--YOU’RE NOT PERFECT, BUT YOU ARE NOT YOUR MISTAKES

                                                            One Great Love

           

            She was a constipated mail-order bride who had yet to arrive.  So he sent her emails and texts in her foreign language, sometimes misspelling words.  Eventually, he even reverted to old-fashioned letters.

            After a while, he wondered if she was real.  The advertisement claimed she was and he had had those initial contacts with her.  He’d sent money, too, via his credit card over the internet.

            Afterward she, or the website, kept updating her life.  New photos showed she’d gained a little weight and now had an adorable muffin top.  She wore less jewelry and had cut her hair in a choppy bob.  He adjusted his computer settings so her images could be magnified, yet the closer he looked the less he could tell if she was happy or content.

            His friend told him he was being played, that he’d be best off calling The Better Business Bureau, yet he didn’t want to spoil his chances of meeting her by looking flakey and indecisive.

            Even though the flights sometimes arrived late, he showed up at the airport each Monday an hour early.  He knew many of the TSA agents and, for fear of being thought a terrorist, he was always overly polite while waiting as close to the exit gates as allowed.  One of the uniformed women was nearly a granny and she often greeted him with a sad little pouch of a smile, as if she was disappointed or depressed for him.  But she couldn’t possibly know, could never understand.

            This was the great love of his life.  His father had told him we only get one of those, and his father had demonstrated as much, waiting by his wife’s bedside as she struggled, then withered, then died.

            While driving to the airport, he played mix tapes of songs he thought his future wife would enjoy.  He constantly rehearsed his greeting.  He was going to make a good first impression if it killed him.

            One day she sent a Friend Request through social media and his heart soared.  She was so glad he hadn’t given up on her.  She missed him, too.  Times were very rough in her country and her mother had grown sick.  He told her he knew what that was like.  Be patient, she said, and he told her would, no matter how long.

            Then they started talking on the phone.  For hours they spoke.  As incredible as it was, he fell even more in love with her.

            Their impasse went on for months, years, decades, and still they kept communicating.  On his death bed, a very old man now, he imagined what their life would have been like if they’d ever physically met.  Almost every married couple divorced, often in bitter dispute, and so he realized they’d been spared all that.  Smiling as he passed away, he said her name aloud, said, “I love you,” and whether it was true or not, he believed that somewhere, wherever she was, she heard him.

                         

--THERE’S SO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT A RED WHEEL BARROW

…It's early and gray out with fog hanging over the tree tops, but I like it.

…The other day I saw the beaver swimming across the lake.  He was taking a different route, sort of zig-zagging across the lake.  He seemed sort of confused, for a beaver anyway.

…A week ago I had my 800^th story/poem accepted.  It felt good.  I’ve hardly been submitting anything lately since I’ve been at work on the novel.

…I wrote this a long time ago:

Apples

A murderer’s hands is what I always thought,

the berry-stains having settled into the whorl of my fingerprints and

under the jagged canopies of my nails.

I’d scour my skin with steel wool that looked like a ball of pubic hair

but showed no mercy as its metal bristles

ripped away the evidence.

I had tried to pick with gloves once but it slowed me down

and, despite my young age, I was the fastest of them all,

adults and migrant workers.

In the fields was the closest I ever came to being king.

Ragamuffins, we had nothing

yet we were rich in summer.

I was anyway,

my berry-picking money so light yet a weight slithered inside a back pocket.

Juice splotches marked the bills like blood bombs,

still that was Lincoln’s face one the paper money.

I had brothers but not friends.

Even the Mexicans kept their distance,

me skinny and tall enough to be a monster to them,

some white boy Godzilla.

Just before dusk

I had the habit of passing through the weed-wasted cemetery

that butted up to our trailer park.

It smelled of sewage and clay and

the cadaver gray headstones looked like absurd slices of toast

or doors sinking into the sun-baked earth at an angle, aged and crippled,

waiting to be handed a brace.

Some had been sprayed with graffiti,

fake neon names slurred across the chiseled real ones,

though no one seemed to object

or ever even visit.

I established relationships with the dead,

befriending them in a way I never had the courage to do in real life.

Lawrence Lemley, deceased 1956, became a wise uncle dispensing advice,

Ida Schwimmer, 1932, my sixth grade teacher.

I courted a few of the girls that I expected had been pretty,

one who’d died a year older than me. 

She had eyes the color of a Holiday Inn swimming pool and hair brown and bouncy like root beer.

I told her I was going to be rich some day.

