Wordsmith Holler

Original Pulp Fiction

Category: Scribbles

Scribble April 12, 2017

The flag carrier at the front of the parade struggled to keep the Stars and Stripes and the Gadsden Flag from crashing to the ground as the wind whipped at the top of the 30-foot flag pole. He thought perhaps agreeing to carry both flags was a poor choice. Behind him a band of cowboys and their ladies carried various flags. Children wandered away toward the street causing the mothers to pull them back. The flag carrier hesitated slightly as the crowd moved up. He seemed to sense the parade was slowing down; the participants unsure of their route. He pressed on with both flags dipping behind him. At the end of the marchers, a cowboy blew on a sheep horn. A low, mournful cry wafted over the parade. The group marched forward as the man with the sheep’s horn ran to catch up.

***

A Conversation

“I’m just going to take a quick walk to stretch my back.”

“Does your chair tighten you up too?”

“Badly.”

“I heard a rumor we might get new chairs.”

“I heard it too.”

“Either they give us new chairs or they supply us with an unlimited supply of Ibuprofen.”

“Honestly, either option couldn’t hurt.”

***

I wonder what archaeologists will say about my trash. Will they question why I needed to eat so many pop-cycles finding only five-inch sticks at the bottom of an eroded bag? Or why I threw out a stack of unopened junk mail promising millions if I just entered the clearinghouse sweepstakes? Does the unopened mail mean something and should I have recycled it?

I never used to worry about my garbage. It would go into a can, the trash man would lift it into the truck, and away it would go to the landfill. Then Earth Day came along and I have wondered if I am doing enough to reduce my trash thumbprint of waste? I threw away my entire collection of Mother Earth News magazines and replaced them with a thumb drive with 40 years worth of magazines in roughly three inches. I now wonder if someone will find the magazines and wonder why I was so wasteful? They will never find the zip drive; I plan on hiding it in my junk drawer. Hopefully, I won’t get the bright idea to empty it.

Too much stuff ending up in an archaeologist’s museum. Here is a stack of battered and torn magazines advocating against too much waste. And over here, is the same pile of magazines in a plastic memory device. At least the paper can degrade; they memory stick will be around for a long, long, time.

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April 12, 2017
Scribble April 10, 2017

The business of writing never ends. Sometimes, writing requires reading, thought, and daydreaming.

***

Blood covered the sidewalk in front of the doorway. Something had died. But nothing showed up on the tape and the security guards knew nothing about the killing. It happened in the blind space no one talked about. They knew about the limitation of the security camera. It was a fact. The janitor could only imagine the crime as he washed the blood covering the sidewalk. Nearby, a rose bush was wrenched from his pot. A fight? No one knew. Nothing showed up on the tape so it was of no concern.

***

The sun blinded his face so he closed the curtain. Now the office seemed like a coffin. He looked back at the window but the sunlight shining through the eyelets blinded him again. He would have to wait for the sun to rise further up in the sky. The weekend ended too soon; he still could feel Saturday’s party. The light in his eyes made the headache hurt worse. He took a drink of cool water and closed his eyes. He’d better rest before the day gets too hectic.

***

My agent called to say I was up for a par. only, I couldn’t admit I was an actor. I was hired as a real person. So, no prepping for the part. I just needed to show up and pretend to be real. Was this acting? I wasn’t sure I could pass as a guy off the street. What if I fell into my training? I decided to go to the mall and see how real people acted. Of course, they weren’t acting; they were being real.

***

The weeds in the culvert smelled burnt. The smell matched the yellow, dried leaves. A kind of dried, dirty smell with a touch of what burnt toast smelled like in the morning. The rain stopped months ago and the rocks in the dried stream looked hot. A breeze touched some of the dried grass down on the rocks and they seemed to flinch away. A grey lizard darted across the ravine avoiding the rocks. He paused for a second looking back. I tossed a rock at him and he ran away toward the shade.

***

I leaned against the stick bending it outward as my weight pushed it down farther into the stream bed. I pushed at the rocks below. The four of us sat on the bridge dangling our legs over the stream. The girls giggled and shivered as the breeze reminded them of winter. A spring storm blew through the valley pushing white clouds closer to the mountains. They gathered at the summit and threatened to rain.

I pushed the stick down again balancing myself against it. Until it broke and I dropped off the bridge landing on my nose in the stream. The cold water rushed around my face and I lay in the water surprised by the accident. My father jumped down to pick me up. I started to cry. My mother held me close in her arms and looked at my forehead. She seemed concerned. I understood her worry later when a giant goose egg rose up above my right eye. The bump lasted more than a week. My sisters took turns touching it. The bruise sent a spark of pain every time one of them touched it. I lost the stick. It floated down the stream to tangle up in the bank below the house. I avoided the stream the rest of the summer.

