Archive for the ‘Piece of Mind’ Category
This weekend, I received an invitiaton on LinkedIn to write a recommendation for Pete Dulin, co-editor of Present Magazine. The editorial staff there has been very generous and supportive of me in my development as a writer. I thought I’d post my testimonial about Pete here so I would have a record of it, but also because I’m pleased that he asked me to endorse him. Here’s what I wrote:
Too many editors are mere wordsmiths or style-conscious followers. Pete Dulin has a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the written word. He’s more concerned with story, rhythm and being sensitive to his writers’ abilities to tell what happened in their own voice. He’s encouraging at the same time as curious to help them discover their talents. I’ve personally benefited by working with him, but I’ve also enjoyed the experience.
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Tags: Friends
Sunday Early
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
Morning’s broken and fall breezes filter in through the windows pre-maturely, a day before summer’s man-made end. Each wind shift brings in a faint rotting smell from hedge apples lying in the cut grassblades from the previous weekend, all smelling as sweet as warm cider.
My granfather had a full apple tree on his land a long time ago. Every fall we’d collect the apples that had been pecked to the ground by robin’s into a bucket and he’d pitch them to us for batting practice. The smells of summer dieing takes me back to eight or 10 years old. I can’t feel the coarse bat in my hands and the tightness in my back as I swing toward a distant tree line.
The night was never cool enough for dew to set in. The windows in the cars that line the streets are dry, not sweaty, and the sidewalks are still the color of cement, not wet paper bags.
This early, the crickets chirp as though it were twilight while the world rumbles to wake – traffic on the interstate a few miles off, an airplane cracking the silence above the low-lying rooftops, and early conversation from the men who step out to the driveway for a smoke and let their old dogs have their way in the yard. This sets the other dogs to barking and soon the day is ushered in as the sun gradually climbs to a place where it can watch over part of the world.
On crisp mornings like this, children sit on couches, swaddled in blankets, watching cartoons to the sweet smells of syrup, cinnamon rolls and fruit-laden breads. Lamps left on overnight at the tops of stairwells or in long halls grow weaker as the brightness advances – as more sun trickles in the windows. Fans that were left on all night to circulate the air are switched off because the wind is too cool. House cats scratch at the door as Tom cats return home from glorious nights prowling the sewer, hiding in window wells and crossing streets lit by orange glows from streetlamps – prancing from underneath cars.
When fall and winter come, the Tom cats will finnagle their way inside, bottled up until nect spring when the sweet smell is for for arrival – for the living – not departure. Memories, if we’re not careful, can pass as easily as the seasons come and go.
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Tags: Sunday
Last night, a storm blew in as predicted, but still with a sudden power that sent us scrambling to take hanging baskets, flag poles and other breakables down from the porches. In less than a minute, the picnic table was flipped omn its side and the saplings – and even more mature trees – were bending at the half-way point and about to snap.
This sudden flourish paralleled another recent explosion in my freelance career. An article I was supposed to write for Urban Times fell through last week, leaving me with an average-sized historic piece to write. I scheduled a few interviews and was crusing along when an unexpected assignment from a local arts-focused magazine, called Review, came through. Than, after accepting that piece, another Urban Times article was floated my way. Now, I’m back to my usual monthly alottment of three pieces.
Funny how it happens that way. When I thought I was in for a slow down, it tuns out I can actually expand my portfolio a tad. I’m trying not to think about all the work – the words – now. I’ll find them. After all, there’s a paycheck in it for me. It’s a lot easier to be ready for a downpour when you can afford a decent rain slicker.
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Tags: Rain, Review, Urban Times
I am parked out behind the old pizza place at 5:30, by a stained wooden privacy fence separating the parking lot from an Colonial style house with flaking paint. The fencerows in this neighborhood are overhung with greenery either for latent privacy or sound insulation from the highway.
The lot has been freshly laid and its black as tar, which draws the heat and aggression of the fading late-August sun. I have the windows rolled down but only the sounds seem to penetrate, no air and no smells – just cars stopping and starting, rubber wheels screeching on the asphalt, a motorcycle sputtering to life deeply and hollowly, all its noise reverberating on the fence and the pizza place. How many stoic people are on the road now on their way home to places with the workday ended, with home as a destination or even a goal for most of the day, but with this vague banality in them – not rejoicing, but instead shut down and or just reserved on the time they have for themselves?
Crickets in the nearby bushes sense the twilight and set in with music. What clouds there are in the sky are whispy and thin so the sun shines through and there is no temporary shade. How many of the people on the home now recognized the sky today or will later? Few if any. And in this place where existences not more than 50 years ago used to be so tied to farming and what happened with the weather isn’t a consideration at all anymore for most.
The spaces begin to fill up. A Buick pulls in with the windows down and the driver kills the engine and an over-loud radio commercial. Traffic has died down considerably and the wind with it. Above the fenceposts, the branches hang completely still. My mind slows down. I’m starting to sink into the relaxed front-porch-swing mentality, wise for my years and can see myself in old age commenting harshly about the kids that pass on the sidewalk – berating them for the clothes they wear and their stupidity for playing so close to the street.
As the vision comes to me, my wife approaches the driver’s side window with kids in tow and I look out into the parking and, for the first time this afternoon, see something familiar. We’re only five miles from our house, but this might as well be another world – parked out here at an hour when everyone seems to be going separate ways.
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Tags: Free Writing
Waking
Monday, August 25th, 2008
I make a silent vow on Mondays to appreciate every second of the weekend. This vow is made sometime after the alarm clock goes off or threatens to. When I roll over on my side and see the room beginning to warm with light and the shadows around the furniture and the pictures on the wall brighten. My wife’s body is warm and though it was decided by our unconcious minds that it was not comfortable to hold each through the night, we sometimes re-embrace at dawn or lock a leg together.
I lay there for some time in that warmth beneath the covers. This late in August the windows are slid open. The whoosh of early morning commuters passes by our house and I feel late, in some way, even if my job hours begin an hour or more later than the drivers’. My whole day begins as soon as my feet touch the carpet and I pull on my bed clothes that I leave within reach. I make several nominal attempts to fall back to sleep. I have neither the time nor the patience once the world is awake to go back down into a shallow, meaningless slumber.
Meanwhile the room gets brighter as do the prospects for the day. Dread of my day job isn’t an issue, it’s the real feeling of loss I have of something precious, the commodity of family time and the last moments before I leave them all for the day are like the last lines of story that, in the end, has no final fulfillment or redemption until late Friday afternoon.
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Tags: Monday
