
Olympic Protestors Fend Off Liberty Hating Athletes
4.07.2008
It looks as though carrying the torch has become a bit dangerous, as evidenced by recent demonstrations in France. Apparently, there have been protests all over the world about the Olympics being held in China.
Here's the article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap
I particularly like the part where the protesters threw things at a wheelchair-bound athlete. And only in France is the bread hard enough to be a projectile. Viva la Revolucion!
Actually, I think the protests are great (if a bit sloppy in their execution). I didn't realize that there was so much global sentiment about human rights abuses in China.
Posts
