NaNoWriMo Blues

I am once again attempting National Novel Writing Month. This is my fifth year participating. In that time, I've never crossed the 50,000-word finish line and seem unlikely to this month. I came down with a cold on Day 2 that's been difficult to shake and it's affected my productivity significantly. This virus also has eaten up a chunk of my vacation time, which is annoying.

Regardless of the virus, I'd probably be struggling right about now anyway. I started the month with a plan to write a literary novel in short stories -- a character study about how the different pieces of our lives add up to the people we become. It was a deeply personal project, and one I hoped would be beautiful and poignant. I wrote roughly 2,500 words on the first day, but none of it compared to the vision in my head for what this book could and should be.

Then on Day 2, I woke up with a head full of zombies, vampires and steampunk. I decided to switch horses mid-stream and write this new idea (which really was a continuation of an old idea) because it would be more "fun."

So, aside from being sick, I've been trying to write this second idea and not having much fun. I feel guilty for abandoning my first idea. Essentially, there's a war going on inside my head between the voice that whispers to me that I'm better than this campy steampunk action/adventure I'm now writing, and the one that derailed me to begin with by telling me I wasn't talented enough or skilled enough to write beautiful prose that would move people.

I am struggling, have been struggling, will continue to struggle to figure out just what kind of writer I am. There are people who tell me to just do what I love, but it's not quite that simple. I love imagining monsters and zeppelins and kick-ass heroines, but I also love the artistic satisfaction of producing a beautiful turn of phrase or writing something that contains some kernel of a universal truth.

So I'm lost and confused and finding little joy in the writing this month, and I don't quite know how to overcome this obstacle. Maybe I'll just work on both.

I've neglected this blog for a little while now, but I just haven't had much to say lately. Work is increasingly strenuous and demands the lion's share of my time and mental energy. I'm also working on writing samples for graduate school applications, which consumes what little energy I have left after work, so not much blogging going on.

Somehow despite the rigors of work, and the financial stress of a shrinking paycheck and rising bills, and my health and fitness routine going off track, I feel pretty good about life. I don't like my life the way it is now, but I see possibilities. I like the direction I've chosen for myself. I just have to do the work to get where I want to be.

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
— Sylvia Plath

After a brief hiatus, the blog is back.

All our tomorrows find their own ways

About 90 minutes from now, I'm scheduled to zip off on an intergalactic adventure with a rag-tag group of spacefarers. Translation: It's game night.

Game night has been a regular Saturday night fixture in my life for nearly a year, with lengthy breaks while I temporarily moved across state for a work assignment, and now for about the last six weeks as the other gamers had other commitments. I've missed the gaming during this last break as it represents one of my only, okay the only social outlet I have outside of work and the Internet.

In the interim, I've filled my Saturday nights with reading or watching movies on DVD. I went to karaoke once -- formerly a fixture of my social life before that out-of-town work assignment -- but the fun surprisingly had disappeared, like air leaking from a tire so slowly you don't notice until suddenly you have a flat.

While I am looking forward to seeing the gamer group, I'm afraid the fun may be leaking from this activity, too, as I evolve into some sort of cave-dwelling creature who desires only solitude. I'm watching the clock tick and looking at the stack of books yet to read (at last count I have nearly 300 unread books in my apartment) and the unfinished short story I'm trying to write, and I just want to stay in. I have too many plans, too many desires, and not enough time to accomplish them all. And that doesn't even include the laundry or bathroom-scrubbing that should be done this weekend. In the words of the fabulous Greta Garbo, "I vant to be alone."

I want to dive back into The Artist's Way and start writing morning pages again. I want to finish this short story and a dozen others sitting incomplete on my hard drive. I want to read all of those books on my shelf, but these things require time, and I am nothing if not an impatient creature. Our days on this planet, after all, are finite, and each person can accomplish only so much in one lifetime. I've already allowed 35 years to slip by while crossing far too few items off of my lifetime to-do list.