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March 31, 2017 Scribble

March 31, 2017: Clearly a lion day. The wind knocked over two trucks with a gust near 84 mph at St. Rose Parkway.

***

“You should live in Vermont.”

“Why would I want that?”

“Vermont is a nice place for wildness.”

“Nine months of snow, two months of mosquitoes, and only two tolerant months.”

“There’s all the maple syrup you can eat.”

“I don’t even like pancakes.”

“Maybe you should try a stack with some real maple syrup.”

“You know what I do with my syrup now?”

“No.”

“I buy a bottle every three years just so I can throw it away.”

“You don’t like maple syrup?”

“Oh, I love it already mixed into my oatmeal.“

“So, you do like maple.”

“You can make maple oatmeal even better by pouring maple syrup on it.”

“Sounds like you need to eat more oatmeal.”

***

The voices in my head compete to be heard.

***

The phone alarm directing him to take his medicine went off every two hours. If he forgot, the alarm grew insistent and demanded he satisfy its need. He put the alarm on snooze. Sometimes he couldn’t take care of the plea. The pills sat in a drawer while he sat around a conference table. The alarm made him ashamed; a grown man tethered to a pill bottle. He tapped his phone. It alarmed nine minutes later. A reminder of the reminder of the first alarm. He put it on snooze again. He looked at the speaker then his phone. He could see the dust falling around his wrist. The speaker’s mouth became a painful slow motion movie of round vowels and hard consonants. The clock hand grew larger beating out every deliberate second. It went off again. The medicine would have to wait.

***

A dead pop star on a doubledecker bus

His ghostly image promising a real experience

Circus performers moon dancing through Pepsi fire

So real you can touch his face

Like visiting Madame Tussauds to touch wax.

***

Tally Ho, the leader seemed to cry as he led his besty and their girls on a forced march of The Strip. The map on his phone showed only two blocks of walking. Two miles later and the girls needed a drink. Bring on the party, we’re finally here.

***

Enough looking at the window watching the mindless tourists; time to get to work.

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Worse than letting everything I write drop in the wastebasket, the blog deleted some posts. Some really good stuff too!

Reminds me of the time I wrote 2,500 words for a magazine only to have the computer flash and die. All of those thoughtful words were gone. I madly wrote it again and the second time it was better; Less superfluous verbiage and more succinct in style.

This is a space to write, explore, and make mistakes. I just wish the electrons felt as highly about my writing as I do.

***

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

To switch and scriggle and unruly wiggle.

For mischief playing or a glancing Lear.

My cat uses those muscles to make me giggle.

***

No owls exist on Antarctica. No snow owls, nor great horned owls. So to find Athene cunicularia, the burrowing owl, on the beach near Palmer Station startled Betsy Granger. The owl looked nearly dead sprinkled among debris from last night’s storm. It must have been caught up in the wind and tossed from Argentina. Betsy chocked up the find up to serendipity. The Gentoos eyed the owl with skeptical glances. For its part, the stranger just sat on the rocky beach as if to ponder it’s new home.

***

The pedicab driver begged the couple to take a ride with him to Fremont Street. Of course, they were uneasy. No pedicabs lined the street and they didn’t know what to think of him. They declined the ride. He turned around on the one-way street and peddled back up the bicycle lane opposite the traffic. Maybe if he got closer to the Container Park he might find a fare.

***

Water leaked out of the cliff forming a irrigation waterfall from the alfalfa and corn fields north of Hagerman. The photographers pushed off from the shore in a long boat headed toward the island in the middle of the Snake River. The mayflies rose up in the spring sun darting around the passengers. A single fly landed on Tom’s cheek. He brushed it away in a casual sweep. He pulled his green hat down as the boat skied across the water. A few yards from the island the boat slowed. On its starboard, a group of nesting grebes rested in the water lilies. The birds dipped below the water in an uncomfortable dance between avoiding the boat and protecting their nests. Tom lined up the birds taking closeups of the water nests with his Nikon. The boat slid across the water with the current. Soon, it reached the island and the passengers climbed onto the shore.

The island covered in cottonwoods seemed primordial. Wisps of grass hung from the bottom of the trees. The air carried a distinctive muddy smell. And then the prize; hidden among the trees hundreds of Great Blue Herons made their nests. Each bird stood stoic among the lower branches hidden as sticks. Their eyes bubbled out from their beaks. But otherwise, they stood still. The photographers took time to capture each bird. They stood silent too. Then the photographers left as the melancholy of the birds was too great. The boat skid back across the water toward the far shore.

