Category Archives: Just Me, Being Me

Only For A Moment

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I get an idea for a story I’m working on as I come in after one in the morning from hanging out with friends. I’m sleepy, but I want to get the idea down while the muse is hot. I hangup my outerwear and head for the computer.

I am happily typing away, occasionally closing my eyes as I try to visualize a scene while writing it down. You know –If she lifts her head up, when and why did she put her head down? – His hand is on the door, handle or knob?–  things like that. I get a bit done, but I am sleepy. I convince myself to flesh out this one scene before I head for bead.

I close my eyes only for a moment to visualize the scene. When I open my eyes an hour had passed on my computer. Crap, I fell asleep, I’m clearly sleepier than I thought- fine off to bed I go.

I am in bed when I see my clock radio. It is relic from the 90s. Long before people started using their cell phones, before such things got all digitized fancy. I have to set it manually, but still works so I keep it. I look at the time wondering why it’s an hour off, then realized I hadn’t fallen asleep for an hour…

…Daylight savings had clicked in.

D’oh!

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Today is Day 11 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Come see how others are slicing it up today.
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Strike Five – You Dip

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Going to a friend’s place for Game Nite. Just a BYOB gathering of a few friends to chit-chat and yes, play games. Board games, card games whatever. I always try to bring a dish. Learning one of the friends attending has gone gluten free, I decide to make a spinach-artichoke dip. It’s one I’ve made before. The five ingredients are simple enough. It does not take a lot of time to make. It’s easy to transport. I can pick everything up in the morning. Perfect, right? Right!

Yeah, that’s about where this tale goes a little south. I mean seriously the recipe has five freaking ingredients, how hard is it to find one? As it turns out harder than I would have thought.  What was the one thing I could not find? Artichokes.

I hit my usual market that until today has not failed me. None what-so-ever. I expect not to find it fresh. I understand is not something consumed a lot of in that market, but they usually have it canned or in a jar. Nix. Fine, I get everything else I need and make my way to market number two a few blocks away. Nein. I had not brought my shopping cart because knew I could carry everything back in one trip. As I headed for a third market, my fingers and my knees are beginning to feel it. Nyet. Three strikes and you’re out right? Not quite.

Must be something comforting about the number three. People always give up after three.
– Sherlock Holmes / BBC’s “Sherlock”

So, I take a cue from “Sherlock” and try a fourth market. Nada.

What the…?!

Has my entire neighborhood given up on the vegetable in any form, or had the last emergency shopping from the last snow storm depleted all the markets in an eight block radius?

Seriously, it’s call a spinach-artichoke dip. I kind of need it?

And because I’m stubborn, now an hour from when I first started this trek, fingers, knees and back making their unhappiness known, I try a fifth.

Nix. Nein. Nyet. Nada. Nope!

I’m NOT getting on a bus and officially  throw in the towel.

It’s going to be my spinach dip. They’ll love it!

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Today is Day 10 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Come see how others are slicing it up this Saturday.
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A Wrinkle

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I went to the movies to see “A Wrinkle in Time”  based on the novel by Madeleine L’Engle. A fellow slicer bemoaned earlier this week about novels versus film adaptations – as in if you’ve read the book, especially if you liked the book, don’t go see the movie. I fully understand that viewpoint. Rarely are films as good as the source material.  Including this one.

Granted it is a little messy in driving the plot forward in some places, but that’s almost a trope  with adaptations. It is lavish and so beautifully filmed. The costuming details are amazing. Visually stunning. The casting is spot on. Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling and Reese Witherspoon are gems in their rolls. Storm Reid as movie lead, Meg Murray, is a doll. She captivates every scene she is in and she’s in almost every scene of the movie. Deric McCabe as Charles Wallace is simply adorable.

Still… It’s not the book. 

You saw it coming, stop it,. Granted, I have not read the book in nearly two decades, but there are passages I do remember, that did not make the cut. All in all, with Ava DuVernay at the helm as director. it is a solid film and I’m glad I saw it.

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Today is Day 9 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Come see how others are slicing it up today.
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Not Exactly What I Meant

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When I told someone I need to chill this is not exactly what I meant…

tulip buds in snow
…Though it is very representative of my mood right now.

Frosted over, but trying to push through the madness. I seriously chose the wrong year to give up coffee for Lent.

