20140530 Working on Frankie's books
Send a check to ELLEN! Water tomatoes, R'dale
Sriday, May 309, 2014, 4:31 PM I am out for a short walk, 15 minutes, because Graham is making Tacos. Ellen and Warren came over and the house was a disaster, but I didn't do a single thinbg to clean because2 I was working on a book for Frankie called Frankie goes to Three Rivers which I got free, except for the postage, because Rob sent me some coupons.
Ellen and Waren came over, I guess I said that, and Ellen brought Millet and bird treats for Rocky and clothes for me, not all of which fit, and which I did not ask her to do. 2 had to be sent back because they were too small. None of them were things I exactly would have chosen for myself, but hey, I don't have to shop for them. Still, I'd rather choose my own clothes. They were old lady clothes which I guess is apporpariate since I'm a old lady.
I don't feel like an old lady, well I guess I do, in some ways (being fat and tired), but I do LOOK like an old lady. Does that mean I have to act like one?
It's another perfect day--too bad I spent almost all of it INSIDE. That would have been a good rainy day project, but tomorrow is my birthday and I didn't want to work on it on my birthday. And tomorrow was the deadline for the book. That is, the coupons expire tomorrow.
Sunday, there is a party at KT's. I need to get a few things but I don't know when I will be able to do that. I'm brining a salad and also some poems.
7:25 PM I am out on my second walk. Graham made tacos and we had coen chips with them and I ate too many and feel bloated and icky and don't want to walk. I want to vegetate. Sleep.
I think I will try to write 55-word stories for some context in California because it appeals to me.
Saturday, May 31, 2014, 3:43 PM Black River, my birthday, in flower, Blck locusts, pink "locusts," wild geranimum, columbine, false solomon's seal, Mayapple, white tillium almost etirely gone by (pink remnants), some daisyfleabane-like flower singles, buttercups, jack-ib-the-pulpit, blue phlox, garlic mustard, tower mustard, dames rocket, celandine poppy, (or celendine, look up--small yelow flowers), winter cress, wild ginger, painted turtle laying eggs, deer skeleton, nannyberry
Monday, June 2, 2014, Rita's birthday. My fibro is pretty bed. I had a bad night as a direct result of bad food as direct result of going to a party at KT and Jef's. I should avoid parties because I haven't got the willpower to avoid foods that make me sick and now I feel pretty wretched That fermented cabbage may be making me slightly healthier, but it is not protective against sugar and white flour and chocolate. It may take weeks to recover, plus of course we went out for my birthday. I'm at the highest weight in yera, maybe, also. I'm sad, depressed, angry, low energy, enraged, furious, hateful. The person I hate the most is myself.. For eating food that makes me sick.
I also feel angry at Keith for not listening to me, but that's not fair because I m not always a good listener either. BUT HE is TERRIBLE listener and it makes me feel he doesn't love me or care about me.
That makes me angry at him. So I am angry at both of us and feel sad and cut off.
Wednesday, I am meeting with Dawn McDuffy and need to bring some poems and Wednesday night I have my fiction group and need to have a story ready, and I ahve neither ready and my piece of shit computer is acting like total piece of shit.
Which reminds me, another thing that upsets me about Keith is that he didn't get me a card or a gift for my birthday, nothing. He did take the day off from work, which cost him a lot, both financially and emotionally. And he took me out to eat (at a crappy restaurant, but that wasn't his fault.). Still, I feel as if some kind of gift would have been nice. This is a secret resentment, because he does so much for me that I can't really complain. But I am angry and sad even though I shouln't be and then I feel guilty for angry and sad.
I hope he's not having Demntia. I feel very stupid right now, because of being without any Sleep ar all past 2:30 AM!
What I need to be doing is writing a story. But I am tired and stupid and have no ideas or energy or enthusiasm for anything.m
Ironically,, I wrote and ecstatic poem this morning.
I sure do not feel ecstatic now..
It's looking like it might rain. It's overcast and windy and hot.. (82)
II could write something Wendy Wyatt, Private eye.
I could write something about one of my own dilemmas, but I feel as if I've beaten them all to death.