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A chance to bleed.

I spent the morning re-writing explanations of my writing tools so they would make more sense. I actually found a few ideas I had forgotten such as planning climaxes and struggles. I think most of these things are apparent, for instance, you tend to see them pop up. But that is the pantser in me; plotters get ahead faster. I used to be just a pantser because it fit better with my observational nature. However, if you fail to notice a detail, it will show in the story. So you have to think about the plot to help build up the scenes. Anyway, plotting is much better than pantsing when you get to the middle of part two and you have no idea what comes next.

***

What’s better: a comb-over or buzz-cut? The buzz-cut aficionados swear running a blade through their hair solves so many problems and looks better. If a bunch of round heads looks better, then fine. The comb-over set swears at least they have a few hairs to shape up their head. Of course, they look ridiculous if only two hairs cover the bald spot. Maybe it is time to think about a toupee?

***

Four women stand like a choir bunched up against the rosemary wall separating the federal courthouse from the sidewalk. They can stand on the path and protest as long as they keep it open for visitors. Together they hold a sign; “Justices for Our Brothers.” On the back of the sign slashes tally up the number of hugs offered to anyone who passes. The count totals more than 600.

***

Chicken and Wild Rice soup simmers in the kitchen. The wild rice resembles black-eyed peas with the brown speck surrounding the white kernel. Orange rounds of carrot float on the surface. The perfect soup for a cold day. But, it’s nearly 90 outside. For some reason this year, I dislike the warm weather. With nearly 400 inches of snow I want another storm to dump more frozen water. Might as well see if additional records are broken. Towards summer, the melt may lead to a second round of records as the most snow leads to the most runoff. Maybe a new lake will form in the Fallon desert. Lake Tahoe has enough water to keep the Truckee flowing for three years. And more is on the way. Northern Nevada lies under piles of snow and ice. Send some of that south; we need a few more days of winter.

***

In my present condition, the only thing left to eat is dirt. Dirt contains no cholesterol and no sugar. Depending on the source, dirt contains iron and other minerals. Free-range dirt sounds organic, but even it can lead to problems; the raw soil might contain natural asbestos or arsenic. Even dirt has its limitations.

***

Mark Twain spent a sojourn in Territorial Nevada. Some of his observations in the gold and silver camps of the Sierra Nevada ended up as well-remembered short stories. Other pieces found there way into longer novels from his office in Hartford, Connecticut. The school room scene in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer originated at a schoolroom in Carson City. Always be on the lookout for interesting events or scenes. They will prove useful at another time.

***

I still like to ramble adding unneeded words to sentences. My mantra has become, “Get to the Point!”

***

A nine-foot stone wall stands across from the Spanish mission with water flowing over red sandstone rocks. Two fat pigeons, one grey and other steel, each splash through the puddles of water before they fall to the pool. The artificial river meanders passed a canyon of concrete, Mexican fan palms, and under flat tan rocks until the water reaches the pump. With a whisk, the water starts the climb again.

A potable water truck pumps rainwater from Utah into the pool. This is water trucked 500 miles to make the desert green. A pet project of a former mayor who demanded a water fountain between the city courthouses. At the end of the river, the Poets Bridge features Earth House Hold poet Gary Snyder and 19 other poets and Las Vegas artists.

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I spent twenty minutes holding my head to the right as a doctor went in again for my fourth thyroid biopsy. “Boy this is really deep,” he said. “Yep, maybe you’ll be the guy,” I said. It is clear with have a nodule or two. We don’t clearly know if it is cancer. “At least if it is cancer, this is the best one to get,” said my endocrinologist. “It takes so long to grow.” Comforting. While other writers are busy taking people to other places, I’m in an endless loop of out-patient surgery. No, you would not be interested in the waiting, prodding, and sore neck. It doesn’t jump off as one of those stories you want to hear.

***

Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” True. Sometimes you just have to write it out and hope something sticks. Then let it fall to the floor. In Hemingway & Gellhorn he says,” Never crumple pages. Always let them float gently into the basket. Any writer who rips out his stuff and crumples it will go insane in a year, guaranteed.” I like the idea of floating paper to the trash. I would float this to the trash, but it’s a huge monitor.

***

It turns out nobody reads this blog. (more…)

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This post consists of thoughts and fragments as I attempt to free write 750 words every day. Some of this may end up in a Story or a Conversation. Anyway, this is how one learn and shapes up The Craft.

