Category Archives: Just Me, Being Me

My Human Nature Deja Vu All Over Again

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*🎼 excuse me while I take a momentary interlude to hum a few notes from the chorus of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” 🎶*

Oh, okay I’m back. The moment I thought of the title for today’s slice the music moment happened in my mind. I imagine quite a few of you familiar with the song, had a similar musical Pavlovian response reading, but I digress.

I remembered it is Tuesday and I need to post today as I have not done a slice in a couple of weeks. At the beginning of the year I did say my One Little Word is Persistence. I did promise myself I would persist in being more regular in my blogging. Human nature that while my regular posting is not where I want to be, yet accept it is better than it was.

Only now as I started typing today did it hit me that today is also March 1st aka the first day of the Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge. How lovely and fitting it is that this year, the 15th Anniversary of Slice of Life Story Challenge starts on a Tuesday! I’ve been a participant for over half its existence. Oh boy!

Make that an infrequent participant. One where I’ve missed a year or two, but most often do not complete a full month. Like last year where I fell asleep and missed completion by ONE DAY. Oh hell!

Now here am I – I, who has been letting Life! Liberty! and persistent pursuit of simply Living! has trouble remembering to post once a week, has once again signed up with a promise to post every single day for the next 31 days. How’s that for self-gluttony for self-punishment? Yet I cannot help/resist enjoying the challenge each year.

I will dub this the Pursuit of Persistence 2022.

See ya tomorrow.

Come see how the rest of us are sharing slices of our lives!

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15th Annual Slice of Life Writing Challenge
Two Writing Teachers

St. Jude of the MTA

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Many New York City dwellers will happily tout their knowledge of the City and how to get around it.

I am here to say many of those New Yorkers are liars.

Yes, they are the experts who know the optimal place to stand on the subway platform to be in the right car to be let off at the optimal stop at their destination. Key word “their”. It gets proven every time a wrench is thrown onto the their perfectly laid tracks throwing them off course. These are the New Yorkers who know how to get from Point A to Point B and that’s it.

Yesterday morning was prime example.

The train we’re on was being put out of service. The entire train. We are at a station that is not an exchange point. There is no other train coming on another track. Not something anyone wants to hear first thing in the morning. Especially those who, like me, have an hour or more commute one-way and we were barely fifteen minutes into it when it happens. Alas, we’re New Yorkers, we’re commuters such is life now and again.

Naturally, there are no announcements because usually such disruptions are minor, the conductor playing ‘better safe than sorry’ by putting a train out of service than risk something major. The train is put out of service, a few minutes later the train drives away and we wait for the next one. It’s fifteen minutes of griping commuters on average.

This was not an average day. It’s twenty minutes later of angry commuters playing ‘do I stay or do I go?’ as there are no announcements from the train crew or the station to help in the decision making. It all came to a head when NYPD, NYTPD, FDNY, and transit maintenance personnel with their equipment enter the station and the train. Aw hell, that’s a bit not good. NYPD, NYTPD and FDNY, respond to rule out there is no unexpected human element involved when a train is majorly delayed as such (aka no one died and/or a person needs to be removed – it happens). However, when you see the maintenance crew with their gear board the train, then you know the train you got kicked off from is not going anywhere anytime soon. This also means no other train on that track behind it is going anywhere anytime soon.

I build in extra minutes into my commute so I can get breakfast, get to my desk, eat and caffeinate before I officially start my work day. I look at my watch and know I am not getting to work on technically time, but I can still get to work at a reasonable time. I know where to go. Time to reroute myself and get going.

Finally there is an official announcement over the PA speakers telling everyone what some of us have already figured out: Get to the next express station, one stop away, where trains on the center track are bypassing all of this nonsense.

And THAT’S when the lamentations of those above mentioned experts begin.

“I don’t know what to do…” “Where to go?”  “They ain’t telling us nothing!”

That was my cue to be quiet. I knew where I was, where I was going and several alternate ways of getting there. Mind my business and get myself going to my destination. Easy right?

