Ah jeez, another manifesto?
In a word, no. Although if you need a kick-ass manifesto, I’m your huckleberry. This is more a place where I can post stories (both fictional and personal), random thoughts on creative leadership, and whatever wafts through my rigging.
Like this poem:
Onionskin
After he died
My father spoke to me
In the crinkle and snap
Of onionskin paper
Neatly stacked beside
His silent typewriter
It waited, patient as a loyal dog
Just inside the front door, waits
For its never-forgotten master
The top sheet slightly curled
By the dry west Texas air
I would select a page
Run my 9-year-old fingers over the uneven texture
And, pinning it between index and thumb
Flap it before my face
To create that
Unmistakable sound
With painstaking, reverent precision
I would roll a sheet into place
The satisfying thunk
Of the bar snapping into place
Setting a timer inside me
Impelling the first strike
Did he feel that inexorable pull?
Was every clack of key hitting paper
A tick of his internal stopwatch
Urging him to finish the book?
(He was going to die
Before his time)
He knew, as surely as he kenned
His own failing health
His novel would never be published
Clacking keys, echoing through his writing room
Spilled words, muffled through the closed door
Ticking stopwatch
Time bomb of a heart
Before he was too sick
He would write all day
Taking a break
After finishing a sex scene
To burn off a bit of that
Artistic energy
I created entire newspapers
About his death
Hand-drawn front pages, not typed
I wouldn’t, couldn’t sully
The paper that whispered hoarsely in my ear
It rolled, snow-white, off the platen
Am I more afraid today
Of comparing myself to him
Artistically? Or fatalistically?
White page. White sheet.
I’ve outlived him by 4
Seen my own sons grow to men
Two volumes of crinkling pages
Bound in leather, a token
Of generosity from my mother
A gift from father to son
The most terrifying art form
But I call myself a writer
The Smell
Like clockwork, she hits the wall around Washington.
It’s 102 miles, give or take, from the club to her house near Pittsburgh, and 71 miles in, right at the city limit sign of Washington, Pennsylvania, the fatigue and nausea reach critical mass. Lifting her foot from the accelerator, her mind again works through the dead ends of her various theories as she brakes a little too hard—fuck it, the highway’s deserted—and guides the 2003 Mitsubishi Galant she calls ‘Penny’ onto the shoulder of I-79.
Maybe it takes 71 miles for the work buzz to wear off? Even before Penny comes to rest, she closes her eyes, listening to the crunch of gravel as the car creeps to a stop. She counts the seconds, subconsciously, listening for a catch in the idling motor. She lowers her head forward, slowly, and rests her forehead on the steering wheel. She feels for the gear shifter, presses the button with her thumb, rides out a wave of dizziness, and slides the column into park. One hour and five minutes to feel dirty? Right thumb on seat belt release button. Left hand finds cool metal handle. She unfolds more than climbs out of the door, takes a carefully measured 7 steps, and only opens her eyes as she feels her ass rest against the cool metal of the trunk. Sixty five minutes for the smell to creep up to the front seat?
She thinks, not for the first time, that right about now would be a good time for a smoke, if she smoked. As if she didn’t get enough at work. As if West Virginia clubs acknowledged the 21st century and banned smoking indoors. Just over an hour for the secondhand nicotine to drop to subtherapeutic levels? She inhales deeply, imagines the last of the stubborn tar molecules exiting her body as she expels the air. She looks up, picks out a few stars through the suburban haze. Coulda been a nurse, she thinks, rubbing the cold from her butt cheeks, and climbing back into Penny. The smell hits her, reminds her why she isn’t working the graveyard shift at some county hospital. Graveyard shift? They can’t possibly call it that, at a hospital? The sharp laugh that fills Penny’s interior sounds like it came from someone else. Must be some other bitch sitting in the back seat. Counting the money. Too close to the smoky, sickly smell, for now. Not for the last time, she reminds herself to keep a box of gallon zip bags in the back seat. Fucking money.
The turn indicator illuminates a few deserted lanes of blacktop. Like clockwork, the nausea passes. The fatigue remains, of course. Last-dance-last-chance adrenaline only goes so far. She focuses on the eyes of the men who looked her in the eyes. The tattoos she admired. Stops there. Enough.
The rest of the drive skitters like mercury released from a broken thermometer. The early risers, the deliverers. Box trucks and civil servants. The smell envelops her. She squints against it as Penny’s tires hit the driveway. A long, hot shower. The second-best reward. Far behind the first, which is climbing into bed with Kaylee, her little sleep zombie, who never wakes.
She lies on her back, staring at the sticker-dotted ceiling of her daughter’s bedroom. Stars and stars and stars. In her nose, the faint residue of smoke, and lotion, and hand sanitizer, and perfume, and cash. She leans over, slowly and quietly, places her face next to Kaylee’s, inhales the sticky sleep breath of her middle child. Imagines watching her play on a beach, somewhere. Salty breeze and sunscreen and cherry lip balm. The smells of a summer day. Somewhere else.
She rolls back onto her back. Stares at the sticker-dotted ceiling. In the rising light of new day, she closes her eyes, and channels the black highway outside of Washington, PA.