journeymanwithpen

[journeymanwithpen]

You can’t foolproof life, because life is made of fools.

— random thought.

#life quote #foolproof #thoughts #amwriting #writing

[journeymanwithpen]

Mom I never really knew

Dying is a messy thing. I keep learning new things about my mother, post mortem. I learned that she was compulsive obsessive; that she documenting everything in writing. That she kept every receipt of every bill she ever paid. That she kept diary, and did her own budget and accounting. That she had letter-written correspondence with her friends. That they fought in letters. That friendships which lasted for decades were destroyed in only a few choice letters with a few evil words, betrayed confidences and a few dangerous lies.

I’m swimming through the pieces of mom’s broken life, getting to know the mean and unforgiving side of her. With every new letter, with every new revelation I wish I never found it and never read it. Still, I keep going through the mountain of folders, envelopes and documents. Because, some of it may be important. Maybe ALL OF IT is important? Maybe that’s who she really was? Maybe that’s why she died so alone?!

And maybe I never really knew her.

#writing #amwriting #thoughts #mom #mother #death

[journeymanwithpen]

Wrote a quick but painful memory to my blog where the memories are stored…

Mom

A small figure retreats in the rearview mirror. She stands in front of the long ramp for disabled which leads to the entrance of the Old Age Home. The woman is clad in a light blue jacket, slightly too big. It hangs from her hunched shoulders like a poncho someone mistakenly put on her. Snow-white hair trembles a little when her head moves in minuscule bird-like moves, following the disappearing car. Her hands, which arthritis slowly turned into claws over the years, clutch handles of a faded white purse, pressing it to her stomach like a precious treasure. She is already too far behind to discern if she’s crying. And, although she is where she wants to be, she looks lost. Lonely. Abandoned and left behind like a well used broken piece of furniture.

The last image of mother replays in my head on an infinite loop. We will talk on the phone after this scene. We will fight, badly. We will stop talking for too long a time. Then, we will resume our phone conversations. Tentatively at first, carefully dancing around the dangerous topics. With time, it will resemble the conversations we used to have, the teasing, the complaining, the lecturing. Even the laughter. But, we will never see each other again. And on that late afternoon in May neither of us knew it. The car vanished in traffic and the figure turned slowly and laboriously made her way up the ramp, until she was swallowed by the double swinging door of the building.

#amwriting #writing #memories #memoir #mother #mom #leaving #ageing #old

[journeymanwithpen]

Dad

— Your first memory is of a broken leg? — she asks. Her eyes are smiling, though the rest of her face isn’t.

— Not a broken leg, — he says. — The pain. Maybe that’s why I remember the whole thing. Because it hurt so much.

— You never broke anything else?

— No. Never broke any other bones. Had a few dislocated joints, but that can’t compare. Actually, now that I think of it, it’s probably because I was so young. That was the worst pain I felt until then. Later, even if I had similar breaks, I’d be more used to the pain, I think.

— Tell me about your dad, — she says. Now her lips are smiling, but her eyes are weary. She was leading him to this question, he knows. — You never talk about him.

— There isn’t much to tell. He was a drunk and a wife-beater. A coward. They divorced when I was 12. By then he was in jail for a year. Frankly, we spent so much time hiding from him, that I can’t honestly say I knew him. Nor that I missed him. Not then and not since.

— What do you remember about him?

— Just bits and pieces. Mostly embarrassing, violent and drunken stuff. Come to think of it, I don’t have a wholesome memory of him. Neither good nor bad. Isn’t it sad? — he sighs.

———

People who knew my dad always told me I look exactly like him. They meant it as a compliment, I think. It always made my skin prickle. If there's one thing I DIDN'T want in my life, that's to be like my dad. Mom said he was handsome, but even if that's true, I didn't want HIS handsomeness. You think it's harsh?

My memories of him are fragments, shards of a picture painted on a glass that shattered down a long stairway. Some fragments are sharp and clear, some are so broken they reveal only a detail of something unrecognizable. Some are lost forever. And some are swept in a trash can, discarded, but still there. None of those fragments I'm keen on revisiting. Sometimes, though, they surface unbidden into my consciousness and cut into me with their sharp edges.

