The Jester Reads: Woolf 7-12

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I’m in a book group headed up by Lisa over at Seeking Elevation. It seems to be the thing that has replaced Friday Fluff (which had probably run its course anyhow, though if it comes back, believe me, I’ll be all fluffy again.) Anyway, we’re reading Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse.

If you want background on the characters and story, Lisa has both on her blog. Start here, then go here,  here, here, here, and here. I’m just going to jump in and assume you’re one of the other people in the group though and already know what I want to talk about.

And naturally, what I want to talk about is sex. No, really. Sex, gender, and the things we all really live for. It doesn’t get any better than modernist sex with people too repressed to admit they ever got it on. Especially when the most repressed of the lot is simultaneously held up as a paragon by the other characters and killed off early by the author.

Clearly, Mrs. Ramsay’s eight kids were all born of immaculate conception to hear the woman think about Minta and Paul. Lisa points out that there is a great deal of sex symbolism going on, but that’s not what I mean. What I’m talking about is the way that Mrs. Ramsay obsesses over Minta and Paul, who have gone off to get engaged, but who have been away far too long. She keeps distracting herself, trying to convince herself that not one, but two of her brood of eight children accompanied the young lovers.

And I would argue that she does this precisely so that she won’t have to think about their being L-O-V-E-R-S. The woman has eight children. She knows what people do in the dark, OK? And yet the closest she can bring her sexually repressed mind to speculating about Paul and Minta is this: “If nothing happened [i.e. no engagement] she would have to speak seriously to Minta, for she could not go trapesing about all over the country, even if Nancy were with them…” (41) So the best she can do is want to warn Minta that people will think she’s …. ‘traipsing’ (wink wink nudge nudge) with Paul if she keeps going off alone with him. (And never mind about Paul. Boys who sleep around aren’t unmarriageable.)

(And let’s have a long parenthetical discussion of that damned book she’s reading James. I hate, loathe, and despise the tale of the magic herring, the fisherman, and his greedy fucking wife. Sexism disgusts me, even in fairy tales. The point is that the story is about a woman grasping for power and thereby causing ruin. The implication is that women should know their place. I oversimplify, but that’s the gist. And ooooh, it’s being read by the story’s number one model of domesticity, Mrs. Ramsay. And she’s reading it and thinking of it (“the bass gently accompanying a tune” (41)) while she thinks about Minta. In short, she’s worried here that Minta will step out of her place.)

OK, anyway, Mrs. Ramsay is making these new matches like Paul and Minta’s, and hoping for others,  like Lily and Mr. Bankes’, even as she resigns herself to a shitty marriage. Now, in any marriage, there’s a certain amount of putting up with your spouse. But throughout this section, we’re told how the 8 children supposedly detract from Mr. Ramsay’s work while they draw Mrs. Ramsay into life and away from her thoughts about mortality. For me, the implication is the exact opposite. Woolf is really showing us that Mrs. “I don’t have a first name because my identity has been subsumed in my husband’s” has put up with more than enough.

What I really get out of this section is that Woolf is flipping the tables on more than just sex. Even as the characters remark about Mr. Ramsay being pretty well saddled with these eight kids, Woolf shows not Mr. but Mrs. Ramsay trapped into a role by them. Mr. Ramsay can go around worrying about his work and book, just like all the other male characters.  Mrs. Ramsay can’t do anything but cling to the young ones and their vivacity, because it is their youth that keeps her from thinking of her own mortality.

She has to convince herself that the dreams she gave up upon attaining mother-of-eight-dom would have been horrible and that the life she’s living now is therefore clearly much better.. And yet that isn’t enough, and she mothers and matchmakes for everyone around her, desperately scrambling to retrieve the period in her life before sex had saddled her with those eight kids. She thinks James “will never be so happy again” as he grows up (41), because the older she gets, the more life presses in on her.  (In contrast, Mr. R. defends the little birdkiller, Jasper,  pridefully calling his behavior “natural in a boy” (48).)