WOW! The wind has redoubled itself and is really strong. My plan was to walk to Rolandale, water the plants, walk home via Village Market and buy food and walk home with it. That's more than an hour and ten minutes of walking not courting the store, but if it's raining, I won't want to do that and will hve to trying calling Keith for a ride, which I'd rather t do.
However, I may not even make it to R'dale without getting wet.
A bunch of black kids with cars are farting around at Balduck and one kid is riding with his butt in the sunroof and I'm adfraid the kid driving will take off too fast and the other kid will be injured.
I keep writing about people unlike me in places I've never been. If I can't afford tor esearch these things, I need to write about people more like myself in familiar venues. I can't just pick up and go rafting down the river.
I can't write as a black or half-black person because it's been too long sonce I worked with them and I cannot reproduce their speech, which, by the way, has changed anyway. Or the Detroit version is somewhat different than the inner-city Syrcuse version or both. Why do I want to write about those things. I should write about Gross Pointe, Detroit, Syracuse, Baldwinsville, Idaho, California (years ago).
I could write about hiking and meeting someone on the trail.
I am almost to Rolandale, not the house, but the street. There are sirens blaring from the nearby hospital. I haven't gotten started on a story yet, and it's prety much almost too late. I've only got 2 1/2othree blocks to go. First, though, I need an idea that resonates for me.
There's a firetruck down a side street. Gumball whirling.
I could try rewriting the Dial M for Murder stry, which I've already written mltiple times, so I'd need to reimagine it. Nobody knows Dial M for Murder any more. Although it's still a cool title.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014, 3:11 PM I am walking toward R'dale. I'm going to get my exercise and download my new story which kind of sucks, but I have my fiction clas/group tomorrow night and during the day, I have Dawn at the DIA so I can't work on the fiction clas.
So what is it exactly that sucks about the new story, which is called "In the Grave of a dog"? Wahat sucks about it, for one thing, is that there's no resolution with Jakob Kensen, and maybe not enough tension. It feels more like the beginning of something longer. I could have Also what siucks is that we do not know who the people are that Lily (?) finds. Or how or why they are killed.
I wanted her finding them to be a surprise. But the proble. with the whole thing is that Lily is a kid and not a hacker. She no access to the process once it gets underway.
I could make the protagonist an adult or cop so we could follow it through. So I could follow it through to a resolution. One problem with that is that I dont' know much about cops. I mean, like everyone else, I've read books about4 cops. I could make stuff up, but I'm not comfortable with that.
I started, obviously, with the mound behind the garage at Roldnadle, which I imagine to contain dead dogs. I am trying to think how I might reimagine the story. If, for example, the skulls are several months old, why would Jensen choose that particular moment to take flight Maybe he returns. The timing of his return, were he to return, would be crucial. If he returned while the cops were there, he would probably run. If he returned while Lily was there, she could be in danger. Being in rel danger could be--well--dangerous for Lily and there's have to be a way to keep ehr safe. I don't want her to die. If Jensen returned just before the cops got there, that might seem a little too contrived.
Another thing is, maybe Jensen did not ill the people. Maybe he's innocent? maybe e's not actually a bad guy. But this is a short story. At least for now. In a short story, there cannot be too many characters and complications. If Jensen didn't do it, who did, and why? And why are they in his back yard?
I am walking along Balduck Park watching them haul trees and Keith rides up on his motorcycle. I kiss him. His lips hot. He is wearing his motorcyle jacket. He says my lips are cool. I forget to stop my watch, so runs while I am talking to him. Meanwhile, a siren. Probably an ambulance headed for the hospital. Now I can see it coming, flashing lights. I run across Chandler Park. There it goes.
I meet several groups of black people walking on the sidewalk, but as I approach, most of them walk into the street.
Yesterday, when Keith got up, Graham was sitting on the frot porch smoking a cigarette. We were out in the yard photographing the flowers Heidi sent me, and we notice a "trampled" lookin area in the pachysandra on the front garden. Later, Keith discovered vomit. He hypothesized that Graham came home drunk, pass out in the pachysandra (maybe without a key to get in the house, and then woke and comited (or vice versa). Because of his DUI and R &O, he's not supposed to be drinking. But he's drinking, smoking, and probably doing other things. I keep smelling something that doesn't smell like cigarettes.