He talked endlessly about meeting us at Pea Soup Andersen’s in Carlsbad for a quick lunch. Except, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Some memory from his childhood about a Danish windmill, two crazy cooks name “Hap” and “Pee”, and the best split pea soup a boy ever ate. We all just let him ramble. And he expected us to meet him there. Since none of us had the courage to ruin his reunion, we just agreed to meet at the windmill and let him find out.

As far as I remember, the place has always been a TGI Fridays. I suppose it could have been a pea soup place once upon a time. I recall it was a bit expensive. Something told me we would be eating somewhere else. So much for memories.

He rushed ahead of us on the 5 and tore off toward the windmill on the frontage road. By the time we caught him, he was driving through the parking lot circling the restaurant. Sure enough, not a sign pointed to a pea soup place although the TGI sign stood out large and center. He climbed out of the car looking lost and dejected. I laughed. Served him right; so sure and smug. I realized I really didn’t like the guy, but my wife thought the world of him. Some sort of strange brother-like quality made him seem less of a threat to women. I knew exactly what he wanted; my wife in bed.

I drove up to his car, yelled “We don’t have time for dinner anyway,” and then left the parking lot back to San Diego. Cindy pouted. I smiled. Who knows what happened to Fred. Maybe he found his mystical pea soup. I didn’t really care.

***

I saw my first black kid in Coalinga. I grew up in the northeast corner of the whitest part of California. American Indian kids stayed in one (more…)

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This post consists of thoughts and fragments as I attempt to free write 750 words every day. Some of this may end up in a Story or a Conversation. Anyway, this is how one learn and shapes up The Craft.

I’m writing another short story about a little girl found next to jewelry tools and a safe missing its jewelry. That’s how I spent my 750-words today. With these words, explaining why my Scribble lacks from an explosion of words, I have written nearly the maximum goal for the day.

The story is a fun read, full of mischief, mystery, and conflict. Hopefully, the muse will let me post if tomorrow.

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You can read this if you wish although it consists of thoughts and fragments as I attempt to free write 750 words every day. Some of this may end up in a Story or a Conversation. Anyway, this is how one learn and shapes up The Craft.

In Bishop, I slept in a room carved out of the garage. Not a hovel; more of an addition. A large loft bed hung at the end of the room and it made for a nice space to hide. The concrete floor kept the room cool in the summer and a bit too cold in the winter. Still, I ran around in the room barefoot. One day, I managed to find an errant metal shaving, which entered the pad below my right big toe. Since the room had been part of the garage, there was garage trash littering the corners. In any case, I stepped on the piece of metal, felt a sharp pain, and because it seemed to go away, I went to sleep and forgot about it.

A few weeks later running around the track a sharp pain bit into my foot. I hopped over to the grass, took off my sock, and looked for the piece of metal. I found nothing. Yet, the sharp pain returned every time I stepped down. For the next few weeks, I walked on the side of my shoe so the pain would not bother me.

Walking with my right foot rolled to the side worked for a few more weeks. However, the pain made even that solution unworkable. I finally complained and my dad agreed to take me to the doctor.

The doctor was on West Line Street next to the post office. I don’t remember his name. He was an older man and I remember thinking his office wasn’t very modern. I told him about my toe and he had me remove my sock. He then looked at the toe and seeing nothing, he turned to my father and told him it could be fixed with a band of copper.

He described how the copper would draw out the cause of the pain. That afternoon, dad took me to the hardware store where we found a 10-gauge copper wire, which dad fashioned into a ankle bracelet.

I wore this bracelet for a few weeks still walking funny to keep the sharp pain from shooting up my leg. The pain was still there and the copper wire hadn’t drawn out the metal shaving. I decided to operate.

From the age of five I wanted to be a doctor. I still have the porcelain doll my mother painted of a young doctor with a mirror on his forehead and a stethoscope around his neck. I worked for a doctor taking vital measurements. I had seen a scalpel and I figure it couldn’t be that hard to dig into my toe.

A small callous outlined the pad under my big toe. It felt like a button and when you pushed on it pain shot up my leg. I knew something was in there but I couldn’t see it. I cut around the edge of the callous with the knife. I cut off a tough layer of skin. At this point nothing hurt unless I pushed on the button. until I reached the most tender part of my foot.

I kept digging. Like a wildcatter, I dug down into the callous through layers of hard skin. Then I touched the sliver. I became nauseous. The pain rolled like a wave. I took a deep breathe. I touched the sliver again. Same rolling pain.