And she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She wishes to always have a baby so she will never grow old. She can’t bring herself around to thinking that if she had never had babies, she might have led a happier life.

(Well shit, now it’s time for a maternal interjection. I visualize what my life would have been like without my kids often, and it’s always paler. I think it’s a parental behavior. But here’s the difference between me and Mrs. R.: Scott does it, too. He is also sometimes presented with the idea of what his life would be like without kids and finding the little blighters the preferable selection. We share this in common, where in To The Lighthouse, it is clearly a gender division. ALSO, I look forward to interacting with mine as adults. She dreads their flying her nest, even though James is still extremely young.)

It’s what is killing her, this overt obsession with triviality and youth that keeps her from seeing the life she thinks of only in terms of its end. It’s why, in part III of the book, James is finally going to the lighthouse with his father, while his mother is dead. He wanted to go with her.  (Mrs. Ramsay missed it, but the happiest day of James’ life ended when he wasn’t able to go to the lighthouse with his mother as a child. She shouldn’t think “he will never be so happy again” but “he was happier this morning or yesterday than he ever will be again”.) The very things Mrs. Ramsay thinks would kill her are the ones that might save her, while the things she clings to in order to keep from seeing her own mortality drag her down that much faster. She’s killing herself with caring for others, and even more than eighty years later, I know too many women doing exactly the same thing. Some men. But mostly women

So for me, the moral of the story (oh yeah, Mrs. R. is reading a morality tale starting on page 1; there is a moral) is rooted in Mrs. Ramsay’s death. It seems to me like Woolf is reaching down through the years and laying her head on my shoulder to whisper, “live for yourself, for you otherwise shall perish”.  Look at who survives. As we go forward, look at the woman who narrates much of that last section. It’s not Minta. She’s ancient history. It’s not Mrs. Ramsay. Although she is the subject of the ruminations, she’s dead. It’s Lily Briscoe, the woman who had something other than a family to cling to. Woolf is, on the one hand, presenting Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay as the archetypes of manliness and womanhood, and on the other hand shattering them. She is telling us, especially the women, ‘if you don’t have something besides your children to live for, you are guaranteed to die that much sooner.’

Down the years

Posted on by February 25, 2020

When the doorbell rang at 5AM, I bolted awake from dead sleep. I jumped out of bed and took off running hell for leather down the hall “Oh no! Oh something is terribly, terribly wrong! Come fast,” I said to Scott.

As if he wasn’t pelting along behind me.

All I could think was Sam, Sam, Sam. He’s a flight risk. We’ve considered documenting him. He seems to be settling down, so we haven’t gone through with it, but, Sam, Sam, Sam, when that doorbell rang, I wished we hadn’t dithered and delayed.

I barely looked out before I threw open the door.

Some guy in a hunting cap said, “Does Lawrence Wainright live here?” That may not be the name. The name isn’t the point. Suddenly my brain went all Clockwork Orange.

You just shot my adrenaline through the roof about my kid so you could ask about your hunting buddy? Next do you beat us to death with a phallic sculpture?

Scott said, “No. The last people were the Krings, so there hasn’t been one for awhile.”

The man said, “I’m Robert from down the street, and I’ve got a 90 year old man in my truck. I found him sitting on the curb back there said he was trying to get here to see his friend Lawrence.”

My emotions careened in another direction, back into that land of mother panic, but now with overtones of my two and a half years dead grandfather. “Oh no,” I said. “Can you get him somewhere safe?”

We all looked out to our driveway. “Oh shit, he’s out of the truck.”

I said, “Fuck,” and whipped around looking for shoes in the dark. I found Scott’s first and handed them over. “You’re better dressed for this than I am, honey.” He was not. “I’ll find a phone so we can call 911.” He headed for the curb with Robert.