* * * * END regularl Journal ERJ $$$
* * * * Begin 55-alive 1
Pebble Hole
It was a small pebble that dug the hole in the limestone, deep and narrow. A kid Sasha knew had died there, and they'd closed that part of the park. But Sasha had made a bet She'd be the firt girl to dive from the cliff. They went in before dawn Sasha and the witness. She wasn't drunk. Pebble hole looked so small and far away. She could die for a dare. She leaped, aiming. Wind. Water. Life. He'd caught it on video. Wanted to up the ante. She wanted to live.
Well that's probably more than twice as long as it should be.
*
After Ed died and Pebble Hole closed, Marin agreed to be first girl to dive from the cliff. At dawn, the hole seemed too narrow, too far down, too far out. Jon pointed his video cam. Marin hesitated, kicked off, dove. Wind. Impact so hard she thought she'd missed but rocketed deep under water. Air?
It's imperfect. But 55 words, I believe. I counted them by hand.
*
Adaptations
Ralf held Fred under the water in the back of the school pond, calling him "Frog Boy" because of the webbing between Fred's fingers and toes Thalidomide. Fred held his breath well. He'd been praticing. When the bell rang, Ralf ran in and Fred stood up, dripping and covered with leeches. Perhaps leeches were tasty.
* * * *
Tiny Lee latham and Taming Uncle Beast old stuff from last file:
* Uncle Beast notes
One thing I noticed when rereading earlier segments of Beast is that when Beast abandoned Tiny on the Island, he left Killer with her, but it was so long before I wrote the next section that I had Killer with him. Need to fix that. (One way or the other!)
Another thing is that there is no clear story-;ine. I need one.
* 222
from last file Taming Uncle Beast
My point about all this is that while you could meet good people and bad people anywhere, yr more likely to meet anothoer Bugs at AA or Al-anon than at Church or school. And if that's not PC, I apologize, and I keep saying I'm just writing to you, but if you want me to post stuff on Cowbird, maybe I should revise it?
*
So I tell Trey, Harmon and Jake my story about Bugs and they listen quietly. And I also tell them my theory about AA and Al-anon being a possible den of iniquity, and they laugh, and kind of agree. They understand, thank goodness, what I mean. I don't mean to be offensive. And I don't mean they--Jake and Harmon--are bad. I think lots of people who go there might be innocent. Well, probably no one, at Church or school or anywhere, is totally innocent. But mostly innocent.
* New
It was one of those quiet days when nothing was happenig. Real life is not as exciting as a novel. We were drifting down river, Jake was steering. I'd been talking a long time and was still sitting on Harmon's lap not thinking anything of it. He was comfortable, like an old pair of jeans, but he wasn't old, not for me. I mean, that sounds wrong. All I meant was that I just met Harmon, he's almost a stranger, and he still feels comfortable.
Jake told Trey to take the tiller and got out some of the bread and baloney he'd picked up at the store, I guess with some money from Harmon. When they were getting (whatever it was?). Baloney is like not my favorite food, but it's cheap and Jake likes it. He didn't get any butter or tomatoes or lettuce and the bread is that squishy wonderbread stuff that little kids like. Only I never did when I was little, and still don't. But Jakes slaps a couple peieces of baloney between two pieces of bread, and another and another and a fourth and then we're all chowing down. And it ain't half bad. You know, I mean it isn't. Them other people, I mean the other people with me aren't writing memoirs for their English teachers and they are talking crude--not crude, exactly, what do you call it? Not dialect, either, really, but casual, (). And I start talking the way they're talking. Sometimes, I forget when I start writing to not speak in ().
Here's the weird thing. None of them are stupid or uneducated. I mean, Trey's in high school (?), like me, but he must either come from a good family or have good teachers at school and pay attention, or both, because he doesn't sound like he's from hicksville, and neither, of course, do Jake and Harmon. I mean, I guesss there could be uneducated preachers, but Harmon isn't one of them. So I don't know why they're all talking that way, maybe for fun, maybe mocking out the rednecks at ().