Like this one: a door at grandma's house. I stand in a darkened corridor with stone tiles. It leads from the entrance past one room, then turns in the right angle to the right, past two more rooms and ends up in the kitchen and dining area. It has no windows, the only light comes from the rooms when the doors are open, or a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling wire at the corner. Whatever light seeps into the corridor, it's never enough. To my 4-year-old self it's an ominous place. The naked stone tiles radiate chill that somehow settles around my heart and chest. It squeezes hard so I can barely breathe. Usually, I run through that corridor in full sprint and slide into kitchen. There's a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, it keeps the whole area warm. Plus, it always smells of bread or sweets grandma makes. And there's a large window looking onto the yard and grandma's garden. It's a nice, warm place, in a stark contract from the corridor leading to it.

In this memory though, I am standing in the dark corridor, outside the kitchen. I'm facing the door of the bedroom I share with my parents. Dad just slammed the door into my face. He and mom screamed at each other in the kitchen and he dragged her inside by her upper arm. I tried to follow, but the door's locked. There were a few shouts from the inside at first, but now it's only sounds of slaps, like someone clapping, but really slowly. Each is followed by a wail. I don't need to see to know what's happening inside. Mom is crouching in a corner. Dad is bent over her, swinging his giant hands and slapping her head. Mom's trying to protect it with her hands, but he always finds the exposed parts. I'm crying so loud, my whole body hurts. Grandma is telling me something, but I can't hear her. She's always on dad's side anyway. She's his mother, after all, always ready to justify his actions. She bends down to bring her face to my level. There's concern on her face. My legs are going numb. I can't breathe. Still, I wail. Grandma looks at the door, hesitating for a moment. Then she glances at me again and makes up her mind. She bangs on the door, slaps it with open palms. It echoes like shots through the corridor.

— Open! — grandma screams — the child is blue in the face! He's not breathing! Open!

The slow clapping inside stops. Heavy steps approach. The door unlocks and opens. Dad looks at me, puzzled. Mom squeezes by, crouches in front of me and wraps me in her arms. Her eyes are red and wet, her both cheeks purple and one eyebrow is raised on a freshly swelling bruise. Yet, she consoles me.

— Shush, — she says, running her fingers through my hair — mom and dad were arguing a little, but we're okay. I'm okay.

She's not okay. We're not okay. We won't be okay until they divorce, but that's 8 years in future.

#amwriting #creative writing #fiction #short story #storytelling #first memory #father #abuse #alcoholic

[journeymanwithpen]

The first memory

— Happy birthday, — she sings. — What would you like to do today?

— Thank you, Love! — They kiss.

— I don't want anything special, — he says — It's a day like any other.

— It's not, — she insists. — It's your birthday. And because of that, it's special!

— I think we humans are drunk on our own sense of self-importance, — he says. — We like to mark everything, but in fact all we celebrate is ourselves. It's quite pathetic, actually. Birthday is an anniversary of someone's coming to being. It's a folly celebrating that I existed. Now, if I knew exactly how long I have on this Earth, that'd be a completely different story, then I’d celebrate how long I have left. As it is, we all burn our wick, but none of us know exactly how long the wick is. We have our little birthday celebrations to mark how much of it we burned. Let’s celebrate any other day, a good day spent with you, for example.

She watches him, smiling silently. — Tell me about yourself, — she says.

— What's to tell, you know everything, — he says.

— I want to know who you were before me.

— Ah, — he sighs — you want a story.

— Always.

She nestles on his chest and pulls his arm around her shoulders.

— I already told you all I can remember, — he says. — My recollection is fuzzy, I can't separate what really happened from what I wished to happen.

— That's alright with me. That's why we call them 'stories'.

---

What's your first real memory? Not the story about yourself told by the parents or relatives? Nor the moments frozen in old photographs from the time before memories? The first thing you were aware of as a kid?

