1000 Days

Some areas of the Internet—the blogosphere at least—brim with cheer. Like formerly downward Christians back from a fresh revival they wipe inspired sweat from their brows and proselytize their message. Drunk on their own success they upliftingly decry a seemingly simple message of hope: do what you love. Or sometimes: follow your dream. There is just no way to be happy unless you do things that fill you with joy.

Well, no shit.

These people are grandparents that have forgotten the trials of parenthood. Trust funders raft-hopping in Thailand to get back to basics. Headlining pentagenarian rockers singing burnt-out-from-the-road lyrics—as if.

Listen up Internet cool-aid drinkers: I have a mortgage. I have a family. I have dogs and cats and a car loan. The bank, the grocery store, the vet, and the other bank don’t take bliss checks. They don’t even feign interest in my need for personal satisfaction and inner peace. They send me big envelopes with little envelopes inside. They don’t bother to pay for the return postage.

Yes, I got here on my own. I will get out on my own. I’ll get out by keeping my less than soul satisfying job and paying them off a little while longer. I’ve got practical debts and concrete needs. Those require satisfaction before I do.

I’ll defer my dreams, my passions, and my loves for later—maybe even for ever—so shut up with your fluffy bunnies and sunshine.

Word count: 245
Day 240

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8:37 - 23 mins to write.

8:38 - Crap, that went fast.

Friday evening the world sped up a bit.

Around 4:30 Grandma arrived to pick up Hope for a sleep-over. I showered during the event, but I’m told she grabbed her stuff, trundled over to the car, and climbed into her seat. We thought she’d balk or cry. Excellent.

Near 5—before or after I don’t know—the rest of us bunched into the mini-van en route to the other babysitter’s house. Two miles up from here one stop sign per mile. Dump Joy off like a newborn at the doorstep of a church then headed west. Again, one stop sign per mile. His time six miles. That happens to be one mile more than necessary—fast is slow; slow is fast.

We get very well parked for both the frontside and the backside of the movie. Scoot through the mall to the food court near the theater.

“No we can’t rent one of those little cars. What do you want to eat, pizza or hot dogs?”.

“I need to go potty.”

“Do you too?”

“No.”

“Good. Do you want a hot dog or pizza?”

We dine at the ‘little tables’ near the powder blue ‘57 Chevy table. It’s like parent-teacher night at grade school with our knees bumble the table top. Faith savors a pizza slice like she’s got all the time in the world. Grace devours a hot dog sans bun like she’s got none at all. Mom and I share the bun and crust and some chicken nuggets that she got when my attention drifted.

Kung Fu Panda was ok. I didn’t laugh at any of the parts the rest of the audience laughed but I could usually see why they did. Some scenes moved fast like a frenetic car chase and I wondered if the girls followed the action. Dreamworks rolls a little different then Pixar.

I couldn’t get over the unanswered question of why the panda’s father was a duck. Nor exactly what animal Sifu was.

Word count: 342
Day 239

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Fired up Adobe Buzzword from Acrobat.com this morning. I needed to port my login over to the new site. Plus a recent article on the Writer’s Technology Companion had me feeling guilty I’ve not given this platform much of a shake.

Of course I’ve been away awhile. I’ve been working on some hefty documentation at work. I needed a break from composing sentences–we all know how painful that is for me.

His body lay face up on the tile floor; his head jammed sturdily in the corner of the kitchen cabinets. Each of his arms spread an even distance from his torso with the hands hooked under the toe-kick. This is the way he would look to a groundling if he were flying overhead. The only asymmetry: his turned head and his scratching fingers.

This man, Travis probably, scrapes gently at the wooden edge running from his left eye to near infinity. He’s been making this one single simple movement all his life. The surface is mostly smooth but for a bit of a burr that catches his nail as he extends the tip fully. His fingerprints catch it, turning the knuckles slightly, as he contracts. Some part of his mind must be counting the strokes, must be calculating when the burr will erode completely while his finger grows fresh skin cells to replace the ones rubbed off in the process. It’s possible that there is, in fact, a number in there somewhere. This man, Travis, has no plans to retrieve it.

He enjoys the solid elevated sensation the tile provides. Travis is sure he can feel the concrete below the tile, the sand below the concrete, the clay beneath the sand, and the whole of Earth below that. He doesn’t have to imagine he’s atop a pedestal of obdurate granite. He is atop such a thing. He’s been place here personally by tearless God or fate or fucking circumstance.

The mundane cabinets balance the centrifugal exertion of everything that’s happened since it happened. Without his arms and hands under these, he’s sure he’d be pressed through the ceiling and attic and roof and into the sky. Travis is not moving his arms from their secure place just yet. He does turn his head to look upward along his anticipated trajectory. If he grows bored of the scratching–or the burr comes loose–and he has nothing better to do but be flung further into space he’d like to be able to roll to the side to align his body with the rafters so he can be passed through the softer parts. A Dole banana sticker on the underside of the counter flares in his attention.

###

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Let me. Let me. Let me!” Connie begs.

“Constance, you can’t reach the cupboards,” says Travis.

“I can reach here.” Constance dabs the sticker to the underside of the counter top and runs into the living room.

“Get back in the kitchen to eat…” Travis gives up this time.

###

His body lay face up on the tile floor, but now he’s curled and sobbing. The floor does not move nearer the ceiling.

Word count: 508
Day 238

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