The thing is, it's catching, and I find myself repsonding in kind and then it leaks into my writing.
I finally get up off Harmon's lap when Jake docks up at a fallen tree and we take turns wandering into the woods for a quick pitt stop, or as they refer to it, a piss stop. (I like Pit stop better.). By taking turns, I mean they all go first to "check things out and make sure they're safe" and then I go by myself. When Harmon gets up, he kind of hobbles at first and I wonder if I put his legs to sleep sitting on them, but in a minute or two, he's fine, and he doesn't complain.
*
We're in church in (). I've got the mini iPad disguised in one of the hymnals. But I'm not going to write much, because I want to hear what Harmon has to say. I am sitting between Trey and Jake in the back row. I wanted to sit in the front, because of my ADHD, or lack of ability to remember to pay attention. That's why I always sit in front in class, front row center. I don't want to get distracted by kids passing notes and whispering and texting each other and sleeping and doodling in their notebooks and stariing out the window. I really want to get good grades so I can get into a good college and hopefully get a scholarship. A lot of kids think getting good grades is uncool. I don't usually mention it out loud to most of the kids, but I actually like school, like learning new stuff. Okay, I'm weird.
(Darn that cowbird thing, if you have the other kids reading what I write they'll know my secrets.)
Speaking of weird, one of the other Cowbird members is having a "Weird Party" on Cowbird, which means we're supposed to write something weird. I guess I just did. Liking school and research and homework and writing papers and taking tests is definitely weird to most kids I know. So, yeah, I'm weird.
Other ways I am weird include my not liking certain kid foods, like hot dogs, water melon, PBJs, and liking other oods that most kids I know don't like like liver, spinach, bean sandwiches (everyone makes fun of them), meatloaf sandwiches.
It occurs to me that my beng a "whisperer," even though I'm really not exactly a whisperer, is pretty weird. At least most everybody things it's weird in a good way.
Martin says one of the reasons I make a good whisperer is because I am more empathetic than most people, especially kids my age. I think being empathetic is not necessarily a bad thing. For one thing, people talk to me. They tell me stuff because they know I'll listen. I can keep a secret and I don't gossip. And because of that, I have more friends than most of the other weird kids at school. I have friends in every group of kids. I'm not popular, but I sometimes get invited to popular parties.
I am trying to think of ways I am not weird. That's a lot harder! One thing is that I attempt, to some extent, to dress like the other kids, because I don't want to be too wierd. I wear jeans and flannels in the winter and jeans and T-shirts in the summer. That makes me fit in more with the boys than the girls, though, cause I mostly don't like fashions, with very few exceptions. In fact, I just plain don't like girl's clothes. I hate stuff without pockets.
I was wearing my hair in braids right up until the end of eighth grade. Then I got my hair cut and styled like everyone else. I hate it and am growing it out again. It's such a pain to take care of. But it's pretty awkward right now. I hope by the end of the summer that it's grown out enough to put in a pony or tiny braids. Right now I am using little hair clips to keep the too-long bangs out of my eyes. I look pretty stupid, which makes me sad because I think Trey is really cute.
* * * * end Taming Uncle Beast
* * * * Begin the Grave of a Dog TGOAD ^^^
The Grave of a Dog
Some kids know what they wat to be when they grow up, pursuing their interest with single-minded dedication. Some kids flounder around with no idea what they want to. Me, I wanted to be several things, and none of them seemed to coordinate into a single carreer objective. I wanted to be a veterinarian, a marine biologis,a natural history museum educator, a private eye. My father wnats me to be a chemist. My mother wants me to be a teacher. That way, I could have summer off to spend with my imagianry kids.
I'm too young to think about kids yet. I'm only fifteen. But I may have narrowed down my carreer chocices.
The people across the back fence raise Jack Russel (?( terriers, otherwise known as pit bulls. Their yard is fenced in with cyclone fencing ahich is then further divided into dog pens and dog runs.