But shouldn't an evening of fun, imagination and laughter rank high on that to-do list? Won't I be a happier person, if only for a few hours, if I go? I hope the answer is yes, and that The Artist's Way and those short stories and all of those books will still be there for me to tackle tomorrow. For while it's wonderful to suck the marrow from each day as though it's our last, sometimes we also must live as if tomorrow is another day.

Dreams: Maniacs and Sharks

I'm back in Olympia, in a representation of the house where I lived last winter. It isn't really the house, and the images my brain is throwing at me at lightening-fast speed aren't really Olympia. They're just stand-ins.

I'm in the house, renting from the same guy. In my dream he and his girlfriend live there. I'm taking care of a little girl who isn't his daughter. She's someone else's child, but I have to take care of her. We're at the house and I ask her if she's hungry. We talk about going out to eat. But then there are other people in the house. Dangerous people. A man wielding a knife. A teenage girl who's crazy. I think they must be ghosts. But the guy who owns the house is suddenly there and he says they're real people who used to live there. The man is a killer. The teenager is his daughter grown into an adult. She's crazy because of the killer. The killer was in jail but got out. The killer is chasing all of us, and I'm trying to protect the little girl and get her out. We climb through a window and the killer slashes at me with his knife and misses.

Then we're climbing on top of a network of bunk beds sticking out of the water in an aquarium, like the skeleton of some kind of fort. Three giant, dark blue sharks circle in the water. I'm conscious that we're re-enacting scenes from the movie Deep Blue Sea, and I'm the Saffron Burrows character who dies a grisley death at the end. I know this and I'm trying to stop it from happening to me. I'm also trying to figure out how to get the little girl and several other people past the sharks and out of the aquarium. The sharks keep attacking the bunk beds we're standing on. They shake. Some of them collapse and broken bits jut out of the water. There are fewer and fewer places for us to climb to get away from the sharks.

A large window with a ledge wide enough for us to stand on leads out of the aquarium. But there's another strip of water on the other side and we'd have to swim across it to get to solid land and get out. The sharks keep attacking. I'm sitting on top of one of the bunk beds with a man -- the Thomas Jane character? -- and a shark leaps up at us. Its teeth are at our toes, just barely missing us. We jump to another bunk bed, one that seems to be solid. Others are crowded there, but the sharks are circling and we know it's only a matter of time before this last island of safety is destroyed.

Then everyone decides to get married before they die, and the man I'm with wants to marry me. I'm surprised by this, but I agree. Everyone cheers. Apparently, they've known all along that we should have been together. The noise of their cheering attracts the sharks, who start thumping against the structure where we're standing. Someone falls into the water and there's a streak of blood. We're screaming and scrambling, trying to get higher, to stay out of the water.

Somehow we strike an unspoken bargain with the sharks, my new fiance and I, that everyone else can go free if the sharks can have us. We climb up onto the window ledge and the sharks allow everyone else to cross the strip of water at the top and scramble to safety.

We're down to the last two or three people, and I'm making plans how to kill the sharks before they come for us. I have a chemical in my pocket that will make them explode if they swallow it, but I have to get into the water for it to work.

I get in and swim across the strip to the other side, letting the chemical flow into the water as I swim. The sharks are coming as I reach land. They swallow the water with the chemical. I can see them react to it as I climb out of the water. Two of them explode in a rain of water and blood and skin and teeth. But there's still one left.

My fiance -- perhaps he isn't now that it seems we might live -- swims to me and we try to think of another plan for the last shark, the mama shark, the biggest and most powerful shark. As we talk, a train vibrates by overhead. The concrete shimmers and cracks, and we realize the mama shark is trying to make the train crash down on us and there's nowhere we can go to escape except back into the aquarium.

I wake. My body is tensed, stiff as a board, and I still have to go to the gym yet today for my daily laps in the pool.