While I ran for my phone and jerked on a pair of shorts, I had time to worry about Clockwork Orange again, and that poor teacher in Vermont. It was five AM, after all, not yet first light. We could barely see to that curb. What if the man standing there was hale, hearty, and holding a crowbar? What if they were attacking Scott? What was to say that we hadn’t entered into “The Most Dangerous Game”? (If the current events thundering around inside my brain didn’t get me, then I was surely going to die of literary allusion.)

I went back out with a bit more trepidation. “Should I call?” I asked. I already had 9-1-1 typed on my screen.

“What we really need is a phone book,” said Scott.

He came in to get some shorts on and find the thing, and I didn’t go out. Scott grabbed the first phone book in the drawer. “He says his name is Buddy Hall, and he lives down the street at 590.”

The first phone book was a Yellow Pages, which, when he realized it, sent Scott cursing back inside again. I found the right book, but I couldn’t find a Buddy Hall. Scott and I both went out this time, as I had added a bra to my ensemble and felt reasonably confident that our lives weren’t in danger. (Which didn’t stop my in-head commentator from suggesting that this might be exactly what these crazy people were waiting for.)

I needn’t have worried. When Scott and I got there, the man’s name had changed again. Now he was John W. Hall, and he lived at 620. Third name, third address. And he was an old ninety just then, standing tall and hunched, with wispy hair, a raspy voice and no teeth in. I handed Scott my phone (just in case they actually found him in the phone book) and went inside to find Scott’s cell and dial 911.

Jesus. I write a story about a kid nearly drowning and the next day lose my son in the aquarium. I write a story featuring Aunt Charlo at her most kooky, and the confused neighbor makes an appearance. Dangerous thing this writing business.

By the time the police arrived, we were on address number six, but we had established that the man was John W. Hall, nicknamed Buddy. We brought him and Robert in and learned their story. Robert got up early and headed out hunting. (And his gear certainly attested to his truth.) As he drove through the neighborhood, he saw Buddy sitting on the curb. He pulled alongside and rolled down his window. John said, “Help me. I fell and I can’t get up.” Robert coaxed him into the truck, and that was how they landed on our doorstep.

The police found John’s correct address (650, so close, but then, we knew from his slow walk he couldn’t have come from very far) and called the home phone. Nobody answered. They drove by and found the door open and the place deserted. John volunteered out of nowhere, and in the third person, “He lives by himself most of the time, except when he has these little flare ups.” It sounded like he was reciting from a script. He reminded me of Caroline when she was in the worst of the autistic echolalia at age 2.

I brought him coffee, and the police checked a database of some kind. (Alabama has a registry for at-risk senior citizens.) They said he lived alone (confirming John’s odd account), but located his son living halfway across town and said, “He’ll be here soon.”

“Well that’s a relief,” said John. “My wife’s going to kill me. Last time I pulled this, she about went out of her mind. This is the second time I’ve gone and done this, now.”  At first, nobody said anything. We weren’t sure if his wife was alive to kill him or not. We never did find out.

But then, Robert said, “Well, I’ll come in first with my hunting dog and distract her.”

Scott said, “Have you got antlers lying around in the car? Carry those in first and you can mount them above the fireplace. Say John bagged a buck.”

Robert said, “Well, it’s turkey season, but I guess we could drum up some feathers.”

The police left, and Robert, Scott, and I made awkward conversation while we waited. Periodically, John would interject something, and it seemed like the longer he stayed, the more cogent he became. (“I just tripped over my own two feet. Nothing there for me to fall over, and still I went down.”) Like maybe we were dealing with a drug interaction of some kind addling his brain, rather than outright senility or Alzheimer’s.

Sam came in and stalked across the room. “You woke me up,” he said. “My job is to wake you up.”

Until Sam entered, John sat on the couch, half sipping his coffee, looking around the room, making odd conversational contributions. It was so obvious that he was looking for something, anything familiar to tell him a friend had once lived there.

But when Sam came in, John suddenly became animated. “Why don’t you come right over here and sit with me!” he invited. Sam chose instead to finish his lecture about not getting enough sleep. It sounded remarkably similar to what I tell him every morning. Then Caroline arrived, and once more, John’s whole face lit up. “Come give me a hug!” he said.

