For weeks, at work, Craig was seized with an odd obsession. He thought constantly about sneaking away in the afternoon and seeing a movie. It had been unbelievably hot – though it was a typical summer. Thirty-plus days in a row of triple digit temperatures. Coming up on two months without a drop of rain. This day after day of baking was affecting Craig’s brain – broiling his thoughts.
He thought of the multiplex down the street from his work. He thought of the cool darkness. The isolation and peaceful quiet, interrupted only by the cacophony of the film soundtrack itself. The crankle of ice cubes in a big paper cup, the swoosh of a straw, the smell of popcorn.
He dreamed of the time when he could lean back and close his eyes and feel the cushioned seat that jiggles a little, modern stadium seating, plenty of legroom. A modern bastion of entertainment, a pantheon to air conditioning. Cool whispers, dust filters. His fingers would feel the little paper stub in a pocket, a ticket to ride, escape.
It didn’t matter what the feature is… as a matter of fact, the more banal, the better. Some teen comedy maybe, or modern special effects smash hit mindless electric drivel. Escapism, is what they call it.
In his imagination he tells the girl at the front desk of the office, “I have an off site afternoon meeting,” and strolls out to the parking lot. It is only a five minute drive to the gigaplex; He sees himself locking his cellphone in the glove box of his car. The ticket seller, the ticket ripper, the concession slogger are all bored, the afternoon weekday crowd is light.
The worn carpet, the signs over the doors, the posters (coming soon)… He could see it all when he closed his eyes.
He didn’t do it though… He couldn’t do it. He worked in a factory, He was a critical cog in the machine. The oiled parts, hot and constantly moving, never know when his attention is needed.
So he took a hurried lunch, drove past the theater on his way back. The best he could do is to lean back a little between phone calls or emails, when nobody was standing in front of his desk with some question.
Lean back and close his eyes, try to smell the popcorn, hear the roar of the coming attractions.
“Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.” ― Clint Eastwood
Fog in front of my house, Richardson, Texas
Panel
Craig went back to work today. On the drive home, he thought, ” Hectic day, plenty ‘o stress. Quiet panic, nothing big, little things. Hey! Hey! it’s about to be a new year! All that’ll change, Right? Yeah, and monkeys will fly out of my butt.”
When he made it home his wife had broken out the overhead light panel in the kitchen. So it was off to Home Depot for him, mister home repair handyman dude. As he left the house in the minvan it looked hazy, some ground fog, very humid. It happened as he was driving, supersaturated air, more water vapor than it can hold, gas wanting to condense to liquid, giving up the day’s solar heat, the sun gone, over past the west coast, traveling across the Pacific. Polluted urban air, dust particles, stirred up by car tires, car exhaust (“I’ll get it tuned up next week”) jagged microscopic particles of carbon, every facet a condensation seed, a point for the liquid water crystals to begin forming, the molecules to line up along the surface. Oxygen, each with its hydrogen couplet, randomly spinning, vibrating, doin’ the Brownian jig, not enough energy to stay aloft, random movements bring the trio alongside the dust mote where millions of millions (Avogrado’s number is really fuckin’ big ya know) of its twin brothers now sit, lined up. He joins the line, relieved to be out of the air, safety in numbers, condensation, droplets, driplits, lets see where y’all feel like goin’, hitch a ride on a mote. This dance, this lining up, bringing into focus, making a little sphere, a little lens, refraction machine, forming of millions of millions, is itself repeated millions of millions of times across the city, plenty of dust to go around, no shortage of seeds so. WHAM!
Fog so thick you could cut it with a knife. Pea soup. Clouds on the ground at night, no white fluffy furry “hey it looks like Zanzibar” cloud this, but clingy hot and yet cold, “who selected the blend tool?” green blinding scary fog-cloud. It’s a big electric Texas city so the cloud glows from within. The fog captures oncoming cars, streetlights, leftover Christmas displays, store neons, RedGreenYellow traffic indicators, all give their light to the fog. The fog gives it back as a glow, as a hint, “There’s something there, but damn it if I can tell what it is” luminescence in the distance – actually not the distance, a lot closer than is comfortable. Car lights are tungsten white, Town East Mall Lights glow mercury vapor blue or sodium yellow, Christmas lights are -well you know what color they are.