I explained it was berries now, but the real money was in apples.

Once I could find me an orchard that’d take a twelve year old, I’d be set, I said,

and I felt myself blush a fire

when she answered with a whisper that

she believed me.

--NEVER GIVE A GUN TO DUCKS

…Writing a sex scene is a lot harder than you might think.  At least it is for me.  After my writing group rejected the notion that a single kiss would suffice in the novel I’m writing, I was pressed to make the two characters have sex.  So that’s what I worked on most of yesterday:  Sex.

…For some reason I’ve had “Legal Boys” by Elton John stuck in my head all morning.  Usually I get something from Les Miserables caught in my head, but I’ve had an apparent reprieve from that.

…Today needs to be a productive day.  After all, it’s Wednesday.

Here are some things I like midweek:

“Why should I? When somebody insulted Caruso, did he sing an aria for them? “ Joe Louis, explaining why he did not hit a motorist after the latter
abused him following an accident.

“There is a sense of exhilaration that comes from facing head-on the hard truths and saying, "We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail."
Jim Collins

“I saw a man conceal his cowardice beneath the mantle of patience, call laziness tolerance, and fear, courtesy.” Kahil Gibran

“The worst prison is a closed heart.” Pope John Paul II 

“Some people say I have attitude - maybe I do. But I think you have to. You have to believe in yourself when no one else does – that makes you a winner right there.”  Venus Williams

“Eighty percent of success is just showing up.” Woody Allen

“When trying to make something of yourself, be careful not to make an ass of yourself.” D.J.

“Men do cry.” Ron Johnson

 

--HEY, MOON, WHERE YOU AT?

…Well, I survived a rather fun and somewhat raucous weekend in Portland.  That’s always considered a success.  Good times, for sure.

While I was there I got my 800^th acceptance.  That’s a very nice feeling, considering I’ve mostly been working on the novel and haven’t really been submitting very much at all.  I’ve been doing this writing gig for six years now and man is it fun.

…Here’s something I wrote a while ago that was published at Pure Slush:

                                               

                                                                Cherry Picking

            They were amalgams: nudists, migrants, Germans, chain-smokers, victims, assassins, butchers and people with dirty fingernails who could till hardened soil and make a life from it.

            I was six the year my mother changed the course of my life, divorcing a stoic peacemaker for a stock car racer who wore chinos, a hairline moustache and his name tattooed across one bicep.

            For a birthday gift, my stepfather bought Mom new breasts, these gum-pale mounds that peeked out over everything, showing up at inconvenient moments.  Whenever my friends visited, I’d have to ask Mom to put a shirt on over her halter.  She’d narrow her eyes and purse her thin lips, cigarette smoke funneling out of her nostrils like a defiant dragon.  “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

            Summers we picked pie cherries on rickety ladders, rope-tied pails slung over our shoulders like ragtag infantrymen.  As far as I could tell, my brothers and I were the only ones who weren’t drunks.  I knew for a fact we were the only pickers who were white people.

            One year when I was thirteen, the foreman, who ran the orchard and had a crush on Mom, threw a season-ending shindig, as he called it.  What we had, really, was a two hour break, some ice-cold hotdogs and plenty of alcohol.

            It was us and about fifty Mexicans; the friendliest folks I’d ever met, even if they couldn’t speak English.  Jack, the foreman, was a squat stick of dynamite who chewed so much Red Man tobacco that his teeth had become feces-colored, worn down and cracked.

At the party, my Stepdad got drunk in a hurry.  I thought he was faking it, but then he toppled over a hay bale and didn’t get up.

It took about five minutes before Jack slipped his arm around Mom’s waist.  Stone-faced, she allowed it.

I had borrowed my brother’s Bowie knife a few days earlier to complete a chore and had left it sheathed inside my boot the way wise drifters did.  It was a noteworthy knife, with a wide serrated blade and the tip slightly curved for easier entry. My brother used it to skin rabbits and squirrels, and once he had even cut down a thin maple with it.

While someone turned up the portable radio, I transferred the knife from boot to the inside of my pants.

Couples formed, dancing to the clatter of yodel and Honky Tonk.  Their shuffling feet threw up clouds of chaff that swirled with cones of gnats in the sunlit air.

A lot of people were drinking whiskey straight from the bottle.  When handed one, I took a swig.  The fuel taste was not unlike when we’d be flat broke and have to siphon gas.  I took a second pull.  “Well, how about that?” Jack said, dumbfounded.

I drained the rest of the bottle on my third drink.