Caroline never refuses a hug. She wrapped her arms around him tight, and he closed his eyes and swayed with her. And then Sam, jealous because big sister was getting the attention, decided to go next. He literally threw himself into John’s arms, so hard I feared he would knock he old man backwards.

But John withstood the blow. Clearly, he still retained some of his physical strength. And he embraced my son with his mouth opened wide in a smile, eyes closed, holding on like my kids were bringing him back to life.

His son arrived. John was clearly glad to see him. The son seemed embarrassed. He acted apologetic. And I wanted to say he didn’t need to be. I wanted to say that we all have parents. Scott’s and mine are comparatively young, in their sixties and seventies. This is a long way in our future. But someday, they may be that old man, sitting on a stranger’s couch, wishing to just go home. Someday, we may be that old man.

But I couldn’t think of those words. My four hours of sleep were closing over me like a heavy fog, and I was feeling less than fully lucid myself. So instead I wished John well and watched him ride away in his son’s car, firm in my resolve that tomorrow, I’m baking him some cookies.

Clara Jean’s origins

Posted on by September 19, 2013

Hey everybody, first and foremost, I want to say that I got a visit from the Fairy Hobmother. I GOT A VISIT FROM THE FAIRY HOBMOTHER. (Yes, I know the link goes to an appliance store in the UK. It should. It’s cool.) The Fairy Hobmother (@Fairyhobmother ) is an Internet Awesome who randomly visits and bestows love. In this case, I have been gifted with £25 Amazon voucher. And if you comment on this post, the Hobmother might visit you, too. I’m prettttty sure that’s how I got found, but I really have no idea how this works. It’s not a giveaway, precisely, more like… well a visit from your fairy hobmother. Unexpected. Badly needed. And altogether welcome. Thank you Hobmother! I will be buying books to soothe my soul. Aaahhh.
_______________________
Now. I mentioned that “Sisterhood of the Travelling 45” is a fiction piece with a nonfiction companion.

Here’s that companion.

Just as Dodo and Wilma are based on a couple of kids that I know, so too is Clara Jean based on a real person. Only this person isn’t a kid. “Clara Jean” is really my dearly departed great-great aunt Charlo. Aunt Charlo had schizophrenia. Pure and simple. She was one of nine siblings, all of whom had some kind of physical or mental struggle. But only she and Charlie Boy were completely debilitated. (Charlie Boy was the survivor of a set of twins who would have been 9th and 10th instead of just 9th. He never walked; he never really talked; and he loved everyone he met unconditionally.) My great-great-grandfather Klaren owned a bakery in Lexington, KY, and his primary inheritors were Charlo and Charlie Boy, his gentle way of ensuring that they would be always cared for by the family.

Aunt Charlo used to terrify my second and third cousins, I’m told, but I loved her to death. My primary memories of her are of walking down the street and across Tates Creek Road to a little drugstore, where we always bought a coloring book and some crayons. Also, we sometimes played communists. Yes, it involved tinfoil hats. I loved it. I kind of think it’s what freaked out the other kids.

Anyway, after her parents died, Charlo either lived in supervised apartments or with family members.

Some of Charlo’s adventures:
When she was 18, she put on a red dress and ran away to Natural Bridge, utterly convinced that Jim Nabors was going to come marry her.
When she was living with one of her sisters, she went prowling around the house with a butcher knife. The family daughter, who adored Aunt Charlo, asked “Why?” Charlo explained that some African Explorer needed her help, and the rest of the rescue squad was coming to get her. The niece armed herself to come along, and they sat outside together until the niece could ‘borrow’ Aunt Charlo’s knife for awhile.
In spite of the fact that she was never a threat to others, Charlo once held a standoff with the FBI because she made a strange phone call to some federal number and her statements were misinterpreted as very specific threats. She also insisted she had an arsenal in her apartment, and of course, she had no such thing.