On purchasing A Poet's Bible: Rediscovering the Voices of the Original Text

Once upon a time, I was a young girl creature who went faithfully to Sunday school each week. I climbed on the bus wearing a pretty dress, the week's Bible verses dutifully memorized, and eagerly anticipated singing hymns and making macaroni crafts in the Sunday school class taught by my aunt. My parents didn't force me to go. I wanted to go because I liked Sunday school. I liked the Sunday school teachers, liked the pretty stained glass windows in the church, liked riding on the bus my uncle drove. And I liked believing, liked having faith as much as a child of 6 or 7 can understand the concept of faith.

I grew older and my family moved to a different part of the city, so I stopped going to church with my aunt and uncle. But I sought new experiences of my own, went to church with my friends. I seem to recall I even tried vacation Bible school once. But none of the new ones really stuck, and I was becoming more sophisticated and more cynical about religion as I realized the only reason most kids got on the bus was because the driver passed out free candy.

I had always been a bit odd anyway. I was never quite devout to any particular Christian doctrine, having attended churches Apostolic, Pentecostal, Baptist and I can't really remember what other denominations, but there must have been others. I was Christian as a child and adolescent because that's the religion I was exposed to, but I recall telling one of my Sunday school teachers back in the day that I thought the various gods people worshiped and all of the different religions were really all the same. I have a vague recollection of an expression of shock.

Somewhere along the way, I could no longer see any logical reason why someone would choose one religion over another. None of them seemed any more right or wrong than any other.

In 8th grade, I learned the words "agnostic" and "atheist" for the first time. They were on a spelling test. By then, it had been a couple of years since I'd been to church, and something about those words seemed to fit. By high school, I had lost interest in religion altogether and embraced my identity as a nonbeliever, but some part of me missed having faith.

At age 19, I read St. Augustine's Confessions for a college course. A year or two later I read Mahfouz's The Beggar. Both nagged at something in my soul that wanted the comfort of belief.

After college, I tried church again with a friend who invited me to her non-denominational church, The Vineyard. It was one of those megachurches with a coffee house and dance ministry and a "Christian contemporary" band, and no stained glass anywhere to be seen. It just didn't speak to me. I sat there with my friend, watching people with their hands raised to the heavens and dancing to the music, and I waited to feel something. Anything. But nothing came. I concluded that Christianity was no longer for me.

But that nagging never really went away.

I came close to feeling something like faith once about three years ago. I had to cover an event at a church -- a choir of young African orphans singing cheerfully about how their lives had changed through God. It was the people who almost inspired me to go back. They were open, accepting, friendly. For a few moments, I thought it was a place I might be loved. But I never went back.

I've tried other forms of religion or spirituality. My inner feminist tends to like the goddess-based religions a little better than most, and the compassionate part of me finds certain tenets of Buddhism appealing. Again, nothing ever really stuck.

But now I'm having a life crisis (Again? Still?) and discovering that what I thought was depression is really malnourishment. I'm starving in my heart and soul and, try as I might, I can find nothing to fill the emptiness. I've tried food, shopping, relationships -- all were illusory balms. So my thoughts have turned once again to religion. Perhaps spiritualism would be a better word for it, since I don't think I'll ever be able to embrace organized religion the way I did as a child. I've changed too much for that.

I also think that religion is, in fact, an illusion to which we cling to repel darkness and pain from our lives. I don't believe god is a real entity hovering out there in heaven or space. But I do believe there may be a divine spirit emanating from humanity, dwelling within us, if we can tap into it. So, perhaps delving back into religion, or spirit, is illusory, but no less so than the human relationships I've looked to for comfort that I haven't found.

Anyway, when I came across this book on the clearance rack at Hastings, I thought reading a poet's interpretation of the stories of the Bible -- distilling them down to their essence and, I hope, stripping them of the bits that are so maliciously twisted in service of hate and oppression -- might spark something.

I do know that any god I could ever embrace has to be one of compassion, tolerance and love, not wrath, hate and spite.

This is the song that has me dancing around my kitchen this morning.

I'm almost always listening to music at home. I have mix CDs for housework, exercising, various writing projects. Life should have a soundtrack.