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Today is Day 8 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Let’s how other are slicing and hopefully doing a better job of chilling out today…

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It Catches Up…

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Mr. Sandman has chased Ms. Insomnia around the mulberry bush for three days.  I may have slept a total of ten hours twixt these three days.

Maybe it’s all the snow that has fallen on my fair city these past few hours, I don’t know. When Insomnia stopped to take a gander at the pristine snowy city streets Sandman finally caught up to the elusive chick. They are battling still, but I feel she’s losing this round – rapidly and I couldn’t be happier.

My head feels like the marionette string has been cut, I can barely keep my head up. The result being one yawn filled slice before the hay hits me <— not a typo.

G’nite y’all.

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Today is Day 7 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.

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Sometimes You Fail Non Stop

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I write. I write documentation at work. I write creatively every where else I can. For instance this is me, during my cruise working on a story while waiting to dock.

Writing during down time while cruzing

In the Broadway show “Hamilton: An American Musical”, at the end of Act I there’s a number called Non Stop in which the friends and family of Alexander Hamilton both praise and bemoan the prolific wordsmith.

“How do you write like tomorrow won’t arrive?
How do you write like you need it to survive?
How do you write ev’ry second you’re alive?
Ev’ry second you’re alive? Ev’ry second you’re alive?”

This is me to a smaller degree, but not by much depending on who you ask.

If I have an idea I write  or at least try to write a note to myself to revisit an idea later. Trains. Boats. Planes. At a bar. In the middle of a party wherever I am.

However the downside of that is on occasions like today, where I find myself writing so much about the whole fruit, I forget I need to be writing about – you guessed it – the slice.

So for the second day  -er- night  in a  row. I skate in just under the midnight hour.

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Today is Day 6 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.

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Stepping Up!

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One of the interesting things about my daily commute is the hill. New York City is not known for its hills. There’s a reason we have an area call Flatlands in Brooklyn and the magical phenomenon called Manhattanhenge which occurs a couple of times a year.. Then you travel north to upper Manhattan where there are inclines that can rival San Francisco. The train station where I exit my evening commute home just happens to be halfway to the bottom of one. There is even a simple marker in the park near one end of the station that notes the area as the highest natural elevation on Manhattan.

Suffice to say at over 400 feet deep it’s a long climb from the subway platform to the street level. Essentially, we are talking a five story tenement building climb.

Normally this is not an issue as there are escalators to help. Two going up and one down, plus a standard flights of stairs. A week ago the usual escalator that goes down went out of service for major repairs, scheduled to be back in service, I hope, next week.  As a result, one of the usually two escalators going up, was switched to a down escalator. There was a reason for there being two escalators that went up. This station is a busy station. Two are needed for the volume of ridership that disembark at the station. Down to only one working up escalator the inevitable happened. It gave its all – and died. So this evening after a long day of work, I exit the train and just know by the number or people walking to the right instead of left that the up escalator is broken. This has happened no less than five times last year that I can recall.

Granted, I could walk to the other end of the station and take the elevator, (yes the station also has elevators), but then I would have to walk that same distance back to continue home. What I save in convenience and accessibility, I loose in time. I don’t consider the trade-off worth it, so I climb the steps.

When this happens I dubbed them my “Rocky” steps. For climbing them is very reminiscent of the Philadelphia Art Museum Steps the titular character had trouble climbing. For like Rocky and his steps at the beginning, I have yet to make it up the entire flight of steps without stopping at least twice. I’m faster than a couple of people, much more are faster than I, leaving my in the smoke of their speed. I have no shame, when I need to stop and catch my breath for a moment for a moment, I stop and wheeze and pant. As I stood at the bottom step and looked up at the daunting task ahead of me, I figured today was going to be no different.

Or so I thought…

Today, I plugged in my iPod grabbed a banister and started to climb. It was Drowning Pool and I trudging up the stairs. I didn’t look I simply climbed.  I felt my first twinge telling me I was going to need to stop. I looked up and to my surprise I was more than three-quarters up the stairs!!

But… but… But How?!?!?  

I had never made it that far up without stopping, I was not going to stop now! I continued climbing. My knees started complaining. I looked up and could have counted the steps if I stopped. I wasn’t stopping. I could easily count I had about a dozen steps left when my lungs started their wheeze.

Are you kidding me? Less than a dozen. Not so easy, let alone peasey, but…

Oh! My! God! I! Did! It!