Craig drove slow, careful, of course this is Texas so everyone else is driving like bats out of hell – who are these people? why are they always in such a hurry? there’s nowhere to go nowhere to hide a good song on the radio so why not take your time, slow down and smell the diesel exhaust. Craig wouldn’t mind if a few took the whole pipe in for awhile, they scared the shit out of him. Someone even creeped out into the foggy intersection… maybe to get a better look at an oncoming pickup before they get smacked on the passenger side door.
But Craig got there all right, picked out his transcucent panel, he had a small piece of the broken one in his pocket so he was sure that the new one matched. Home Depot at night, a guy in front of him was buying an entire cart of broken odds and ends of wood, no piece whole, no piece straight, they gave him a good deal on it, he also buys four tubes of caulk. His hands were covered with white dust, cement or wallboard-sandings maybe, so Craig figured he must know what he’s doing.
When Craig left the Depot, the fog was even thicker. He crept home, put up the panel. When they built the kitchen they made the light fixture a tiny bit too big so the panels barely fit in the frame. Every now and then one pop’s out. Craig thought, “Maybe I’ll add it to my things-to-do-list somehow shim the damn thing so they don’t fall. Maybe I’ll use duct tape, hoo boy, that’ll piss her off. Duct tape on the ceiling, might as well put a big sign out front – –White Trash, come on in, eat some Ding Dongs, we buy Mrs. Baird’s Pecan fried pies and to heat ’em we fry ’em again . Wash it down with Mountain Doo if yure under age, or Meister Brau if yure old enough, or some peppermint schnapps if yure cold and yure heart needs some healin’. Never mind the cars in the yard, they don’t run anyway, have a sit in the ARVEE out back – put a tape in the boombox we got both kinds – country and western. We’ll play some Yatzee and then UNO when we get too drunk to roll dice. Then it’s movie time, we got Rambo, we got Anyway but Loose (love that Orangutan), but that’s it, hard to get them Beta tapes nowadays.– – On second thought better put the duct tape away and cut some wooden pieces, finish them up real nice.”
“She alone was left standing, amid the accumulated riches of her mansion, while a host of men lay stricken at her feet. Like those monsters of ancient times whose fearful domains were covered with skeletons, she rested her feet on human skulls and was surrounded by catastrophes…The fly that had come from the dungheap of the slums, carrying the ferment of social decay, had poisoned all these men simply by alighting on them. It was fitting and just. She had avenged the beggars and outcasts of her world. And while, as it were, her sex rose in a halo of glory and blazed down on her prostrate victims like a rising sun shining down on a field of carnage, she remained as unconscious of her actions as a splendid animal, ignorant of the havoc she had wreaked, and as good-natured as ever.”
― Emile Zola , Nana
Nana, 1877 (oil on canvas) by Manet, Edouard (1832-83)
La Débâcle (1892) (The Downfall/The Smash-up/The Debacle)
Le Docteur Pascal (1893) (Doctor Pascal)
Now there are only three to go. I’ll finish before September, so it will have been a four-year reading project – which seems nuts – but I have read a lot of other books too. I just keep coming back.
Nana is one of the best known of the series, and is one that I read first, years ago. No problem in repeating it, though, I remembered very little and the translation I read this time was superior and not as bowdlerized.
We first saw Nana in the amazing L’Assommoir – she was the laundress Gervaise’s beautiful, precocious, and trouble making daughter – who at the end of that novel was living on the streets and introduced to the life of a prostitute. Here she has continued down that path until she was the untalented but frighteningly sexy star of the theater – appearing practically naked in a production called La blonde Vénus, and creating a scandalous shockwave through Parisian society – one that nobody really recovers from.
Nana is a force of nature, a being of pure sexuality and no common sense that destroys everything and everyone that comes into contact with her.
With this subject matter it was going to be a racy book – but I was surprised at its frank sexuality. For example, I didn’t remember the plot thread of lesbianism that ran through the story from the first time I read it, years ago. This theme might have been edited out – or I might have simply missed it – probably a bit of both. There are a few scenes of raw sexuality – such as the passage where Nana spends time admiring her nude image in a full-length mirror while her lover waits in bed. Really heady stuff.
The book starts out slow – there are the numerous crowd scenes that Zola is known for – effectively written but a bit of a slog – so many French names – until you get to know the characters. An online character list was a big help. After a few chapters the pace picks up until, near the end, Nana is destroying another man in almost every other paragraph.
So, all in all, a rewarding read. I can see why it is near the top of the Zola canon – a little too flamboyant to be with the classics like L’Assommoir or Germinal – but still…
Now I’m excited… on to La Terre. Seventeen down – only three to go.