Music isn't just about a good beat or a skilled guitar player for me. It's an emotional experience. I like music that makes me feel something or that paints pictures in my head.

And it's transformative. I listen to The Ramones when I want an energy boost, Sarah McLachlan's Surfacing when I want a good melancholy. With more than 400 CDs in my collection, there's something for just about every mood I'm on, or want to be in.

But I do like a good beat, a bit of ethereal electronica, and something I can sing in my kitchen or my car at the top of my lungs. For reference, I think Seal's "Crazy" is just about a perfect song. We'll never survive unless we get a little bit crazy. Oh, yeah.

Maybe that's why I don't particularly enjoy going to concerts -- because my experience of music is about what's going on in my own head. That, and I can't seem to bring myself to dance in public, so any time I go to a concert I end up sitting there stiffly while everyone around me is tapping their toes and letting their arms fly from the joy of seeing their favorite band live.

I added a widget at the bottom of this blog with a few of my favorite songs for anyone who wants a (very shallow) glimpse into my music tastes. I'll definitely have to add more songs to the list.

Dreams: The Baby

I'm dreaming that I'm imagining having a baby.

I know the baby is imaginary, but I can see it, hold it, smell its comforting baby scent. Not it. Her. The baby is a girl, although I don't know her name. She is, however, my imaginary baby.

I'm cradling the baby in my arms or bouncing her on my hip and it feels good, even though I tell the baby she should not be here. I do not want a baby. My biological clock is on permanent snooze. My life will be completed on my own terms, without marriage or children, I say.

The baby just smiles.

I put the baby down on a waterbed. Something tells me that's irresponsible, but the baby is only imaginary so what difference does it make. The baby cries. I pick her back up, cradle her against my breast, and she snuggles there in blessed silence.

I have an imaginary conversation with the baby's imaginary father. I tell him he is only imaginary, and so is the baby. He just shrugs. For a moment, we make a lovely imaginary family.

Dreams: The Village

The dream is hazy, already receding from memory.

I'm in a village. It's muddy, wooden, pre-industrial. A post-apocalyptic relic or people who have chosen to abandon modern society and create their own? It's unclear.

I'm traveling with people — people from my workplace. I don't know how we got here. We're just here. We're outsiders. We don't belong.

I find a library. It's clean, warm, bright. A man cares for the books. He's my age, wears glasses, disheveled hair. Harry Potter grown up, without the trademark scar.

I like this man, though I do not know his name. I like him because he cares for the books, cares for knowledge. We talk. It's good.

Someone comes? I don't know how, but I'm in a hut with plank walls and a dirt floor. I'm lying on a metal table. Three women are in the room with me, preparing rudimentary surgical instruments on a dirty cart. I see a bone saw. They think I'm wrong. They want to cut into my brain to make me right, make me like them. They want to take my knowledge, my independence, my soul.

I leap off the table, flip it, pin them against the wall. I run. I look for the people I was traveling with.

I find my boss in another hut tinkering on a rusty vehicle. Post-apocalyptic relic. He's wearing overalls and a simplistic smile. I shake him, tell him about the women who wanted to cut into my brain. Nothing registers. It's too late for him.

I run.

Every day is a commencement

Every year in late May and early June, the reporters at my newspaper are tasked with covering every high school and college graduation in our region. It amounts to dozens of ceremonies, hundreds of graduates and thousands of proud friends and family members each year. I just returned from my assigned graduation, quite possibly thankful for the first time to have reached my mid-30s.

I often lament the days when it seemed the entire world was at my fingertips, when I felt invincible in mind and body. I was the girl who could do anything she set her mind to. I haven't felt that way in awhile.

I've been struggling this week -- for the past several weeks really -- with a good deal of pain in my lower back and hip. I went to see a chiropractor and was told I'm "wearing out" my spine. The x-ray showed my spine zig-zagging at unnatural angles where it should be neatly curved, and I discovered I'm putting twice as much weight on my left leg as my right, which is probably what's causing the excruciating pain in my hip. I walked out of the chiropractor's office on Monday feeling glum and fatalistic, like I could see the remaining span of my life in front of me and that it's all downhill from here. I could see a future of arthritis, hip replacements, a walker, maybe a wheelchair. I felt old.