I also noticed, early on, that they hard erected security cameras and motion sensor lights. I took to watching the and notived people coming and going at odd hours. I had to be careful how I watched them, because Jakob, the main guy there, gave me the stink-eye when caught me peering through the fence. He gives me the creeps.
Once when I was walking by the front of his house on my way to Sarah Bailey's, he told me to keep out of his yard. I wasn't even thinking about him, I was thinking about the coupons Mom gave me so that Sarah and I could get half price ice cream. So I looked at him like he had too heads and he came toward me with his eyes slitted and said, "If you know what's good for you, you'll steer clear of Jakob Jensen."
"I said, "Fuck you," which is something I am most never say, at least not aloud to an adult..
Jakob isn't that much older than I am. Maybe 19, 20. He wear his pants so low his skinny butt hangs out and he wears icky muscle shirts and his hair in a mowhawk. It was pink and green, but he let it gownout, so now it's dirty blond on the bottom and faded pink and green on the top. He wears converse all-star hightop sneakers,which I know because they are just like mine.
I saw him bury a couple dogs, and I figured out he was having dog fights, must have been in his basement or else somewhere else, 'cause they weren't in the yard and his house is pretty small. He buries the dogs like at 3 AM using headlamps with red filters on them, turned to a low setting. He had started out with all five dog pens full of dogs, but the numbers kept diminishing.
My Mom gave me a book called How to Make a miniature Museum, which she got when she was kid. I had this idea of doing an extra credit biology project making a miniature museum of labled skulls and bones. I found a squirrel skeleton at the edge of the park and a really cool turtle skeleton at the edge of the pond, and thought, when I saw Jakob out burying another dog, that could dig up the dog and assemble its sketelton as part of my ongoing Maniature Zoo. Mr. Carbanaro has been putting my finished pieces in the glass display case in the scince wing lobby. A whole dog skeleton would be like a crowning glory. I asked him how long I should wait before I dug it up, and he said a couple months, so I thought I'd work on it over summer break. He told me that I could continue working on special projects with him, even though I finished biology and will be taking chemistry next year.
So, imagine my delight and good fortune, when early in June, I saw Jakob Jensen packing a couple of his dogs in the dog cages in the back of his pickup truck, along with camping gear and two coolers of food and a big backpack of clothes and a bunch of other stuff. He took the last two dogs, so there would be none to bark at me at three AM.
I had been making a careful study of the situation. The dogs were buried behind the garage, which was separated from the houseand back farther in the yard. The security cameras and lights were all on the house, but I was pretty sure that if I approached from directly behind the garage, I might not be detected by the motion sensors. and if I dressed all in black and stayed in the shadows, perhaps I wouldn't show up on the video surveilance.
I decided to use a stepladder as a style, like in fairy tales, to quickly climb over the cyclone fencing. I was going to haul my father's sprinkler over the fence and set it on the burial mound to soften the dirt to make the digging easy. I had a tarp to lay the sod on so I could replace it as it was. And a couple pails of dirt hidden the bushes in case I needed it to bring the mound back up to the the way it was before I started.
When my alarm sounded under my pillow, I reached under it and turned it off. Then I went back to sleep and didn't wake up until dawn. Okay, truthfully, I didn't actaully wake up until Mom came to get me for school.
When Dad came home that afternoon, he found the step ladder were I'd hidden it behind the sweet syringa bush and put it away in the garage. He also took the sprinkler head off the hose and did something with it, because he wanted to use the hose to wash the car.
After my parents went to bed, it took me a long time to round up everything I needed again. I figured why wait until 3 AM? There were no lights on in Jakob Jensen's and no lights on at our house, or any of the 4 houses on either side of us, even though it was only 11:15. So I put my plan into action, starting withdressing alll in black and hauling all my gear to the spruce tree at the back fence behind our garage, which is closer to the fence Jakob Jensen's.
erecting the style and watering the mound. The security lights did not come on, so I thought I ahd eleuded the motion sensors.
I had some gunny sacks to put the bones in (that's what Dad galls the bags we get bark-a-mulch in, but he says real gunny sacks are cloth, something called burlap, not plastic) and I hauled those out from under the sweet syringa and put them in my backpack.