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Goldfish Pond, Dallas Arboretum
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Tuesday, September 08, and Saturday, September 12, 1998
Tuesday, September 08, 1998
Houdini toad
….. After work, I drove to pick up Lee at Nick’s piano lessons and took him home to get ready for soccer practice. I went over to feed K’Nex and Mortimer (pronounced More-Timer) and while I was shaking the live crickets into the aquarium I noticed there was only one toad.
We have had an escape.
I have absolutely no idea how the little bugger managed to get out. I cleaned their little world yesterday and am absolutely sure I put both back in. The lid is held down securely with suction cups and was tight today. Usually they can’t climb the glass of the big cage, but they are always trying, so I suppose he could have made it to the top and somehow jimmied open the clear plastic locking feeding gate.
At any rate, he’s out. So we have the attractive proposition of having a small, colorful, poisonous toad loose in the house somewhere. We are mostly worried that the giant killer dog might find the toad. I’m not sure exactly how toxic these guys are; I hope a moose-sized Labrador Retriever Mix might have a chance of surviving a meal.
I have devised a trap. At first I thought about using some crickets as bait, but on reflection I think that the toad will be more desperate for water than for food (there are plenty of bugs hidden in a house). I’ve set out a plastic box with a plate of distilled water in plain view. We’ll keep the dog in the back bedroom for awhile. Hopefully, tomorrow I find a lil’ green dude sitting in the plate of water.
If not, well, we’ll have to assume he’s escaped the house entirely, met some untimely end, or been abducted by aliens (which to me seems the most likely way he escaped in the first place). We haven’t mentioned anything to Nick or Lee so we’ll be able to sneak off to the pet store and purchase a replacement….
Oh, yeah, if you happen to know us, DO NOT mention this to Nick or Lee or any of their friends. For obvious reasons.
…I hope I can find one that looks enough like the old to fool the kids. Actually, that’ll be easy; green toad, red belly, black spots… they all look alike.
Candy is pretty freaked out at the thought of having an amphibian loose in our happy home. I’m freaked out ’cause I can’t figure out how he did it.
A little green escape artist.
Saturday, September 12, 1998
A runaway returns
….. I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night. Tossing and turning and turning and tossing, I ended up on the couch in the TV room. I kept hearing a noise from the window. A tapping, or maybe a melodious scraping sound coming from the window. My exhaustion muddled mind imagined all sorts of horrible possibilities for this sound; when I’d turn on the lights, there would be nothing there.
Finally I realized that what I was hearing was simply the sound of raindrops hitting the glass. It has been almost four months since it has rained at our house, I had forgotten the sound completely.
Today I was out of sorts, headachy and tired. We ran some errands in the morning (soccer games canceled because of muddy fields) and Candy dropped me off at home while she took the boys to a church carnival. I made an omelet and was sitting on the couch eating, watching “Planet of the Apes” and generally trying to imitate a vegetable when a movement in the kitchen caught my eye.
There he was, hopping across the tile floor, heading out of the kitchen, our missing toad. I guess he’s been hiding behind the cabinets or something; luckily I was there to see him make his run. He was hopping pretty well, seemed no worse for wear for his few days on the lam. I scooped him up before the Giant Killer Dog woke up and deposited him back into the aquarium.
We had to come clean with the kids, had to tell the truth about why there were now three fire bellied toads in there. They weren’t upset at our deception, only happy that we now have three toads.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” ― Rumi
Washarama
The Zen of the Washateria
Craig always struggled with the door to the laundromat – holding the basket and pile of hangers while he pulled the door was tough. He knew most of the other customers of the “Wash It Proudly” washateria walked in and pushed the metal cart out to their cars, but he never did that – he didn’t think his weekly washing was enough. But once he was inside and the familiar heat, humidity, and Mexican radio pouring out of the speakers washed over him, he grabbed one of the metal carts with the high bar for hangers. How every one of them could have a wonky wheel was something he never could understand, but he had mastered the technique of using the bar risers as handles and pushing the cart to the washer he wanted.
There were three dollar washers, bigger four dollar washers, and giant nine-fifty washers – used by professional clothes washers and folks with giant families. His load looked a tiny bit bigger than usual, but he had only been able to scrounge up twelve quarters at home so he had to cram it in a three dollar washer. Who used quarters anymore? All week he kept an eye out for spare change – looking in the return slots of vending machines, paying with cash, calculating the change so he would get quarters. Clerks always looked at him strange when he would give them two dimes and a nickel and ask for a quarter – but it was what it was. There were some change machines down at the end, and a few of the washers took credit cards… but this felt like cheating to Craig.