I felt old again today, but in a different sort of way. I listened to these young men and women give their commencement speeches -- filled with cliched metaphors about baby birds and fledgling graduates -- and I felt grateful that I'm no longer one of them. I was grateful to have acquired what wisdom and knowledge I have at what I'm sure these bright-eyed teenagers would view as my ripe old age, to have traded my wide-eyed innocence and complete self-assurance for a more nuanced, complex worldview.

I see things now in a way I couldn't at 18, and realizing that has re-opened the door to the future I thought had closed this past week. I remembered that I will continue to learn and evolve and see the world in new and different ways each day that I draw breath.

I have a friend who often talks about a need -- palpable, physical -- to be hugged or touched. I haven't understood that, being someone generally uncomfortable with physical displays of affection, especially in public. I have to really trust someone before I'm comfortable allowing them into my personal space, and there aren't that many people I truly trust. In fact, I'd say I have a slightly more exaggerated sense of personal space than many Americans. Stand back and give me more than the average 18 inches, please.

In crowds, especially indoors, I experience an anxiety almost like claustrophobia. I feel hemmed in. I get hot. I can't breathe. The desire to get outside, away from the throng of people, overwhelms me. I like open spaces and solitude, or small groups of people at best.

But what I have come to understand about my friend is her need to connect. I just do it with words. There are days I sit at my desk and feel like I could crawl out of my skin because I just want to talk to someone, to know that someone is listening and someone cares. To know that I matter. It is almost a physical craving, not to be touched -- although sometimes I think I could welcome that -- but simply to connect. Just connect. I realized recently that's one reason I write this blog, in the hopes that someone out there is reading and that maybe, even for a split second, I'll be able to connect.

Fiddling with poetry

These are poems I've been fiddling around with. They don't seem quite done, but I'm not sure what to do with them.


Bury This Heart

Bury this heart six feet deep
Where nothing can penetrate
No light, no warmth, no love, no hurt
Safe in a box in unending dark

Bury this heart at the bottom of the sea
A cask of sunken treasure
Its light, its warmth, its love, its hurt
Precious gifts forever hidden

Bury this heart at the center of the sun
Searing white heat blazes
All light, all warmth, no love, no hurt
Only ash remains


A Woman Need not Be

A woman need not be
the height of physical perfection
to be considered a goddess

She need only have
a divine capacity for love
a shining star heart
a soul of steady fire
the wisdom to forgive

Are you, imperfect man,
worthy of such as she?

Story of a Girl

Girl meets Boy.

Girl doesn't notice much of Boy at first. He's wrapped in silence, invisible. She is wrapped in armor, impenetrable.

But then Boy says something small, something unimportant, something unintentional, and Girl's heart sings.

Girl is scared by the flutter in her heart when Boy looks her way. Girl has been broken before. Her torn heart is newly stitched.

Girl fears Boy will break her anew, but she can't seem to stop herself. Piece by piece, Girl's armor falls away.

She's frightened by the feel of wind and sun on her skin. It's been eons since she stood exposed. But Boy makes her feel herself.

The last piece of armor clatters to the ground. Girl opens her arms wide and invites Boy inside.

Boy shakes his head and says, "I'm sorry."

Girl's arms drop to her side. She's seen this happen before.

A stitch tears in Girl's heart. Something cold seeps inside, like mercury running through her veins. She becomes the cold.

Piece by piece, she straps the armor back on. It feels heavier this time. She can barely breathe beneath its weight.

And when the armor is back on, Girl picks up her sword and strikes at Boy even though she knows it isn't Boy's fault.

Boy didn't try to make Girl's heart sing. Boy didn't ask Girl to invite him in. Girl did it knowingly.

But Girl strikes anyway because Girl is so tired of stitching herself back together.