“That’s my boy,” Mom said, her face lit up with what I suspected to be pride, even though I’d never seen it before. 

She broke from Jack’s embrace and gave me a hug.

I felt Mother’s heart beating through those fake breasts just as I could feel the hilt of the knife handle pressing hard against my hip.  For the longest time then and afterward, those two different pressures gnawed at me, urging me to choose, demanding an answer.  

--KEEP YOUR HEART OPEN, BUT YOU’RE MOUTH NOT SO MUCH

…Hello, Portland.  I’m headed your way.  In a minute, I am.

…I finished Denis Johnson’s, “Laughing Monsters.”  It was a real departure for him, and not a good one, in my estimation.  I understand the desire of some writers to stray from what they’re written about before, but this book was a long slog that was only interesting because of a few characters.  His other books—“Tree of Smoke” and “Jesus’ Son”—were astounding.  “Laughing Monsters” didn’t ever feel it had been written by him, but for some of his trademark whit.

…Some good news:  it looks like print book sales are making a (remarkable) comeback.  Yay!

U.S. print book sales in millions

2008 – 778 million

2010 – 718

2012 – 519

2014 -- 635

…I saw “American Sniper,” a film I’d been dying to see.  It wasn’t a perfect picture, but it was tense and intense, emotional, honest, painted a raw image of what war is like in Iraq as well as the psychological damage it does to soldiers returning to civilian life.  Bradley Cooper went all out trying in trying to portray Chris Kyle, the real-life American sniper with a confirmed 162 enemy kills.  He looked and sounded like him.  It was a strong performance.  Overall, it wasn’t an Oscar-worthy performance, in my opinion, nor was the film (I’d give it a solid B) Oscar worthy, but they should still have been nominated.  More than anything, it was an important movie for veterans and spouses and families and friends of veterans.  Having a brother who served some very, very difficult time in Viet Nam, I’m very appreciative the film was made, and the respect it showed our military.

…Okay, as I head out, I’ll leave you with some things to think about on the weekend:

“If you don’t know someone black, you need to meet someone black.  If you don’t know someone white, Hispanic, someone who’s gay, you need to meet them.  You need to meet someone who’s different than you.  Because it’s those differences that are driving us apart.” Ron Johnson

“A jury consists of twelve people chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” Robert Frost.

“The secret of being tiresome is to tell everything.” Voltaire

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn¹t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore,
Dream, Discover." ­Mark Twain

  

“A journey of a thousand miles being with the first step.” Chinese proverb

“Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” Plato

“If you would be loved, love and be loveable.” Benjamin Franklin

“The worst thing is to be somebody to nobody.” Mother Theresa

“As the body needs physical exercise in order to remain in fit condition, man's spirit also requires the spiritual exercise derived when he confronts his problems and combats life's vicissitudes.”  William Sahakian and Mabel Lewis Sahakian

--WE DON’T HAVE TO BE LONELY TONIGHT

  

…It’s impossible to find the appropriate superlative to describe ISIS.  Especially after yesterday when they released a video of the Saudi pilot they’d captured, brutally beaten, lead into a cage, doused with gasoline and then burned alive.

I suppose evil comes closest.

…But then once in a while something not evil happens, an example of man’s goodness, like six months ago when a guy in Australian caught his foot between the space next to the subway and fifty would-be passengers pushed the subway cars to the side so he could escape before the cars started up.

…Also there’s this:

               The first inkling that office workers scurrying along Montgomery Street had that something was wrong came when they looked up to see a blue blur falling from the sky. Some thought it was debris — but then it got closer, and the crowd began to scream and scatter. It was a man, plummeting 11 stories toward them.

With a thump and a crash of shattering glass, the middle-aged window washer smashed into a moving car just after 10 a.m. Friday morning. He lay wincing and miraculously alive for a moment on the crumpled roof of a green Toyota Camry, witnesses said, and then rolled off onto the pavement.

That’s when retired Army Col. Sam Hartwell and 19 others — including the driver of the smashed car — sprang into action. In moments, they had called 911, set up traffic blocks and banded around the man, some bending low to urge him to hold on, hoping he could survive until paramedics arrived.

Within two minutes of being called, firefighters were on the scene near the intersection of California Street, and the victim was soon on his way to San Francisco General Hospital— alive, though with life-threatening injuries.

It turned out that the window washer, whose name was not released, was with another washer and had slipped from the roof while they prepared their cleaning platform for use, police said.

But then there’s this:

              The members of a Polish town council are giving Winnie The Pooh a hard time for not wearing pants.