Yeaaaah, about that…

An older woman looked to me. She’s one of the several commuters I see almost daily on my train. We know nothing of each other than the fact that we have shared the same train nearly every day for a couple of years now. She looks at me and I can see the barely contained anxiety about to explode as she asks “Do you know how to…”

Annnnnd fuck my life…  

Because of course I know and I don’t want her to panic over something so simple as catching a bus to the next train stop and catch the train that is bypassing this stop from there. As I explain exactly what to do I see another woman nearby pretending she is not listening when she most certainly is and dammit I can feel the flashing MTA sign above my head beckoning all the lost souls turn on…

Sure enough, within the next few minutes….

  • “Go downstairs wait for the Bx4 at the bottom of the stairs right here to the last stop at 3rd Avenue where you can catch the #2 or #5 downtown. Can you walk from here to there? Technically yes, but you don’t want to if you don’t know where you are going. And you clearly don’t.”
  • “You guys follow me. You two follow him. You follow them.”
  • “No. Don’t wait for the Bx19 cross town to get to the #1. Take the #2 to 72nd Street it’ll be faster.”
  • “No, since we’re at 3rd Ave, take #5 to 59th for the N train. It’ll be faster than the #2 to 42nd Street.”
  • “You’ve got a cane and limping, get off with me at 135th Street and wait for the #3. You’ll have a seat to your Chambers Street stop.”
  • “If you move down two cars it will put you off right by the elevator at 42nd Street.”

I don’t understand how people have lived and commuted for decades, fucking decades, and still do not know how to get out of their own damned borough without a taxi at times like this. To be fair, I would have been in a cab on my way to work myself were the cost not prohibitive. Alas, I meander my way to the next station like the good employee I am and help a few others do the same. With various directions, words of encouragement, numerous iterations of “thank God I ran into you” and several effusive thanks later, my various temporary charges and I are all off on our respective, if not necessarily merry, little ways.

When the final transheep in my charge exited at Chambers Street, I throw my head back against the wall and let out the aggrieved sigh I have been holding back for nearly an hour. A fellow passenger on the train, not a part of the original mayhem, but has laid silent witness to my feats of transit shepherdess the past few stops of it, looked at me and grinned.

“Gee, I never knew St. Jude was a black woman because damn those were some truly lost causes.”

“Like you have NO idea.” I laugh with relief as my MTA signs turns itself off and I am on my own again for what’s left of my commute. And in spite all of that I was officially only twenty minutes late to work including getting a well-earned breakfast.

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We Don’t Talk About The Name In The Meme

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It’s funny how a simple thing as a nomenclature can take a life of its own, then subsequently affect so many others with the same name.

In 1997 American singer Erykah Badu bade the soon-to-be ex-lover protagonist of her classic song to call his friend for assistance in moving his belonging out of their shared domicile. Or in simple words “I think you’d better call Tyrone (call him), And tell him come on help you get your shit…”

“Tyrone” was a major hit for Ms. Badu. Unfortunately, it was also a major pain for every male named Tyrone, where those not paying attention to the lyrics mistook “Tyrone” for the lover getting the boot.

For many the word chad is a nonsense word worthy of Lewis Carroll. However, many others know Chad is also a proper name. There are a few known well known Chads out there now – Chad Kroeger of the band Nickelback, Chad Lowe – brother of fellow actor Rob Lowe, NFL’s Chad Pennington of the NY Jets, and seriously giving away my vintage here, actor Chad Everett from the 70’s TV show Medical Center.

However, in the 2000 U.S. presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the fate of the presidency hinged on tiny slivers of paper called “chads” as in “hanging chads”, “butterfly chads” and even “pregnant chads”. These chads became the source of much controversy in the state of Florida and across the nation in 2000 — which eventually swung the presidential election to George W. Bush despite the popular vote going to Al Gore. They became the most famous, well infamous, of all Chads to the chagrin of all others.

Tyrone and Chad specifically come to mind because anyone named Tyrone or Chad had to suffer the slings and arrows of jokes from late night talk hosts and regular folks for a very long time afterward until the ever-fickle public found new fodder to set flame. And this happened in a world before “memes’ were truly a thing. While “hanging chads” has fallen out of use except as a mark of U.S. electoral history, Tyrone has managed to (ma)linger on to become if not memes, at least gifs that can me used when someone needs to “call him.”  

A video of a little boy, clearly copying the mannerisms of his father, became viral when telling his mother to “Listen Linda..” while trying to get out of the trouble he was in.  “Listen Linda” became the bane of every woman named Linda. But not just them, any form of Linda in the name was fair game: Malinda, Belinda, Calinda etc. They all caught a piece of the nonsense.