All the women at the laundromat were carefully sorting their wash – whites, cottons, synthetics… but this was too confusing to Craig. He threw it all in and pushed cold. Simple. Who cared if his gym socks weren’t the whitest in the world. Polo shirts and jeans – they were easy to wash and never needed to be ironed. The washer did its work quickly – a digital timer counted down.
The giant dryers were all free. A big sign said “IF YOU DIDN’T WASH IT HERE, YOU CAN’T DRY IT HERE.” It took a half hour to dry, which gave Craig time to watch the other customers go about their routines or to simply stare hypnotized at the rows of rotating drums full of colorful tumbling clothing. When his load was dry he hung up his shirts and pants on the overhead bar and tossed the rest in the basket. The door opened outward so it was easier to go out with the basket than it was to get in.
Craig always parked his BMW Series 7 Sedan around the corner from the “Wash It Proudly.” It was a bit of a walk past all the faded worn out cars of the other patrons, but he didn’t want to be judged by his expensive ride. The basket went into the back and he used the hooks on both sides to hang his shirts and pants. He was more solemn on the drive home than he was in the trip to the laundromat – he was a bit sad – in many ways this trip was the high point of his week. He always dreaded the last bit of the trip up the long driveway across the front acreage of his estate. He tensed as he saw Maria in her trim uniform standing outside the front portico – waiting for him.
“Mister Vandermeer, why do you do this?” she scolded him as he climbed out of the BMW. “You know that is my job!”
“I know Maria… it’s just… it’s just… Well I can’t explain it. I want to do my own laundry.”
“But sir, we have a large laundry room here. It’s as good as any commercial laundry.”
“I know Maria.”
She pulled out the hangers from the car and handed the bundles to two other housekeepers that suddenly appeared. Maria then hauled out the basket herself.
“Mister Vandermeer! You didn’t even sort your laundry. I’ll bet you didn’t even use bleach or hot water on the whites!”
“Maria, I think my clothes last longer if I wash them in cold.”
“Last longer? You should throw these away. You should always wear new clothes.”
Maria turned, spun and went into the house carrying the basket. Craig Vandermeer followed inside, then turned into the media room on the right. There was a heavy glass, a container full of large custom ice cubes, and a two hundred dollar bottle of single malt Scotch sitting on the counter, waiting for him.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said and poured himself a drink.
“Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes
Window Reflection, Dallas Public Library
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Thursday, March 28, 2002
Walking at night
I worked late each day this week to build up enough time to leave early today. I’ll take a day of vacation tomorrow – the kids are out of school for Good Friday. We’ll try to get in a camping trip – taking along one of Nick’s friends and meeting another family with three kids at the campsite – a couple of kids from Nick’s soccer team and some extra brothers and sisters. We didn’t want to drive very far so we decided to go back to Bonham, a small State Park (only twenty or so campsites) that we visited back in October.
The drive out and setting up the camp was uneventful – I’ve finally figured out how to hook up the new popup, work the hitch without an hour or so of cussing and struggling.
We set up and started a big campfire. I showed a kid how to write his name in the air with a glowing stick – shove the end in the fire, down in the red glowing coals (the hottest part) and then flick it around in the dark night of the woods. I know I’ll regret that – kids can’t resist messing with a campfire – they don’t need any encouragement.
As everyone settled down for the night, I left the smells of the campfire to go walking along the road that circles the small lake in the park. One of my favorite things to do when camping is a long walk in the dark. I like to let my eyes get used to the dark and let my ears get used to the subtle sounds of the nocturnal forest. Most of the road was closed to vehicles – metal gates locked across the tarmac (I don’t know why) but I can walk around a gate. With the full moon mostly out, surrounded by a ghostly ring (storms are predicted) and only a few clouds skidding past – it was a nice bright flashlightless stroll. The peaceful quiet was broken by an SUV that roared off the highway spitting gravel and sped around the dark roads for one circuit before squealing back out of the park. Otherwise, it was quiet with branches waving against the sky, slightly rustling as the dark shadow of an owl flew out.
As I reached the far side of the lake, a spot where some low, swampy woods border an open pasture beyond the fence that marks the park boundary a dark shape shuffled across the road ahead of me. I’m not sure what kind of animal it was. A skunk? It looked sort of like a skunk but after I walked past something splashed into the lake with a loud sploosh so maybe it was a beaver or a muskrat or even a nutria.