Mine is of a summer before I started school. A clear, warm sunny day. It must have been warm because I remember wearing shorts and a short sleeved shirt. I was riding a bike, the small green one my dad brought from Italy for my birthday. Everybody else had a "pony" - a locally made bicycle with low, U-shaped frame which folded in the middle and had horn-shaped handlebar. My Italian bike was special, if for nothing else, then for not being a pony. The model was Julia, proclaimed in stylish bold letters along its metallic-green frame. Even its name sounded better, I thought. It was smaller than a pony, true, but also lighter. It had the horizontal bar from the seat to the handlebar. It also had a slightly better chain and pedals size, which made it speedier. I liked to ride it fast, although for 6-and-a-half-year-old everything faster than walk seemed fast. That day Pop, my best friend, and I rode around the building where we lived, an ugly 5-story rectangle with four entrances and a facade made of corrugated tin panels. He had his old, slightly rusty blue pony. Pop was half a head shorter than me and even though I wasn't much more than sinews and bones back then, I was the larger of the two. Naturally, that meant I was stronger and faster too. When we tired of chasing each other in the same old circle, we ventured on the parking stretching to the side of our building. It was out of sight of our parents who occasionally glanced through the windows to check on us, and therefore forbidden.

Pop lagged behind, showing off in front of the girls from our building who liked to congregate at the parents' blind spot too. I could tell he was trying to catch some girl's eyes by the way he constantly blew up a light brown fringe of hair that always hang over his forehead. I sped up and made a swift turn at the end of the parking, then pushed the pedals hard heading back. Dean rode his pony in the middle of the parking coming toward me. Dean was a boy from the building across from ours, two years older than me, a tall, skinny kid with thick-rimmed glasses. He looked down at his pedals and rode straight at me. I moved all the way to the curb to avoid him, moving fast. When he finally looked up, he jerked his bike, handlebar wobbling toward the curb right into my path. We collided in a tangle of limbs, bicycle frames and wheels. I fell on the curb. It was a pretty high one, built that way to keep the cars from parking on the grass. The rest of us - Dean and both bicycles - fell on top of me. If you ever had a naughty spill, you may remember that the first moment after it happens everything is kinda hazy. The sound is muffled and the picture is out of focus.

I was dazed from the collision. Dean quickly jumped on his feet and pulled the bikes off me. I remember pulling my legs under me to try and stand up. And I remember the pain like I never felt before, nor after. I screamed.

Dean's glasses were askew. He was panicked by my howling. I don't remember if he said anything, my brain was a fireball of pain and my lungs and throat were working independently of it, creating a wail in decibels that could cause hearing loss. I remember Dean's forearms hooking in my armpits from behind, trying to help me on my feet. But, it couldn't work,because my right thigh developed an extra joint. It was bending in a weird angle right in the middle where it shouldn't have bent.

A woman who lived in the ground floor apartment under whose windows we crashed appeared in a rush. She shooed Dean away and took me in her arms. My legs hung over her arms, the left one bent in the knee, the right in the new joint in my thigh. She carried me toward the neighborhood clinic which was only a couple hundred yards away in another building. Her every step caused agony of molten lava shoot through my thigh. Days later, Pop told me what was happening outside my fiery bubble of pain: the woman shouted at the kids to call my parents. Pop rushed to our apartment and told my mother what happened.

In the clinic the woman put me on the bed. The nurse in charge called the ambulance. With my legs laid unmoving on the bed the excruciating pain subsided slightly, giving me a respite to catch my breath and whimper down from full-out screaming to sniveling. That was until the nurse had a strike of genius and decided to tie my legs together. As soon as she pulled my broken leg to align the knees together so she can wrap a bandage around them, my world exploded with pain all anew. By the time the ambulance arrived, although I was later told it was only minutes, I was so drained and afraid of more pain, I didn't want to move. But, move I did. Or, rather, moved I was - onto a stretcher and into the ambulance car where I tearfully pleaded with the driver to watch for the potholes because each one he hit felt like a hammer slamming into my broken femur.

In the hospital I was promptly taken to X-ray, then into the surgery. My part of the drama was almost over, at least the most painful part. A man in scrubs told me they have to make me sleep. He asked in kind, soft voice, would I prefer the needle or the mask. I haven't quite grasped what he meant by "mask," so I said needle. He turned to a small tray next to the bed and took what looked to me as an enormous needle, like the ones they used on horses. I called him in trembling voice and said I'd rather have a mask, whatever that was. He smiled kindly, put a rubber cup with some kind of hose attached to it over my nose and mouth and told me to count slowly to ten. I don't remember how far I managed, but it wasn't to ten.