And can you imagine how every Charlie Brown felt when that classic by The Coasters song came out?

Some name memes like Chad and Linda understandably die out when the oft repeated “joke” stops being funny and becomes passé. Sometimes, other names resurrect. “Bye Felica” made infamous from the 1995 Ice Cube movie Friday had a short resurgence in use with the 25th Anniversary of its release in 2020. It has since died down again but let’s see what happens in a few years at its 30th Anniversary.

Then there are the Karen and Becky and Shaniqua type names each with their own mostly negative archetypes that at best amuse and at worst annoy those that bear the names.  And yes, I do note the lack of equivalent male names here that have not taken a toehold in the way the female names have. An angry white man is an angry white man, but an angry white woman is a “Karen.”

I feel for the innocents who share/bear names with memes. I know a Chad, a Karen, a Linda and a Felicia in real life. I now try to avoid the use of the names in conversation that is not about the actual person out of respect, because I completely get how this Twitter user must feel:   

And all of the above just to say, last night I finally watched the Disney movie Encanto that reminds everyone “We don’t talk about Bruno. No. No. No.”

Now I understand all the annoying TikToks, Facebook posts et al, that have emerged in recent weeks and thus, a new name gets to added to the meme list.

I feel for to all you Brunos out there who will, like Tyrone, hear your name (badly) sung for the future.

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Fuse

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If there is one thing I have not missed since my fulltime return to office in October it is the daily commute. Door to door, it is an hour and fifteen minutes in the morning; then an hour and a half in the evenings. And that is if it is a straight run, meaning no sick passenger, some idiot somehow running amok in the tunnels, train suddenly going out of service, standard delays, and a host of other things that are the bane of daily commuting.  Especially in the evenings when I hit the height of rush hour where a two-hour run happens at least once a week.

And this was my norm pre-Covid.

Some reports say the trains are less crowded. That more people have chosen to drive their cars in order to avoid as much human contact as possible. That may be true, but I don’t see it, and the huddled masses packed into the trains each day would certainly disagree. After all, less crowded is still crowded. But now it’s crowded in a confined space where it’s a pure leap of faith, and for many the pure need of a paycheck, that the masked people around you are in fact vaccinated and not asymptomatic carriers breathing in the same enclosed space.

There are only two major changes that I can see:

  • Nearly everyone now wears a mask, including the homeless.
  • And nearly everyone seems to have a shorter fuse these days.

Still, I don’t have a problem with going to work. I am just a few very short years from retirement. And after close to a year and a half of remote working, the nearly three hours lost each day to my commute is grating my patience.

I found myself once again explaining “’cides” to a someone who asked for directions when our train went out of service this morning. She was standing considerably less than six feet away from a friend and I, and without a mask. My friend politely asked her to mask up. She did not want to.

Me (snarky to my friend): Then don’t give directions to a murder/suicide.

Woman (angrily): What fuck, I ain’t got nothing.

Friend: When’s the last time you were tested. We don’t know what you might have picked up a couple of days ago that’s can get us sick now.

Woman: Please I’m vaccinated.

Me. Vaccination doesn’t mean you won’t get covid. It only means if you contract it, you’re highly less likely to die from its complications. And you can still be asymptomatic and spread it.

Friend: Your masking up ain’t about protecting us from you, it’s about protecting yourself from us.

Me: If you knowingly refuse to mask up to protect us from anything you make have potentially contracted today that’s homicide. If you refuse to wear a mask to potentially protect yourself from anything we have contracted that’s suicide. We’re not down with either ‘cide. So, mask the fuck up or back the fuck up, or better yet, do both ‘cause we know how to get where we’re going.

We started to walk away to change trains. As I said we knew how to get where we where going. The woman put on her mask and we helped her out.

No, I don’t have a problem with going to work. I’m fine once I get there.

I just have a problem with going to work.

And it’s a little disconcerting to realize that short fuse I talked about sometimes includes my own.

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2022 One not-so-Little Word

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I have to say the Oxford definition of persistence “firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition” has certainly been descriptive of me and my writing of the last few years.

I can either write blog and poems or read blogs and comment on others, not both, but I persist.

I can either write my own fanfiction or read and comment on the works of other’s, not both, but I persist.