If I had brought a flashlight I could have shined it on the creature and figured out for sure what it was. I sort of like not knowing, though.
“A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.
And the candle by which she had read the book that was filled with fears, with deceptions, with anguish, and with evil, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out forever.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Civitas, Audrey Flack, 1988, Patinated and gilded bronze with cast glass flame and attached marble base,
Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
the wind bottle
The candle wax drips down the wine bottle wine and spaghetti fuel lighted matches spent, still smoke on the tabletop
The smell Grandma and her doilies light and fire hot “Watch the kid burn himself“
I blow and watch the smoke the darkness stringing streaming out
“This is the list you carry in your pocket, of the things you plan to say to Kay, when you find him, if you find him:
I’m sorry that I forgot to water your ferns while you were away that time.
When you said that I reminded you of your mother, was that a good thing?
I never really liked your friends all that much.
None of my friends ever really liked you.
Do you remember when the cat ran away, and I cried and cried and made you put up posters, and she never came back? I wasn’t crying because she didn’t come back. I was crying because I’d taken her to the woods, and I was scared she’d come back and tell you what I’d done, but I guess a wolf got her, or something. She never liked me anyway.
I never liked your mother.
After you left, I didn’t water your plants on purpose. They’re all dead.
Goodbye.
Were you ever really in love with me?
Was I good in bed, or just average?
What exactly did you mean, when you said that it was fine that I had put on a little weight, that you thought I was even more beautiful, that I should go ahead and eat as much as I wanted, but when I weighed myself on the bathroom scale, I was exactly the same weight as before, I hadn’t gained a single pound?
So all those times, I’m being honest here, every single time, and anyway I don’t care if you don’t believe me, I faked every orgasm you ever thought I had. Women can do that, you know. You never made me come, not even once.
So maybe I’m an idiot, but I used to be in love with you.
I slept with some guy, I didn’t mean to, it just kind of happened. Is that how it was with you? Not that I’m making any apologies, or that I’d accept yours, I just want to know.
My feet hurt, and it’s all your fault.
I mean it this time, goodbye.” ― Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen
Design District
Dallas, Texas
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Friday, October 09, 1998
The best food ends in “O”
At lunch today I was off to buy groceries at the Hyperbolic Market (Shopping From Hell!!) before it became overcrowded. As I pulled out of the parking lot my pager went off, belt bee notifying me of incoming voicemail. I was pretty sure it was not business and considered going back to get the call, but I decided that I’d better get my errand run, I’d call back a little later.
We’re having guests this weekend. I bought tomatillos, cilantro, jalepenos (the recipe calls for habaneros, but they were three dollars for a few orange lumps in a little plastic tray and covered with red warning labels saying stuff like “Danger, these are the hottest things in the universe, do NOT EAT, wear thick rubber gloves when handling, wash hands thoroughly before taking a leak, For God’s Sake!”, so I chickened out and bought jalepenos instead) and mangos.
Fresh food, tropical food, food ending in “O.”
I’ve been trying to spend some time in the middle of the day, every work day, with my office door closed. I’ll sit there and daydream, listen to a little Mozart, maybe talk on the phone, anything to take my mind away for awhile.
The Others are starting to put this down. One guy knocked, asking me paperwork questions when I opened my door. Immediately others lined up behind him, needing favors or answers or only to unload. It was actually kind of funny, my thoughts were elsewhere and I was no good at all to anybody.
And now, a piece of flash fiction for today:
I have been a fan of Kelly Link for years – ever since her amazing and very odd book of stories – modern day adult fairy tales – Stranger Things Happen was listed as a Times magazine best book of the year. I was happy to find this story from her follow-up collection Magic for Beginners.
“You love me. You ignore me. You save my life, then you cook my mother into soap.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Dallas Arboretum
Warm Water
Complex salts and surfactants change the surface tension make the water smoother One end loves water the other oil The molecules line up, sticking one end in the other out. billions and billions in line to make one tiny bubble one unit of foam.
I know too much that there isn’t much difference a chain here a conjugated double bond a COOH group there between lilac (bath soap) and the stench of death
Six men sleep is a star pattern feet, boots in against the tree heads out the only way to pull a little shade from the mesquite tree, thin green lacy thing hats pulled down over eyes
What rough dreams stream from such meager shelter?
A pickup brakes up throwing dust dirt stringing streaming out brims tilt for a peek
Everyone jumps at the boss “OK, off yer asses, y’all’s ten minutes up!” one yells in a futile excuse
Bill Chance 