After nearly all of her other siblings had died, and the one living sister simply couldn’t care for her any longer, she moved (quite willingly, I might add) to a nursing home, where she would visit all the other residents and bring them cheer and weirdness. I have a picture of her somewhere holding onto a cat some volunteers brought in, just beaming.

Anyway, when her meds got off, she was very suspicious of authority figures. I mean, I’m suspicious of authority figures. But my conspiracy theories are nothing compared to Charlo’s. In her room at the nursing home, she had a record player, some old 45s, and a 45 converter to make them play right on the machine, which had a much smaller central spinner. When things were going downhill for her, Charlo would break the records into pieces and give them to her visitors, imploring them to help her smuggle the whole secret code out one fragment at a time.
So. That’s where I was at midnight when I finished writing. With a funny little story where Aunt Charlo made a visit in the role of Clara Jean. I had trouble getting to sleep. Yesterday was rough. And I tossed and turned until probably one or so.

And then the doorbell rang at five AM.

To be continued.

Sisterhood of the travelling 45

Posted on by February 25, 2020

For this week’s Trifecta challenge (this week’s word is confidence), I’m back in the nursing home with DoDo and Wilma. Take a second to read their previous (short) escapade. They have now returned from their shopping spree unscathed, as they have every week so far. It helps that Wilma’s great grandson helped them hack the garden gate code, but sooner or later, they’re going to get caught.

Here is the first of two nonfiction companion pieces to go with this little story.

And here is the other companion.

_________________________

“I know what you did.” Clara Jean Phillips peered at Wilma and DoDo from the hall, then waddled in and perched on  Wilma’s ladder back rocker.

Wilma scolded. “When the nurses see you, it’s back to the lockdown wing.” Even as she spoke, a klaxon blared.

DoDo slid her hand up the inside of her bed and pushed the nurse call button. She mused, “How to buy her silence.”

“Take me with you! And we won’t come back!”

“We’d get caught before we left the gate. No, it’s going to have to be something else.”

“Quickly, now,” Wilma added.

“You take it for me,” Clara finally said.

“Take what, dear?”

“This!” Clara Jean reached down her shirt and brandished something thin, black, and jagged.

“What is it? Did it cut you?”

Clara pushed it towards Wilma, “Take it to 754 Washington Street. Tell them I cracked the code.”

The speaker on DoDo’s bed came to life, the nurse answering her call. “Are you all right?” a male voice asked, “Is it an emergency?”

Clara continued to hold the item out to Wilma, who accepted it between pinched fingers.

DoDo said, “Turn off that racket. My hearing aids both have feedback. Clara Jean just popped over for a visit. She’s down in our room. All ready to go back home, now.”

“Right. Thanks,” said the man.

The speaker clicked off. “Oh, they’re coming now. Oh, hide it!” Clara wailed.

“There now.” Wilma tucked it into the foot of DoDo’s bed. “All taken care of. 754 Washington Street.”

Clara Jean left with the dark haired nurse muttering, “Mustn’t tell.”

When she had gone, DoDo asked, “And what confidence has she bestowed upon us?”

“It’s part of an old record,” said Wilma.

“A record? A vinyl record? What do we do with it?”

“Take it with us,” said Wilma. “ We’ll pitch it at the convenience store. She won’t know. And even if she tells, who would believe her?”

“Who indeed?” Dodo agreed. “Who indeed?”

Deleted post

Posted on by April 25, 2012

If you’re looking for the post I placed on Things I can’t say, I have deleted it. I offended Shell when that was the last thing I intended. My profound apologies.

House guests

Posted on by February 25, 2020

We have house guests. This is all Annabelle’s fault. She wrote a cute post over at Glass of Fancy about how she once sent her brother live bullfrogs. She said, “It’s amazing the things you can find in biological supply catalogs online”.