I can also paint or draw, but not both. Unfortunately, that particular outlet has fallen – if not necessarily by the wayside, definitely down quite a number of rungs on the ladder, but I persist.

Yet even while I’m in the kitchen making lemon bars from scratch, I’ll be damned if Erato, Calliope, and even Melpomene won’t suddenly spark an idea in my brain that wants to be written down RIGHT NOW. And naturally Polymnia wants a visual of it that my mind can see, but regretfully my talent and patience cannot always procure to my satisfaction, but I persist.

To write or to read or to comment or to paint or to bake or to any of the several creative outlets that I try to enjoy has been both a bane and a blessing. A blessing that I can, to highly varying levels of proficiency by my eyes, do all of the above. A bane, because I cannot do all of the above all at once.

I know! I know! How DARE I be only human!

Only human in a small apartment where one corner of my dining room does double duty as my office when I work remotely and my creative writing station for blogging/poems/story writing, another as my painting crafts station, the third corner a multi-utility station and the fourth corner is my window and closet. Oddly enough what my dining table has not been used for in ages is that thing called you know dining.

Still, I can’t / refuse to call it my studio, because I cannot afford, never mind actually fit a kiln in it to pursue the glass and metal creative work that remains in my head.

Though it’s my fanfiction that gets most of my creative time, sans the items in need of a kiln, I doggedly try to indulge in all of my various creative outlets. Thus why I have chosen persistence as my one not-so-little word for this year.

I’m determined to somehow find a balance where my blog does not suffer as much this year as it has in past couple of years. Let’s see just how persistent I can be.

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My Words

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I’m stripped soul-naked standing bare
To a universe made of blank paper
Its mocking nakedness haunts me
Seductively taunts me with its vapor

I see my words as pieces of my deepest soul
Shattered apart in my passions throes
Then brought together in a multi-hued mosaic
A stained glass window, if you will, of prose

My words reaching through time with voices of one from long ago
My words reaching for the vernacular of the street griot, ya kno’

Words lose me in the folds of its scripts
And lets me discover myself yet again
Words listen to me when no one else wants to
Words speaks to me in a way no one else can

Sometimes my words scroll across my monitor
To let me say what I want to say
Sometimes I resort to pen and paper,
To express my words in some other way

It sometimes scares me to the core, being so beholden to such
I’m scared of being pushed away, I care for my words so much

Yes, I cater to word’s selfish lusts
It’s a call I’ll always heed
Words give off a satisfaction
That’s almost carnal in need

But lately my words are not happy
With the scratch of the mighty pen
There’s this new desire to be heard
And it’s a most frightening yen

Paper no longer holds them, my words have something to say
But in the excitement to be heard, my words get in their own way

I risk the bleat of my vocals failing
Changing the meanings I devise
Yes, my words on paper are lovely
My words from my voice are otherwise

But words have trusted me all this time
In the handling of its care
Spoken word is the natural evolution
If only I take up the dare

So, I put my trust in my words, as it puts in me alike
I take a prayer and a breath and step up to this mic

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dVerse Poets Pub | Poetics: Take a risk!

Tricia at dVerse challenges us to explore the theme of risk. Whether it is tackling difficult subjects or laying bare a personal struggle in vivid detail, exploring a new writing form that you may find “risky” or unconventional; perhaps the risk we take falling in love.

Write on any topic as long the word “risk” is used,

I’m Baaaaack!

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Yesterday was my first official day back in the office. I am one of the first people on the floor and it was lovely to see one of the other early birds whom I have not laid eyes on in over a year. After the pre-requisite elbow touching in place of a hug, the first few minutes are spent catching up. It was a routine repeated as others came in. I spent the day in a bubble of working, reconnecting and organizing as we also make ready for a floor wide restructuring.

Some of it was very familiar: Coming in early, jumping into work, plugging up to my music to focus, not taking a proper break for a few hours; rolling my eyes at the one colleague who insists on wearing ill-fitting shoes that squish and clomp noisily as they pass my desk, staying late to work with a client having an issue, even the extra-long commute home was an annoying comfort of the familiar.

Still, for all its familiarity something about yesterday that felt off and I could not identify it until today.

Yesterday… 🎵 Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so fa… 🎵  

Huh? Oh, wait sorry, sorry… brain wandered off for a musical moment, I’m back.

Yesterday, because I was distracted by several things, I had not taken my mid-morning coffee run.