No, I did not jump up and down like Rocky Balboa. 1- I was too out of breath and 2- while I’m sure many would have gotten the reference, 3 – I would have looked absolutely ridiculous in my suit and winter coat jumping up an down on the pavement.

I climb the steps without stopping! That’s not to say I am going to be able to do the same tomorrow if they’re still down. That’s not so say I will not pray that the escalator is working tomorrow.

But today – today….?

Gonna fly now
Flying high now
Gonna fly, fly, fly!!!!

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Today is Day 5 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Come see how others are slicing it up today.
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Wake Up, Shake Up

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My eyes opened on the alarm clock blinking at me.

Huh? Blinking?  Crap!

Apparently the power had tripped some three plus hours ago. Luckily my circadian system still works and that’s what woke me. I glance at the burgeoning dawn outside my window, grab my cell phone and see I have roughly forty minutes to get it together and catch the bus.

You can do this, shake a tail feather, Raivenne!

Please note, I am not a morning At. All. So I am still not quite awake as I haul arse out of bed and head to the bathroom for my morning ablutions. I am under the shower when my brain starts to come online at last.

Wait…

Why didn’t the alarms on my mobile wake me, even if the clock radio didn’t? 

Oh for fuck’s sake! It’s bloody Sunday!

Sigh – I’m wide awake now, in annoyance.

On the plus side – I’ve changed my sheets, completed the Sunday Whirl, posted the story that sprang from it, checked my emails and now have an easy slice to submit today.

Even better –  once I post this I’m off to brunch!

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Today is Day 4 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Come see how others are slicing it up today.
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To Fall or To Rise

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March 1st marked the twelfth year of my being a widow. I’ve had no serious relationships in the interim. A friend asked this morning if I think I will fall in love again. I told him I hope so, but I’d prefer to rise in love again someday. It sparked a discussion that the results of I thought would make a good post. So here goes…

We say we “fall” in love.

Fall.

  • to come or go down quickly from a high place or position, to let yourself come or go down to a lower position, to become lower, to become less,  to lose value)

Falling is uncoordinated; a generally unconscious act. No one wants to fall. The body instinctively tries to reach out to brace itself against it. Falling is not something we want to do in any other circumstance. 

Why is it allowed in love?

Now to rise? That’s something different.

Rise.

  • to move upward, to become higher, to advance to a higher level, to become stronger,  to be or become better, to make the special effort.

To rise. To uplift. To  elevate. 

Love should bring you above it all even when in the muck of it.  Does anyone remember a few ago during the Vancouver riots after the game – specifically the now infamous photo of the couple kissing on the ground? There’s chaos around them, you can see police in the near distance behind them. Yet they are kissing.

Vancouver Riots 2011 - Couple kissing on ground

Vancouver Riots 2011 – Couple Kissing

For all that was going on around them, in that moment it, was just about the two of them. It’s him giving her comfort in the midst of madness, still it comforts him as well for her to accept it and return it.

That was a moment of rising in love between two people who had no idea the moment was captured until it was shared across the globe.

Also note: rising in love is no guarantee of its reciprocity. Nor is it solely the providence of romantic love.

  • Ask the parents visiting their newly admitted drug addicted daughter screaming vindictiveness from her rehab room as they walk away praying it works this time.
    They rose up to keep loving her.
  • Ask the caretaker of the elderly sun-downing woman who no longer recognizes him as her son these days. He rises up to love her regardless.
  • Ask the classroom of children who shaved their heads in support of their teacher stricken with cancer. They rose up.

And because sometimes the love you have to rise up to, is the love of yourself:

  • Ask the man momentarily miserable, yet at peace as he walks out the door of an abusive relationship knowing he’s never coming back. He rose.

And that is the blessing, but also the crux and the curse of it.

Because falling in love is relatively easy. I said relatively.

Falling in love is that easy B-. It required very little effort on your part to pass the test. Now you have time for that Saturday Social with your B- and maybe even B+ friends. And if that was all you wanted, then okay.  When you see the Honor Roll and your name was not on it. You’ll always know you could have done better.

Rising in love takes work, compromise work and yes some sacrifice.

Rising in love is not being satisfied with that easy B-. You’re willing to work for it. You give up a couple, maybe a few Saturday Socials. Some friends may tease you. You see the pictures of what you’re missing, but you persevere. When you do show up at the Saturday Social again, you do so with a hard earned A, maybe even an A+ and your name on the Honor Roll.