Immediately, I thought of my niece. Bing! went my brain. My Mom was Madame Fruit Fly Experiment when I was a kid. She bought Kaylee an Ant farm, and they adore it. She has a pond, sometimes a swimming pool, full of tadpoles. Wouldn’t she and Kay LOVE to WATCH the frogs develop? What CAN I get from biological supply?

Hello Google!

Hello Nature Gift Store!

I could get a tadpole kit, a pet frog kit, a Venus Flytrap kit, a ladybug kit or, hello a butterfly kit. I knew about these. But I thought they were sold at school prices for classroom use. Or that you had to send off for the kit, then mail away again for your caterpillars, and generally hassle about the thing. Not here. Reasonably priced, and you could get everything all at once.  Somewhere between ‘ooh look’ and ‘I clicked da button!’, I went from thinking, Kay would love this, to saying out loud, “Caroline and Sam are going to go CRAZY for this.” Did you notice the “would” to “will” shift there?  Yeah me too.

I’m not typically an impulse shopper, but I considered this for all of five minutes before I ordered it.

It came yesterday, live caterpillars and all.

The kids adore the houseguests.

They came into my office about a dozen times to check on them, and Sam was up with the sun (not that he ever sleeps much past its daily arrival) proclaiming, “I’m ready to check on the caterpillars.”

For their own safety, I’ve moved the caterpillars’ jar into the habitat, even though this is an unnecessary move unless you have an inquisitive four year old who should only hold said jar under supervision.

Anyway, the kids love the house guests, and I’m totally fascinated with them, too. I’ll keep you updated on their progress. In about a week, we should have chrysalides, and a week after that, we ought to start seeing our own painted ladies.

 

Guest Post: Aboveboard

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Hello people of the internet! The awesome Carrie over at Views From Nature is on vacation this week, and as such, she has invited some of us to guest post in her stead. I’m totally thrilled to say that I’m kicking off her week.

Come check out my story “Aboveboard” over at Carrie’s today, where I’m the first of the tourists:

 

While you’re there, you should also take a look at some of Carrie’s wonderful stories, including her awesome ongoing series. Although I had been an occasional reader of her blog before I started doing Trifecta posts, I got addicted with her series about “The Glade”. (And that’s one of the series you won’t find linked from her header.)

Hope Carrie is having a great week on vacation and not running into any active volcanoes. In her absence, you can expect to see coolness erupting on her blog. I believe I’m correctly naming all the other posters here. But I may be actually naming the guest posters along with some folks Carrie and I both love to read! Either way, a quick shoutout to:

SAM of From My Write Side

Cameron D. Garriepy

Kir of The Kir Corner

Lance whose Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog

And

Tara R. of The Thin Spiral Notebook.

Take a minute to visit my post on Carrie’s blog and to check out these other great bloggers!

Flori and the Tourist

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Flori flitted down the alley, a crisp twenty folded in her hand. She tossed the wallet in the dumpster. She wasn’t big time; she didn’t fool with the credit cards. Urre and Kulta, who needed drugs, took bolder risks. Flori emptied out enough to eat and kept a low profile.

A sound at the alley’s mouth alerted her. She looked back long enough to see the tourist’s head, the same distinctive ponytail she had noticed when peeling the wallet free of his pocket. “Shit,” she muttered. Then she yelled, “check the trash mister,” and made a show of running straight into the dead end wall, only to whip around and charge when he was nearly on top of her.

For a moment, she wished she did take more from her lifts, wished she kept enough to buy just a gram of lartë. With a gram, she could change into a cat and  dart between the man’s legs right now. Instead, she ducked under his arm and sped on past him back out onto the street. She heard him follow.

He chased her several blocks, shouting all the while for the gendarmerie. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered. Sooner or later, one of the flics would pay attention to his racket, especially as they got closer to the better end of town. Damned if she was giving his cash back now.

Flori bolted down another alley, this one a twisting affair that ultimately separated into two narrow streets. By the time she reached the split, she could no longer see the man when she stole a glance behind her, though she could still hear him shouting. She darted into a restaurant and dropped into a seat facing the window.