According to the Croation Times, the fictional bear was banned from a local playground for his "dubious sexuality" and for being "inappropriately dressed."

In a meeting – that was apparently recorded and leaked to the press – to discuss a new mascot for the park, the honey-loving children's character was suggested but immediately rejected.

"The problem with that bear is it doesn't have a complete wardrobe," said councilor Ryszard Cichy. "It is half naked which is wholly inappropriate for children."


The group also went on to question Pooh's sexuality and criticize author A. A. Milne.

"It doesn't wear underpants because it doesn't have a sex. It's a hermaphrodite," said one official.

"This is very disturbing, but can you imagine!" said councilor Hanna Jachimska. "The author was over 60 and cut [Pooh's] testicles off with a razor blade because he had a problem with his identity."

…And so it’s Wednesday already and here are some things to ponder midweek:

“You know what the issue is with this world?  Everyone wants a magical solution to their problems, but no one believes in magic.” Alice in Wonderland

“In the important matters we are good men. We honor our parents; we take care of our children, we are industrious and peaceable; we trade much; we are trusted for large and small sums; we pay our debts, and are honest, and of course must tell the truth. ‘  Chinese response to government threats to ban them from California in 1852

“Don't let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.”  Robert Kiyosaki

“You can do a lot more with a nice word and a gun than you can do with just a gun.” Al Capone

“If you had only one hour to live and could make only one phone call, who would you call and what would you say—and why are you waiting?” Stephen Levine

“He who has not looked upon sorrow cannot see joy.” Kahil Gibran

--WHERE IS ALL THE SUNSHINE?

…It seems silly, preposterous even, to be depressed about having your football team lose a game, yet that how I feel.  That’s how the whole city seems to feel.  Everything outside looks grayer than usual.  It didn’t help listening to sports radio on the ride back from Bellingham this morning.  That was almost sadistic.  Too much verbal scab picking and childish name-calling.  It’s all childish, really.

And so I’ll stop.

…I’m going to see Sam Smith tonight.  That should be something, something distracting anyway.

…Last week on the way back from Santa Fe (was it only last week?) I read Nancy Stohlman’s novel, “Searching For Suzi.”  It was quite a read, replete with sex and mystery and emotion.  The book is pretty tight, less than a hundred pages.  I was intrigued the entire way through.  If you can find a copy, read it.

…You know what’s nice?  Hearing your daughter singing to herself in the room downstairs.

…Another nice thing is having your pup curled up under your chair by your feet or seeing your pup wake up and stretch her back.  That’s pretty darn cute.

…I have quite a few stories to read for my editorial gig.  I hope there is at least one good one.

…When I think of myself I don’t think of myself as the age I am.  Do you?  In my mind I’m nineteen or nine.  I’m a lot younger.  I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

This weekend I am going to Portland to hang out with my friends.  We’ll certainly be acting like nineteen year olds there.  I’m not sure if that’s a wise thing or not.

…Last week on Facebook some people had this to say:

I just burped. I used to burp once a year, and this was about the 8th burp for 2015. This is yet another sign I am "getting older".

Sometimes after you publish a story, you feel like a stripper without an audience

It feels strange to have nothing sad to say.

Hahahaha! Just heard my husband on the phone: "I don't know anyone from that place. I don't know you. Do you know me? Why are you calling and bothering me? I don't call and bother people I don't know. You should be ashamed of yourself."

  

"oh you look like a disco ball" is not the look I was going for today.

During bath time, the toddler discovered his nipples. "What's this?" he asked. "Your nipple," I said. He repeated the word, pronouncing it "ipple," "tipple," and "mipple." After I corrected him each time, he asked if I had "cripples." I said I did. He, of course, asked to see them. I pulled up my shirt. He stared for a few seconds and then said, "Daddy, you have hairy cripples." I couldn't argue with the kid about that.

 Someone at Starbucks just commented on my pregnancy and asked if I was "keeping it." When I said yes she looked very disapproving. I guess I did forget to wear my wedding ring today...

Sorry but if you compulsively post pictures of your baby's poopy diapers on your FB wall I can't be your friend, okay? Yes. I'm a bitch but we all have limits here.

Guess I'm not the only one that gets aroused by book porn. Maybe I should start a site

Getting complimented/hit on can be very flattering!! You have nice breasts....... Huh??? What bro??? Ya you can have my number it's (509) WTF-DUDE

Sometimes I like people, but then I read the shit they post on Facebook.