Yes, rising in love is work, but the pay off is so worth the extra effort.

You do not choose who you fall in love with. However, you always choose who you rise in love with.

So yes, I do hope to fall in love, again.

But then I want to rise.

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Today is Day 3 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Come see how others are slicing it up today.
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The Last – a Tale

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The words blurred into one another, every yellowed page like the one before.

Sela pulled her sweater tighter around her, the sudden chill making her teeth rattle from more than the air conditioning protecting the ancient scrolls and text. Preconceived notions now shattered under the gravity of what she has learnt.

She was not ugly, but she knew she was no raving beauty, either. She was simply layogenic, all the pieces were there, yet they did not quite seem to align up for true beauty. In school her interests were not those of the other girls her age. She was very intelligent, but she was not valedictorian. She was popular enough to be the good friend, the wing man, but never enough to keep the guy. And she had her secrets. She had spent her teenage through late twenties with a constant sense of the autophobic.  Then three years ago, just when she was truly starting to accept the single life would be her lot in life, she met Avery.

He courted her. With flowers and conversation arcane, often profound, sometimes profane. And when the granite walls she had built around her hear came down at last, she in turn courted him. With creativity and art and myths and politics. The curves to his edges. Avery with his pale fine near otherworldly features. His naturally pale blonde locks that naturally bleached to almost platinum in the summer sun. Avery never made her feel anything other than utterly beautiful inside and out. He was not perfect. She could barely get him to stay the night. And if he stayed he was always up by dawn puttering about.

It was all so transparent now, so obvious, but it was anything but several months ago.

It had started as a joke, a far-fetched notion dreamt up after the late night/early morning hours following an alcohol fused evening. They had lain nude in the sand, under the stars of Cancer. Their bare bodies, beginning to be tinged blue from the cool night outdoors, was now slowly pinking again as they greeted the warmth of dawn.

Then she saw it.

Sela had awoken on her back, Avery was laying sideways, facing away from her, his back to the burgeoning dawn of the shore. Every instinct told her do not move. So naturally Sela found herself in a rapid series of suppression as the urge to yawn, to sneeze and most of all, to reach and touch his beautiful back tried to overtake her, but she persevered.

His skin was so fair she felt she could all but see the blood flood as his flash warmed. She was admiring the fine-boned, yet nicely toned structure of his back.  It was she was looking at his back, at his shoulders, that she saw the thin curved lines that sudden marked his shoulder blades. It was just a flash of light, a bright electrified blue that appeared and was gone in a flash. She was so surprised by it she must have made some sort of sound, for Avery quickly turned to face her. His smile was beguiling and she assured herself she must have been seeing things as he pulled her in his arms.

Later that morning they sat in an outdoor café, sipping chamomile tea with honey, for him, coffee black, for her. They listened to the rising crescendo of the local birds as they woke for the day when she spied a dragonfly in the distance. Not afraid of insects she pointed out the beauty of its transparent wings. She jokingly wondered how such wings would look on him with his coloring. Avery had simply smiled at her flight of fancy and changed the subject, but that flash in the dawn popped into her head and again tried to dismiss what she thought she saw.

She tried to. She couldn’t.

She could not let it go and every single cell of her being knew she could not just ask him. At least not yet. So she didn’t. It was good fortune they both travelled for work. If she stayed an extra day overseas to research something he never batted an eye, just as she never questioned his trips if he chose to stay an extra day. She sometimes felt guilty, but not enough to stop researching. Until today.

Today she had the answers, the evidence; the truth.

She carefully closed the yellowed pages and packed away the last notes she’ll take on the matter.

Sela, the last Nyx Fairy, will trust Avery with the truth of her wings come dusk.

She has faith the Avery, the last Aeshnidae Fairy, will trust her with the truth of his come dawn.

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Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie|First Line Friday – March 2, 2018
The words blurred into one another, every yellowed page like the one before.

Use the above as your opening line in a story or prose.

The Sunday Whirl 340
Honey, Crescendo, Gravity, Blood, Blue, Shatter, Edges, Teeth, Bare, Rattle, Birds, Electrify

Use at least ten of the words in a story or poem.

Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie|Wordle #186
Cancer, Fairy, Sideways, Farfetched, Chamomile, Bleach, Assure, Granite, Suppression, Layogenic, Transparent, Autophobia

Use at least ten of the words in a story or poem.