The table’s former occupant had been drinking a coffee. Now, he was arguing loudly at the counter. Flori took a sip of his drink. Too hot by half. She spat it back into the cup and moved to another seat just as the customer turned from the counter and came back to his chair.

“Hey,” said the counterman, “What do you want?”

“Coffee,” Flori answered.

A cup grew out of the table in front of her, and she grimaced. Food delivered by magic was always too cold. She carried it to the counter and flicked her coin down beside it. The counterman sighed heavily, lifted the pot, and topped her off. She took a sip before she returned to her seat and smiled. Just right.

She stayed nearly twenty minutes, but when she left the shop and walked out of the alley-street, the damned tourist was sitting at a café, watching for her.  The two streets didn’t diverge far before they came out on a main avenue. Not far enough, anyhow. He could watch both from his vantage, and she regretted going forward instead of turning back when she left the restaurant. Flori saw him a hairsbreadth before he saw her, and she ran again. “Why you got such a hard on about twenty bucks?” she yelled. “I threw the wallet away.”

“Nobody steals from me!”

One of those. At least he hadn’t picked up any flics while he waited. Flori ran back up the alley-street, looking for the family of three she had just seen walking out their front door. She hadn’t paid much attention to them. But now, it seemed very important that they hadn’t suddenly decided to go home. Because Flori didn’t remember seeing one of them reach back to lock the door.  They were still haggling with the greengrocer. Perfect.

Although she was in plain sight of the man, she darted up the family’s front steps and tried the handle. Open! She let herself in and clattered through the narrow house, rapidly scooting furniture behind her to trip the tourist up and slow him down. Not all magic required drugs.

She heard him struggling, and the crack of wood suggested he was trying to clear the path with his own spell. Excellent. Flori regretted the property destruction, but no tourist was going to beat her over twenty dollars. (And would he stop at beating? Flori didn’t want to find out.)

Initially, Flori’s plan was to sneak in the front then right out the back again. But from the sounds, her tourist was well trapped. So she popped into the toilet to take care of the coffee, which suddenly pressed to escape her bladder. She sat on the commode while the man thrashed, cracking chairs as he tried to free himself.

She heard other voices now, another man’s bearlike roar carrying in from outside. She had to guess that was the individual she had seen holding a head of cabbage like a weapon. Man of the house. It was impossible to tell if he understood the trapped tourist’s explanations. Then, she saw three vials sitting in a neat row on the sink directly across from the toilet. “That’s not perfume,” she whispered. “Lartë.”

She flushed and rose. Everywhere outside the bathroom, the furniture creaked, her little spell holding out against not only the tourist, now, but also the returning family. Flori’s spell just caught up all their magic like it was more furniture and added it to the mess.

She closed her hand around all three tiny bottles. She tucked them in her pocket and sprinted out the back door, feeling a pang of guilt as she heard a child’s voice for a moment above the adults. “My chair!” it wailed. “My chair, my chair, my chair.”

Nothing for it right now. The back door opened into a courtyard that separated four houses. This house and its neighbor backed up to two  others that opened into the opposite alley-street. A little fence between the courtyard and the alley was a small obstacle, easy to vault over, but she didn’t want to vault. She wanted to fly.

She quickly studied her bottles of lartë, each labeled for strength. The first one measured two grams. Too hard. She wasn’t a regular user, and she doubted she could either manage a trip that strong or moderate her intake to consume only half of it in a hurry.  The second bottle was only half a gram. Too soft. But the third bottle was exactly one gram. Just right. Just exactly right.

She set the two wrong bottles under her toes, then broke the seal and turned the right bottle into her mouth. After the *pop* that told her the transformation was complete, she collected the vials awkwardly in her talons and lifted above the courtyard, above the houses, above the city, looking for a church where she could rest and cry sanctuary when the change wore off.