In the meantime a parallel drama was happening outside the surgery. Mother was pulling connections, people she knew. There was a female surgeon from her hometown who owed a favor to grandparents. Mom called her on it. They discussed the available options - the usual procedure called for a surgery to insert a metal plate that'll screw together the broken parts of my femur. That was going to leave a long, ugly scar along the side of my thigh.

— There's another thing we can try, — dr. Metzger told mother — but it's risky and you'll have to take the responsibility for the outcome.

— What's that? — mother asked.

— It's a clean break, the bone didn't fragment and there are no visible damage to the muscle tissue. We can try to set the bone under the X-ray and plaster him in a really long cast.

— Okay, — mom said — what are the risks?

— The risk is that the bone can move after we set it. The first two-three weeks he should be completely immobile in bed. And we won't know the result until then.

— But there'd be no scar? — mother asked.

— No scar, and no cutting. Just a very long cast from his chest to the toes of his right leg, — dr. Metzger said. — But, you have to decide right now, because he's already put to sleep.

— Okay, — mother said after short pause — do it. Please!

---

I woke up in the cast. As promised, it wound around my torso starting under the ribs and entubed the right leg. The only opening was for the toes. I was held in its grip for the two summer months. It came off in the early days of September, just in time for the first day of school. The first week of the school I walked on crutches. It made me special, I guess. But, that's another memory, for another story.

#amwriting #creative writing #fiction #short story #storytelling #first memory #broken leg #hospital

[journeymanwithpen]

Clot

I sit here, staring at the blank screen for over an hour. Writers write, I was told. Every day they write. Some days words flow like a river in spring. Some days they trickle like drops from a rusty faucet. My faucet, however, seem to have developed a total blockage. A clot of some sort which blocks movement of thoughts and ideas.

Clots are popular these days, everybody talks about them. Today is April 18, 2021. The world is living in corona virus pandemic for over a year. Vaccines are developed to fight the virus. The world is still trying to figure out how to organize proper vaccination. Richer countries are already jabbing their citizens left and right. The not-so-rich countries get the scraps of the vaccines, the leftovers from the rich ones. They vaccinate those in power and those who are close to those in power. Same old cycle of corruption, omnipresent since the first human developed the first coherent thought. Some of the vaccines being distributed may cause blood clots. Those clots do to the body what my creative clot does to my writing process - they block the flow of blood and oxygen and nutrients to where they were supposed to go. So, some patients suffer more or less dangerous blockages which can lead to burst blood vessels and stroke.

It makes me wonder what happens to the ideas that are piling up inside my internal, currently blocked faucet? Will the pressure of all this unexpressed thoughts and emotions burst through the pipe and flood my mind? Will I be able to stem the flood, or will I drown under the weight of my own creation? What if such overstimulation causes a short circuit somewhere inside my mind and I turn into a vegetable?

Actually, this is an indecent thought. Why do we think vegetables incapable of coherent thoughts? How could we ever know? Just as we don't know what people who suffered strong trauma and are lying unresponsive - yes, like vegetables - actually really going through inside their mind. Maybe they too have a clot somewhere between the thought and the body. Maybe they think the same as we do, or perhaps even better, since their brains are not busy dealign with bodily functions and movement? And, who's to say that the carrot you chopped in your meal today didn't have a thought of sort coursing somewhere between her orange root and green leaves? How can we be so absolutely certain it didn't? Weren't we humans just as certain not so long ago that the world is square and we can fall off it if we get too close to the edge? What I'm saying is - we've been wrong before. We've been wrong more times than we've been right about pretty much everything: world, life, sky, space, heaven...

Maybe, in the end, the ones we call vegetables, the unresponsive ones, the ones with the clot between their mind and their selves, maybe they found a different dimension where they are sorting through all the thoughts that short-circuited them into their current comatose state? Maybe clots are nothing to be afraid of, at least those creative clots?