When I tried to set the step ladder up over the chainlink fence, it turned out to be more difficult than I imagined. The metal brace holding the two parts of the stepladder together folded over the top of the fence so that the ladder dangled 2 feet above the ground with its steps slanted in such a way that could not place my feet on the flat step portion. Instead, I had to jam my feet at the stop edge on the stnted steps, which was made more difficult but the swaying of the ladder and the fence behind it. I almost fell several times going up and did fall trying to come down on the other side.
and when carefully began cutting the sod (grass) over the mount in squares the size of the blade of the shovel.
It was more difficult than I'd expected. I'd even practiced on a small patch of cour own grass ahead of time. But under the grass, I felt springy resistance and something like rocks. The shovel kept claning and something hard no matter where I put it. Finally, I peeled up some of the grass and found bones, right under it. Big bones. Bigger than I expected. And a skull.
I'd spent a lot of time studying photographs of dog skulls and palpating Rusty's skull to see what it feels like. Rusty is GRandma's Irish setting. I know that the pit bulls had a different shaped head, but what I was scraping clean with a trowel and brush did not look like any kind of dog skull.
Suddenly, I let out a small shriek. I am not a shrieking kind of girl. I clapped my hand to my mouth and looked around, but no lights came on. I held my headlamp close to the skull and then quickly brushed the dirt back around it, pulled the sod pieces from the tarp and patted them down. I folded everything back up as quicky as I could and ran to the fence. I heaved the gear over the fence, ran abck to make sure I had not left anything, picked up a few clops of dirt and tossed them under a liclac bush, scrambled over the step ladder and dropped down on the other side. Getting the ladder back off the fence turned out to be more difficult than I'd anticipated, but I finally got it down, with a few big scratches from the wores on top of the fence. I dragged everything up to the house and put it away as quickly and quietly as I could.
Then I went inside and took a shower.
"Lily?" my Mom called through the bathroom door, "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, Mom, I just got my period and neeeded to clean up," I lied.
"I thought you had your period last week," she said, vaguely, sounding sleepy.
I got out of the sower, toweled off, and slipped into my nightgown. "Go back to bed Mom, everything is fine."
She looked at my face. "Are you sure? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Maybe I have," I said. And then I told her. She got my father up, after I'd barely started.
"Are you sure?" my father asked.
I nodded solemnly. "I was trespassing," I said, "am I going to get in trouble? What if I get killed, too, for telling?"
Dad's sister is married to a cop, Tony, and that's who Dad called. "What do we do?" he asked.
And then there were sirens and gumballs. Flashing lights and flashlites. I wasn't sure what the rush was. The skull I found had been dead a while. A few hours one way or the other wouldn't make much difference.
We walked over there and stoof outside the police tape while they took the bones out. Not one but two human skulls and five dog skulls. And bones, all mixed together on the tarp.
There was a lot of radioing, and somehow Dad found out fro Tony that Jakob Jensen had fled the country, driven up into Canada. In his basement, they found pot lights, special lights, Tony said, for growing marijuana, set up in a windowless room. And they found drug paraphrenalia, and a dog-fighting pit. And blood. Blood stains on the floor.
I told Tony about my science project and he said he might be able to get the bones for me later. Not the human bones and skulls, he explained, but a set of dog bones for my project. They had to be checked into evidenced, examined, photographed, and so on, but eventually, they would be disposed of, and I might be able to requistion them. Tony said he'd make the effort to get a set for me, considering the tip.
I had my bioogy final, with no sleep, but I still aced it. Then I told Mr. Carbanaro about the delay in my science project and the manhunt for Jakob Jensen. He said he had acquired a human skeleton from China, all in pieces in a box, and I could put that together for him if I wanted. I asked how the person had died, and he didn't know.
"What if he--or she--was murdered, for sale?" I asked. "That would be terrible." I was thinking of human trafficking, of kidnapping. I also thought of Jakob Jensen, free somewhere in Canada, and hoped he didn't come back.
"You're probably all wrought up from your grisley discoveries," he said.
"Okay," I said, "I'll assemble that skeleton, but I am going to research where it came from, too."