 

Epilogue

Late that night, rested, unpursued, Flori returned to the house in her own form. She realized at once that the largest part of the splintering racket had been the front door, which had twisted off its hinges and snapped in half.  They would have to wait for her spell to ebb before they could clear the damage. She looked in the windows for a long time, until she was certain everything inside was still.

Then, she climbed noiselessly over the door. Even in human form, she made a good cat (a far better cat than a bird.) She picked around in the rubble with a flashlight until she found what she wanted, the finished headrest of a child’s chair. She carried it back into the narrow  street with her and walked far enough away that she wouldn’t just be feeding her own spell.

She stroked the wood and called softly for the other pieces, the seat and legs, the back and rockers. (She would have missed the rockers if not for the pegs in the legs. ) While she petted the chair, it pulled back into its proper shape. Other wood came too, extra pieces caught in the tangle. The finished chair was at first too lumpy thanks to the embedded mess. Flori removed the extra bits, but that left the chair too smooth, too new. Well, she wasn’t much bigger than a child herself. Flori sat rocking in the night while she cast her spell, until the chair shaped itself to the contours of her body. Just right.

At dawn, she carried it back and left it on the stairs for its young owner, a small apology for a chaotic day. She wondered about the tourist, whether he’d been believed or arrested, whether he regretted chasing her down over such a little bit of cash. But not for long. Like the chair, the tourist was part of the past, part of yesterday.

Today, Flori had other things in mind. She would look for Urre and Kulta. See if they still had room for a third. See if they would teach her how to improve her use of lartë. Next time she had to be a bird, she didn’t want to hear the grackles laughing at her poor form.

_______________________________

I hope I didn’t bore the editors at Trifecta, who were foolish enough to give me more than 333 words for my story this weekend for Trifextra. The only stipulation was that it should be a recognizable retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Somehow, that never really happened. However, in my defense:

1) Flori means gold. In Albanian. Ulta and Kurre mean Gold in …. two other languages. Dear GOD I love Google Translate.

2) There WERE three people in the family, and I did give the father a bearlike roar.

3) The kid’s chair got broken.

and

4) I got in too hot, too cold, too hard, too soft, too lumpy, too smooth, and just right.

Old Alabama Town

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Well, since I didn’t explode the blog yesterday, it’s time to try this slideshow thing again today. Yesterday’s show was a little on the small side, IMHO, so I’m going to go for bigger. But I don’t know if I’ll get it.

We went to the Alabama book festival yesterday and wandered around with the heady smell of intellectualism in our noses for three hours until Sam started trying to break antiques. The festival was housed in Old Alabama Town, a sort of miniature Ye Olde Williamsburg. I’ve avoided the place before, because I feared it would be all Gone With the Wind veneration of the old South. (Hey, I can be forgiven. I live in a city that simultaneously advertises itself as the Cradle of the Confederacy and the Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. The First White House of the Confederacy sits cattycorner to and within a block of The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott.)

Anyway, Old Alabama Town turns out to just be an overpriced historic village. But we got in free with the book fair, and besides shooting adorable photos of my kids, I snuck behind the barrier in the recreated printing shop where the historic typewriters all suspiciously have the number 1 on them. (This leads me to wonder about their actual age. I thought all typewriters left off the 1 to make room for the striking keys until relatively late in the game. Maybe it was just many. Maybe it was just mine. (I learned to type and wrote for several years on an antique Remington Rand.)

The pictures are awesome, and they certainly look authentic as hell. It was kind of cool that Sam was as enchanted by the printing presses and typewriters as we were. (My pictures here are mostly of the typewriters and typing area. I couldn’t sneak over to get a good angle on the printing presses.)

Enjoy!

 

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Callaway

Posted on by April 20, 2012

Well folks, it’s time for me to try my slideshow function again. The last time I did this, I crashed my site. So we’ll see if I’ve unkinked myself yet.

If this works, you’ll be looking at five lovely pictures we took when we went to visit Callaway gardens last month. The green butterfly is not pinned – he’s just in a hatching case where the cocoons are carefully pinned to the … I guess it’s a ceiling.

 

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