Today I remembered. So off went I to my home away from home, away from home.

While the trip itself was done by almost by rote, it was once I was back at my desk and sipped that did it.

My Starbucks special order, the one thing I cannot get in my neighborhood, was in my grubby little talons once more.

There was a new staff from when I was there last; no familiar faces at all. I handed my phone to the barista and watched her face as she glanced from the phone to the register to place the order and then gave me a silent but definitive are you fucking serious(?) look as she handed the phone back. I especially enjoyed the look of resigned yet annoyed belief when I informed her of the irony that it was a former Starbucks barista who worked at that location, which gave me the recipe.

Starbucks cup
Yes, I erased my insane recipe from the image.
It’s MY recipe! 😝

I have a Keurig with Starbucks k-pods at home, and I love it, but it’s still not quite the same thing because I have that ridiculous order. Yes, my favorite order is one of those orders. When I cannot mobile order, I amuse myself by watching every new barista I hand my phone read the order and then tries, but inevitably fails, to not make a face as they re-read it a couple of times before they make it.

Whether it’s the fancier machines or their precise measurements for the base, it’s just something that I cannot duplicate in my kitchen.

As that first sip slid past my palette and settled oh so warmly in my tummy, I felt it. It’s a small thing, but a needed one.

Ah yessssssssssss! I was back…

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Slice of Life – Tuesday Writing Challenge – Two Writing Teachers

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Self

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I remember a time when
Someone like I
Would never consider
Myself being worth anything, let alone everything
Funny how life can change a thing like that
As my self-worth, my self-care and love of self grows

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 30

First time ever completing thirty whole days of original poetry – YAY!🎊

I end National Poetry Month, keeping it short and simple, with my first Golden Shovel poem using the opening line of Sonnet 15 by William Shakespeare

The Golden Shovel form was created by Terrance Hayes in tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks. The rules are simple:

  • Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.
  • Use each word in the line (or lines) as the end word for each line in your poem.
  • If you take a single line with six words, your poem would be six lines long. If you take two lines and the first line has 19 words, and the next has 13 words your poem would be 32 lines long in total and so on…
  • Keep the end words in order of the original poem.
  • The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.
  • Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).

Got It Write This Time

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For the past near sixty-one days, I have blogged every single day. Last month for Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Writing challenge was arduous enough. That self-promise of thirty-one days straight of blogging, especially when I had posted barely a couple dozen times from all of May 2020 to March of 2021, was truly diving off the deep end to see if I can swim. [I actually did that dived into a 16 foot deep pool without knowing how to swim.] No, I still cannot swim – don’t ask. Luckily I was much better at following through on immersing myself into regularly blogging again.

Because it is following right behind the March challenge, April is its own war as it is all about poetry. Each year for National Poetry Month I look around and enjoy the work of other poets. Each day I also post original work of my own, honoring National Poetry Writing Month. At least I’ve tried to. I admit I in previous years I have been a spotty poster during April at best. If a dozen new works happen it was a good year. C’est la vie.

As I had naught else to do, I also challenged my self to try more of a poetry form I was not fond of the Villanelle. I absolutely knew I could not do thirty days of them, but I have managed one new one per week, the most recent as of today which I published this morning. Which means I now have five villanelles in my poetry portfolio. Having written four more it is better than the single one that has existed for nearly decade by itself, so that is a huge win in my book.

2021 is the only year in which I have participated in National Poetry Writing Month where not only have I not bailed halfway through the month from writing exhaustion. Granted some were posted late, like yesterday’s coming in at nearly 11:30pm, but I will have thirty new poems under my belt, including four new villanelles! With the finish line a mere three days from now, I am confident I will complete it. I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am of myself for this!

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Unmarked

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The spark that once set my soul alight
with fire and fight
I thought died in the embers of the long ago
killed slow
But a moment of the then returns to the now
and how
The desire for apathy crawls upon my skin
and sinks within
But I turn in tune, a marionette
who can’t forget
When words of honor marked needs
negated by dishonorable deeds
I am conjured by promises left unspoken
and now broken
In the end whose price is the one direly paid
for thoughts mislaid?
For once the Fates in their own twisted sense divine
it shall not be mine
And eventually, the pain subsides and the soul heals
from wounds surreal
Finally shelved to deal only with today’s realities
I welcome the banalities