Girl hates that she has done this, hates her own weak heart. She wants to take it back, but the time for apologies has passed.

Boy is gone.

Girl stands alone.

It's the same story every time. Girl meets Boy.

The Girl, the Anarchist Bookstore and the Typewriter

It gleamed on the table. Polished gunmetal gray like new. Like it isn't at least four decades old. Keys as bright white as the day they were made. Wizard Truetype. It speaks to me in its strange click-clack language, whispering of stories that will seep up into my fingers and out onto clean sheets of paper.

I hover over it for a minute, testing the keys, considering the expense. There is another in the corner, a Royal. It's cheaper. I look at the Royal, pick it up, weigh it, stroke its keys, but the Wizard's magic is strong.

It's only a $10 difference, I told myself. I just won't eat lunch out for a day.

I wander back to the Wizard. The clerk watches me from his perch at the front counter as I test its keys. There's no electricity in this machine, and yet it seems to crackle as I touch it. It's magnetic, the new relationship between this typewriter and I. I carry it to the counter. I think if it could, it would emit a contented sigh. We belong together, this Wizard and I.

I pay, wincing a little once I hear the total with tax. But again it whispers to me of the stories we'll tell together. I'm worth it, the Wizard says.

I note that the bookstore sells replacement ribbons. The clerk tells me the typewriters come from a customer who finds and repairs them as he zips the Wizard into its two-toned vinyl case.

I carry it to my car and drive back to work, stopping for a sandwich along the way. I feel light despite the overcast gloom of the day.

Conversation with the Cat

"Do you love me?" I ask the cat.

He only stares, enigmatic. He does not answer. Never answers.

He lies on the floor, black tail thumping against polished wood. His expression is one of disdain, as if to say, Silly human with your questions.

I do not believe he loves me. He loves only the metallic whir of the can opener.

Girl vs. Wal-Mart

So I'm walking through Wal-Mart this afternoon, sweating because the heat is turned up way too goddamned high and even though I've removed my coat and scarf, I'm sweating. There are too many people and none of them – not a single goddamned one – are paying attention to where they're going.

My mission at the Wal-Mart is two-fold: I need supplies to get through the rest of my long weekend, and I've promised to buy some Hannah Montana crap for a little girl whose family can't afford Christmas, and this vast wasteland of plastic junk is the only place that sells anything Hannah Montana.

So I'm walking through the Wal-Mart, pushing my cart with the one wonky wheel, because there's always one wonky wheel, and this voice comes on the loudspeaker, ringing out with false cheer, “We'd like to thank our shoppers for braving the ice and the snow to shop at Wal-Mart today!”

And I think, I didn't drive here on a solid sheet of ice for the greater glory of Wal-Mart, you fake bitch. The only reason I, or anyone else, set foot in this big box of suck today is because we had no other choice. In my case, I was out of toilet paper and this is the cheapest goddamned place in town. But don't make the mistake of thinking I shop here because I like it. You all know you've got America by the short and curlies, you greedy conglomerate bastards. Don't expect us to be fucking cheerful about that.

I'm checking out and the cashier keeps trying to make conversation. Another false dose of cheer. “So, are you all ready for Christmas?” And in that moment – for an instant – I understand why people go on shooting sprees because if I had a gun, that bitch would be toast. But I restrain myself and mutter with as much false cheer as I can muster, “Pretty much!” Which is true, because when you're single and planning to spend Christmas alone, what's to prepare for? Yes, I'm all ready with the frozen pizza and several bottles of cheap wine so I can drown myself until New Year. Thanks. But I don't tell her that. I wish I had.

I creep along the icy road at 20 mph and some asshole whizzes by me – passing on the right – because apparently he wants to die. Sorry I'm too slow for you. Fucking jerk. But I'm almost home, where I can set a big pot of vegetable soup to simmering and sip a hot mug of diet hot chocolate, because heaven forbid I actually enjoy anything in this life. But it will be good to get home, to crank up the heat and shut out the world and settle into my comfy thrift store chair with a book or perhaps my laptop and make notes for my novel. I'm off work for the next two days and I don't plan to so much as poke my head outside except to pick up the newspaper.

