Short Story: First Paragraph

The house always smelled of frying food and rose oil, a heady, Catholic combination that sticks to your hair. We never had money for haircuts and the bathtub was full of whip spiders, but I didn't think anything of it until the day that Daisy died. I came home from school, dropped my backpack, coat, and boots on the landing, and ran up the stairs feeling the thick carpet under my toes. Every day I went through this routine, and for five minutes I felt free. Unburdening myself, my eyes on the kitchen cupboards, anticipating a snack of three soft batch chocolate chip cookies and a glass of tepid water. Most kids preferred milk with their cookies, but I hated the way it coated my mouth with a rancid feeling, like the aftermath of a vomiting episode. Cookies and water in front of the television. Sitting on the floor, splayed on the brown carpeting that continued through the living room and down the hall to the bathroom and bedrooms, watching cartoons I was too old for. This was my bliss. For five, maybe ten minutes I was alone in the house and it was quiet. My brothers were still at school activities, and my mom, who worked as a crossing guard for the little kids at elementary could never quite make it back before my bus. I was so grateful I said a daily prayer to the gods in charge of this orchestration of events. As I finished the third cookie Mom would come in running, out of breath, fear across her forehead, the sleeves of her turtleneck pushed up, as if every afternoon she anticipated the worst.

Poem for River Girl

Mariachis always show up at bedtime.
With bulbous instruments, accordians they squeeze
and tug, guitars that mourn ecstatically, in matching black suits with flopping red ties
and hats that aren't absurd in their hometowns
somewhere north of here.
But in this cement house where I sleep irregularly
in a bedroom facing East to the sea,
outside in those splitting, convulsing streets
these players are joyless music makers
impelled to play all night
by some patriotic sense of duty
that keeps them bellowing in harmony
with tom cats, zorros, and other nocturnals.

Opening Sentence

If it was possible to induce a miscarriage simply by submerging oneself in a very hot bath there would be countless women and girls emerging from a steamy soak with scalded legs and pelvises. Housewives with too many children already, maybe even only one; naïve girls posing as virgins, Catholic virgins confused about the logistics of intercourse; college students, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, and the occasional perimenopausal forty-something anticipating no longer requiring birth control too soon.

Archetypes in Seuss

The Cat in the Hat is a classic trickster. He arrives unbidden, when you need him but don't know you need him. When circumstances seem bleak but you aren't aware enough to just ask. You can do that?! You can cry out, call up the godhead with complaint or supplication? Sure. Go ahead. Try it.

His moves are sudden and limbs akimbo, one minute he's juggling your fish and the next he's unleashing Things that run even more amok than he. They are chaos in dual aspects. He controls them; they are his minions. He is inciting a riot, an epiphany of unreason.

There is no control, or nothing to control, we learn over the course of an afternoon with The Cat. Our sense of order, tenuous at best, as expressed by the scolding Fish, is baseless. So why not let go, let it all unfurl into the atmosphere around us, with cakes, cups, and ships flying free. The Fish is constantly hectoring the children, reminding them of the specter of their mother, who must be The Unmanifest.

He tempts. He jokes. He makes no sense. He speaks nonsense. He riddles and makes ordinary things appear in other orders, for that is the reality of Reality. And that is why The Trickster comes to us, to children alone in a house on a rainy day, to a hero on his journey, a girl alone at the well.This manifestation of the divine psychological process is important because we seek to elude confusion.

Nomads

Maine fulfilled its promise. It was a safe and comfortable place to land. It was where we got our bearings. In Camden, there is a library on a hill overlooking the harbor, where I first imagined being a mother walking with a small girl, that place turned out to be more than fantasy. I lived a dream, which has never happened before. I believed in a life before I saw it, I had faith and that faith was a prophecy come true. Hand in hand. We are building it, we are making it real. And now, here we go again. again-again. We're off. To the West. To pursue. To earn and achieve and make one last stab at adventure. Before the next time we do it all over again.

I've been more tired and more afraid. I am ready to go in the most American direction of destiny. To sift through chaos and have the unknown become familiar territory. Which isn't to say I no longer want roots. A house with a garden, a room of my own. Every time we move I have to create that space all over again. Seek out the best place to write and work and make each house a home. A home, there's no place like home. There's a Wizard of Oz exhibit at The Farnsworth. A collection of the movie's memorabilia. Behind the museum a replica of Dorothy's house as it looked when it landed. Disheveled, having been through a twister and murdered a witch. I know how it feels. I have been that Kansas house in Munchkin Land.

California, here we come. Away we go to Lotus Land.