A simple shift in mass, that is all that it takes to rock forward. The curved wood leans with me. It leans until the two tips meet the ceramic floor. I pause for a moment, to feel the cold surface gripping, sliding against my toes. Soft linen wisps against the hairs on my flexed calves. When I tilt my head upward and touch my naked scalp against the smoothed backing of my chair I am always pretening some grand illusion, of falling backward, downward as into a pit with no end, a boundless motion in one direction. But no. This is only the twin brother of forward motion, a negation of my former momentum, so that inevitably I remain seated in the same place. This, my home.

Protected: Fiction: On Buttons That Go Beep.

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Kicking It.

Yesterday, I spied a blue soccer ball on the lawn rectangle between the asphalt and the sidewalk. I thought about stealing it, kicking it, ignoring it, when, from behind me, somebody called me, “Hey, dude!”

While reflecting on the declining manners of pre-adolescent boys–to whom I am neither mister or sir–I turned. I saw a group of boys holding onto the chain linked fence.

“Pass us the ball!” They call. Not an imperative mood, mind you, but straight up command. But I decide this is not the time or place to go “ghetto” on these kids. 

I pick up the ball, check my right and left, step into the road, imagine a glorious parabolic arch over the fence, over the heads of the kids. I imagine most of them having to run back to fetch the ball, maybe one or two left at the fence, an incredulous, gaping look on their face. I punt the ball over the fence.

The wrong fence.

It bounces once, hits a silver van on the side door, then continues bouncing about in the parking lot. The boys run over to the parking lot, checking under cars for their ball. One, maybe two of the kids are still left clinging at the fence, and I swear I hear a snicker or a giggle, depending on the gender.

I don’t know whether to feel sad for the loss of a time when I could punt that ball well neigh twice or thrice as far into the air, or whether to feel sadder for the reemergence of a time when I would get in trouble for kicking balls into cars on accident.

I shrug, and walk back to my apartment.

devil

mama says to dance is the devil

so I look for him

at the hall

to the brass

in my squeaking shoes

 

papa says the devil’s

in the shaking hips

and parted lips

so I look for her

in the caresses

under the sheets

 

I say the devil’s no verb

no noun

and I look for it

in the adjectives

and adverbs

 

be gone, be gone, be gone

The Crazies.

Today, during my lunch break, as I relaxed into the plastic backing of a booth at El Pollo Loco, I started reading a novel over my chicken carnitas bowl. Because of the general din and chatter of the lunch hour, I missed a call on my cell phone. I noticed this as I walked out of the restaurant, yellow book wedged under my armpit, sweaty cold Mr. Pibb EXTRA in one hand, cell phone in the other. 

208. An unrecognizable area code.

A sharp intake of nitrogen rich air. A swelling of (false?) hope at the bottom left quadrant of my heart, the resultant pumping a mixture of both caffeine and excitement. My Asics threaten to speed, and I intentionally slow them down, sparking internal dialogue:

“Alright buddy, don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Shove it.”

“No, seriously, if it was a school, they would leave a voice mail.”

Dialing voicemail. No messages.

“See? Dork.”

“Shut up, you want us to get in or don’t you?”

“Of course I do, but that doesn’t mean believing in an unknown area code. It’s probably just a wrong number.”

“OK, dumbass, how many wrong numbers have we had in the past month?”

“…”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I’m not going to let you ruin this prayer walk because of some unidentifiable number.”

So I walk slowly back to my apartment, trying to curb wishful thinking and preserve my sanity. Back home, I take my computer out of sleep, and google the area code. 

Idaho. 

What the fuck. 

But I don’t give up. Now that I’ve given in to my insanities, it continues to prod me. Maybe… So I google the actual number. Yes, it is in fact a man in Idaho. Fun fact #1: All of Idaho has the same area code. I don’t recognize the man’s name from any of the memorized faculty names at all the schools for which I’ve applied. Now I google the man’s name, to look for connections. I find a professor at Penn State with the same name. A surge of blood flows through my being. Computer Science. Shit fuck shit fuck (morse code for damn). 

Still, Penn State. That’s closer than some average dude in Idaho. Maybe… But now I realize just how far I’ve strayed from “hopeful MFA applicant” to “hopeless motherfucker” (and I envision Samuel L Jackson calling me this with a greasy fro). 