As I skid into the parking lot, inches from sanctuary, I'm struck by the realization. I forgot to buy cat food.

Scar Tissue

I sit at the end of the bar, waiting for my turn to sing. A bottle of Guinness sweats on the wood surface in front of me. It's mostly for show, ordered out of some sense of duty to the dark-haired girl behind the bar who always remembers my name.

A guy sits next to me. Clean cut. Blond. Nice looking. A little short. He orders a drink. I don't pay attention to what. He says something about the weather. I don't realize he's talking to me until he gestures toward the song book sitting next to my beer and asks if I'm singing. I nod. What song? "Son of a Preacher Man."

He's from out of town. He travels a lot, has sung karaoke in nearly every state. He likes country. Why is he talking to me? I should be social. I smile. I ask questions -- too many questions. I'm interviewing him about his job and cringing inside as some voice in my brain tells me he doesn't want to talk about this and why don't I ask him something else, but I can't think of anything else because work is all I know and I don't like country music.

The DJ calls my name. It's my turn to sing. The voice that explodes from my throat doesn't belong to me. It belongs to someone attractive, talented, confident. Not to me. I'm only borrowing it for three minutes. As this borrowed voice rises to the song's climax, the DJ flashes the lights. Some futile attempt to make me feel like a rock star.

The song ends and I walk back to my bar stool perch. The guy is still there. He smiles and nods. I try to think of something friendly to say, but my mind is blank. I don't look at him. We sit in silence while one of the regulars screeches an excruciatingly off-pitch version of "Turn the Page." The guy finishes his drink. Nice to meet you. And he leaves. I don't know what he wanted anyway. I lift the Guinness to my lips and take a slow sip. It's bitter.

The rotation is heavy tonight. It'll be awhile before it's my turn again. "99 Red Balloons." I flip through the song book, studying it like there could still be some surprise in its pages, some long-forgotten favorite my borrowed voice could polish and make shine.

Another regular who just may fancy herself Patsy Cline reincarnated begins her standard rendition of "Crazy." She's a good singer.

I feel conspicuous sitting at the end of the bar alone. I hop down from the bar stool and slink past her to the women's bathroom, just for a change of scenery. Inside is another regular. She's young. 23 or 24. I'm a million years old. We've chatted a few times about vampire movies and TV shows. She hugged me once just because I knew what "Spuffy" meant.

She's standing at the chalkboard hanging next to the sink. She's sketching a heart and drawing jagged lines through it. Then more lines. Short, strong parallel lines through the jagged ones.

Broken heart?

Stitched up heart, she says. It was broken, but now it's stitched. It'll heal, but it'll be weaker where it was broken and it'll be afraid of being broken again.

She drops the chalk on the ledge and walks out.

And I wonder -- how many times can a heart be stitched before there's nothing left but scar tissue?

Break in the Action

A girl walks into a hockey game.

No, this isn't the opening line of a joke. There's no priest, no rabbi, and no bartender, although she often feels there should be a punchline to her stories.

She walks with hesitation. She's new to the town, new to the arena, new to this whole life she finds herself living. She doesn't know where her seat is, and she's late.

She finds the entrance to the section marked on her ticket, the ticket she got for free from her boss. She has two, but the one person she asked to go, the one friend she has in this new town, someone new like herself, said he was too busy. She's trying not to take it personally.

She walks up the cement ramp, emerging from a dark tunnel into a blaze of light and noise. She stands at the entrance and looks around. A man leans against the doorway.

“You might want to wait to take your seat,” he says.

She smiles and nods, doesn't understand why he said that. She doesn't know the rules here.

She steps out of the doorway and starts to walk up the steps, looking for her seat. Immediately, several people yell at her. The loudest is an old woman with an impossibly tall beehive hairdo and a voice that's saturated with decades of cigarette smoke.