I pulled the tweezers off my Swiss Army Knife. I dug around in the hole until I guessed the tweezers were around the metal. I then pulled until I found an 1/4 inch piece of metal, long and jagged, at the end of the tweezers. Blood poured out of my foot and I grabbed some tissue. I pushed on the callous and the pain no longer shot up my leg.

I examined the metal sliver. It must have come from making a screw hole in a piece of metal. Maybe it came from the homemade solar panel on the roof. I wrapped up the sliver around the tissue and tossed in the garbage.

I rubbed some iodine in the hole and covered it with a band-aid. I no longer walked funny and my foot felt lighter. I slipped on my sock, then my tennis shoe, and ran outside to play with Sandy. The spaniel chased after the ball before walking out into the middle of the pond. I sat down on the grass and watched the dog. The pain in my foot was gone. It had only taken a little exploratory surgery to make everything better.

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The Big Squeeze is coming to Las Vegas. The Spaghetti Bowl, a large mess of on ramps and off ramps between the US 95 and I-15 will soon be reduced to two lanes. It already becomes two lanes on US-95 under the Bowl, so I’m not sure how this is a squeeze, but through media hyperbole and advertising, I’m to understand this will be terrible.

This morning, I decided to find an alternative route. On the advice of some friends, I decided to try North Fifth, a new road into North Las Vegas.

After fifteen minutes waiting for a light to change and let three cars through at a time, I’ve decided I can suffer through the impending peril of the Big Squeeze. Even if I sit for 5 extra minutes, it will surely beat a 55 minute commute to go 20 miles via surface streets. This is ranting I know, but you have to start 750-words somehow.

We spring back this weekend. Frankly, this just means getting up earlier. Remember to set your clocks ahead. (Don’t think about it too much: Your head will explode).

Sequoia Strawberries in the flower bed mulch
Lined up like bare root roses
Patted safe in the warm soil
Watered and blessed; a hopeful refrain.

Spring lasts a few days before summer rays
Bear down on the garden beds
Warming the soil to dry dust
A delicate balance to keep them moist.

The morning frost reminds spring follows winter
Breezes as March enters like a lion
Or sneaks in like a lamb.
Either way, the garden struggles to bloom.

A small leaf springs up from the bare root tip
As roots firmly establish themselves
And the plant becomes accustomed to its new home.
It spreads out to take space.

Small droplets in the morning light
On large leaves of green vermillion
Summer sun gobbles up the water
As ladybugs jump through the delicate flowers.

“Are you drinking enough water?”

“I think so.”

“It’s getting hotter and you need to be refreshed.”

“I went to the bathroom three times tonight.”

“You’re diabetic. That’s a sure sign of the disease.”

“I don’t suppose four tall glasses of water had anything to do with it.”

In these writing exercises you are supposed to write whatever comes to your head, in any order, without stopping. This came to my head just now.

S. I. Hayakawa was a U.S Senator from California, and before that he was a semanticist at San Francisco State University. I first read his book Language and Action in high school. The idea Bessie the Cow was an abstraction allowed me to add only those details that made her a cow, rather than endlessly describe all of her features. Abstraction allows writers to write a picture that others fill in. Hayakawa warned to stay at the top of the abstraction tree, otherwise you could lead others into an existential hell.

Trees have a colored leaf. And the leaf is made of smaller parts from veins to individual cells. Staying at the top allows the reader to fill in the abstractions, without the writer having to describe the color of the veins or explain the arrangement of the cells. However, sometimes a writer wants to describe these things. Knowing when to stop is the art of writing. A writer must be careful not to chase themselves around in circles!

Hayakawa also addresses the power of words to hypnotize and manipulate. If a person can be convinced a brown cow is really white through powerful descriptions, then a writer can powerfully draw a crowd in with the force of prose. He cautions readers to avoid taking whatever a person says at face value; question them and their motivations. Abstractive communication allows writers to rely on simile, metaphor, irony and pathos to communicate an idea. Abstraction has power as long as everyone agrees on the definition of the abstraction.

Too deep? Enough philosophy on the mechanisms of writing.

“I just don’t feel motivated or respected.”

“You hate your job?”

“Just the people. Nobody sees my contribution.”

“So you’re looking for a reward?”

“I would like to be respected and given a little credit.”

“For showing up?”

“For making this place work despite the lack of respect.”

“You received a paycheck this week?”

“Yes.”

“I think you they must like you.”

I’m running out of words for this session’s writing activity and likely this will end long before I ever get to the bottom of a deep well. There. We now have 750-words!

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