The likelihood that this number has any bearing whatsoever on my standing at any of the schools for which I’ve applied is close to nothing. Still, I cannot but help feeling that maybe it is some big, seemingly random event which appears to have nothing to do with anything, but still, somehow, is a kind of sign. Like maybe it was God accidentally giving me the first number to the winning lottery ticket. As in, maybe that crop circle really does spell my name in first century Aramaic. 

I am not, by nature, a superstitious man. Yet, during this process of applying to schools, I have questioned my motives, looked for signs in the heavens, thought about my karma rating, checked my spam box for a google script misrouting my important “YES YOU ARE THE MOST WONDERFULEST WRITER WE HAVE SEEN AND WE WILL PAY YOU TO COME TO OUR SCHOOL, YOU ARE MOST ENTHUSIASTICALLY LOVED BY US, HUMANITY, AND THE UNIVERSE” acceptance letter from UC Irvine. 

And if this whole process has neither been a validation or rejection of my writing ability and/or talent, it has still been an overwhelmingly clear affirmative on the presence of a tribe of Crazies living in straw huts inside my skull.

the present

It is not lost on me, of course, that this should be happening, now, during Lent. 

It is also not lost on me that His suffering should envelope mine, and me.

The worst part of writing with profanity is I will have trouble reading it as a bedtime story for my kids.

Clovers and Rejection

Yesterday, during my sandwich creating process, I saw a very strange thing. As I drew my hand ouf of the plastic bag of the prewashed spinach, I saw a thin, greenish line. I picked at it, uncertainly, half-expecting it to be a strand of leprechaun hair. In fact, it was a clover. 

A three leaf clover in my prewashed spinach. Wonderful. 

The closest feeling? Getting rejected from Iowa. Sure, if it was a four leaf, I would have taken it as a sign that I would get accepted from Irvine. But as it stands, no luck, no news.

No sanity.

Do

It is an ironically imprecise, indefinite word. After all, if the word is to connote some concrete action, such as placing both hands on the ground and lifting your torso and legs into as straight of a gravity-defying line as possible, then why does it have surprisingly little action of its own?

If you try to just do–I mean do-singular, do-standing-in-the-corner-bobbing-its-head-to-the-song-sipping-highly-colorized-punch–you will be hopelessly confused. Even doing nothing requires another word to make it clear.

Yet we insist on asking people this cliche phrase with this hopeless verb in it. For example, maybe you are taking a  hunched-shoulder puff of fresh carbon-monoxide with a dash of bitter tar next to a fellow smoker and you tip your cigarette ash and make brief eye-contact: “So. What do you do?”

I find that this has become an increasingly difficult question the longer I live and the longer I pursue things that are among the outliers of human experience. Especially writing. Writing is that strange “do” that isn’t quite a “do” at all. You sit down. You string words together, and sometimes they fit together quite nicely and you give yourself a smug little smile and sip on a lukewarm can of flat Dr. Pepper. Other times, you are, in fact, playing a game on your computer or flipping through a novel you’ve already read before and didn’t particularly enjoy and pretending to write. But over time, you write something, and then, maybe you have a lucky break and all that “do” that was previously nothing suddenly materializes into something. 

Applying to MFA sucks, because not only does your “do” feel even more useless and un”do” than ever, now you are waiting for somebody to confirm or deny that your “do” is, in fact, a piece of nothing pretending to be something. 

The craziest part? You have a sneaking suspicion that even if everybody tells you what a piece of shit your writing is (or rather,  it isn’t a piece of shit at all, but can you blame us if we can’t accept everybody because of limited space and money?), you are still going to sit there and continue to do nothing because you are one of the accursed group of people who is destined to be a writer. 

It’s a small comfort, at least, that you are not alone:

“When I was older, I decided that getting a rejection slip was like being told your child was ugly. You got mad and didn’t believe a word of it. Besides, look at all the really ugly literary children out there in the world being published and doing fine!” –Octavia Butler

Dare I say it? I apologize Mr. William Gibson, but I daresay I believe she’s talking about your ugly children.

Breathe

Ever get so nervous your heart feels like it’s rolling like a ball?