“Wait for a break in the action!” the old woman yells. Her voice is raspy, harsh. “Wait for a break in the action you dumb ass!”

The girl's face turns hot. She runs up the stairs, above where anyone is sitting so she won't block anyone's view. The old woman continues to yell.

“You're supposed to wait for a break in the action!”

“Stop yelling at me!” the girl screams back.

The old woman shakes her head and turns her attention back to the game. “Come on, Ams!” she yells in her smoke-soaked voice. “Come on!”

When the action stops, the girl finds her seat number. It's right across the aisle from the old woman, and someone else is sitting there.

The girl checks her ticket again. Yes, that's her seat. And someone else is sitting there.

She takes a deep breath and walks back down the steps to her seat. She asks the woman sitting there if she can nudge past her to the open seat next to her.

The woman gets up, “Oh, I'll move. This isn't my seat. I just thought it was open.”

“No, you don't have to move. There's no one else with me,” the girl says.

But the woman moves anyway.

And all of the people sitting around her glare at the girl because the people all know each other and know the woman the girl has just displaced. They glare at the girl like the girl has done something rude in claiming her seat, in not knowing the rules, in simply existing.

The girl sits and tries to make herself small, no easy feat for the girl.

“Come on, Ams!” the old woman yells from the short distance across the aisle. Her voice makes the girl's teeth shiver. “Come on!”

The girl sinks a little lower into her seat. She watches the rink, but doesn't understand what's happening and she's afraid to ask anyone, afraid to earn more yelling and more glares.

She waits ten minutes for a break in the action and she leaves.

She drives home in the dark.

When she walks in the door to her apartment, the cat is mewling at her feet. She picks him up and hugs him to her chest, because she needs to feel the velvet soft fur against her face, because she needs to hear the low rumble of his purr, because the cat is the only one who's ever waiting for her.

The Irresolution of Grief

I can imagine the scene as though I was there.

I can imagine my once-robust grandfather frail and jaundiced, the steady rhythms of a machine the only thing keeping him alive.

I can imagine my grandmother, sitting at his bedside, holding his hand, crying.

I can imagine him asking in a broken voice to be let go, it was time, he had made peace with God.

I can imagine my mother, my aunts, my uncle, clinging to each other, whispering over the decision.

I can imagine the machines being shut down, one by one, their lights fading to darkness, his last shallow breaths, family huddled, waiting for the end.

I can only imagine.

I was half a mile away, yawning my way through a class on communication theory, wanting to get home and watch something on television.

I was sitting on a bus that took me right past the hospital, unaware, unsuspecting.

I was struggling to prepare to teach the next day, trying to learn some model of persuasion my students would only remember until the next test.

I was chit-chatting online, e-mailing friends, behaving as though everything was normal.

I remember the phone call. It was noon. I was supposed to leave for a teaching assistant staff meeting. I hadn't done my statistics homework.

I missed the call. I was in the shower. I remember the message. My mother asking me to call, her voice breaking. I knew what it meant. He'd been sick more than a decade.

I remember picking up the phone, calling home. I remember that word meaning something. The meaning is long gone.

I listened as she told me he was gone. He had asked to be let go. He wanted it to be over. He had been in the hospital for a week this time. He couldn't take any more.

I remember wondering why no one called. A week, and no one called. Half a mile away, and no one called. I can only imagine.

I didn't cry. I got excused from my classes, excused from the statistics homework I hadn't done. I can't remember the rest of that day, or the next. I can't remember anything until the funeral. It was a Thursday.

I drove alone. I was the first to arrive. I walked in alone, into that room alone, through all of those empty chairs toward the casket alone, and I remember thinking that wasn't my grandfather there, it was just a body in clothes he once wore. The knowledge knocked the wind out of me, still knocks the wind out of me. I started crying and couldn't stop.

My mother said she was surprised I cried and my sister didn't. She thought I would have been the one to be strong. I tried to stop. I was ashamed.

I try to understand, my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, my uncle, each of them lost in their own grief. I try to understand why no one called. I can only imagine.