See what happened? I broke through my creative block, I de-clotted my mind by writing about the clot!

#amwriting #blood clot #creative process #writers block #writing #thoughts

[journeymanwithpen]

“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They’re journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.”

— Neil Gaiman

[journeymanwithpen]

Cheat

I'm on a writing streak - trying to write minimum 500 words a day. Usually it's much more than that, but there are days when five hundred is all I can milk from my hazy brain. Of course, all those words, all that consistent effort is supposed to go toward the story I'm currently working on. Except that sometimes - like yesterday - I just couldn't get back into that world I created. Maybe I was troubled by a dream I wasn't supposed to remember? Who knows!

So, I cheated. Instead of continuing my story, I wrote a Tumblr. Still, it's 500 words created where none existed before, so it must count, right?

#amwriting #writing streak #writeblr #writers on tumblr

[journeymanwithpen]

I dreamt of her

I never ever dream, period! Or, if I do, I never remember the dream when I'm back in the waking world. But last night's dream I remember.

It felt oddly real. Although, the fact that she looked the same as 25 years ago should have been a clue. Maybe my sleeping brain decided to erase the last quarter of a century. I wish I dreamt a mirror so I could see if I was the dashing youngster of that time, or my oldfarty self of present day. I didn't feel old in the dream. But then, I never do.

We were riding in a car. I was driving, she was riding shotgun. Her bare feet were on the dashboard, her short dress - white with tiny squiggles of indiscernible pattern - rode up to her hips. Her legs were naked, toes wiggled freely. She looked like she was enjoying the hot summer drive to somewhere nice. Her side window was open, elbow stuck out. Wind tugged her auburn curls and twisted them my way, carrying her scent to my nose. Even though I don't remember such scene, we've travelled so much in the past long gone that it may well be a memory playing out. Then it turned weird.

"Have I told you I'm married?" she said.

That must have been reality sipping into dream, I think. In the 25 years since I last saw her I never googled her, but I'd think someone with her appetite for romance, men and sex wouldn't stay single all these years. However, on our many car rides neither of us was married.

"No, you never mentioned it," I told her in dream.

"Does it matter?"

"Not to me," I said.

She threw head back and laughed. Then she put her legs on my lap. Her toes were small but flexible, like monkey's. She could move them like fingers - separate them and wiggle, show the "devil's horns" and even drum them on the dashboard. I wouldn't have been surprised if she could write with her toes - she could certainly hold objects. On lazy evenings in front of TV she'd pass me the remote, or a pen, once even a bowl with peanuts, all with her toes. And now those toes were kneading my inner thighs, making my temperature and heart rate rise. It was getting harder to focus on the drive. Her toes were moving steadily upward when I woke up.

My dog stood atop the cover between my legs and scratched my thigh to let me know she needed out. Maybe that's how I remembered the dream.

It just proves that dreams are evil. I have been wondering the whole day why did the ghost of my distant past come to haunt me. After decades, I found myself wondering what her life was like since she walked out of mine. And all this time I thought I didn't care.

#amwriting #writing #writeblr #dream #creative #romance

[journeymanwithpen]

Need to keep your behind clean? There’s an app(liance) for that!

https://twitter.com/techinsider/status/1355743688568176644/video/1

Everything you need to know about bidet - to keep your backside clean, add the French touch! 😁

Did you know it means “pony”? It’s because you’re meant to straddle it while using.

Check the video for some fun facts (and “brownie” points).

#fun facts #asswashing #cleaning #bathroom #french #European #interesting #bidet

[journeymanwithpen]

To fart or not to fart, this is a question! 💨

#quote #farting #thoughts

[journeymanwithpen]

Zzzzzz

It's World Sleep Day

Log off.

Go back to bed.

[journeymanwithpen]

Yokel

It’s the word I’ve been using a bit too much lately. I can’t help it.

Here’s what it means (officially):

: a naive or gullible inhabitant of a rural area or small town — by Merriam Webster dictionary

a stupid or awkward person who lives in the countryside rather than a town, especially one whose appearance is in some way strange or humorous: He plays the country yokel in the butter ad. — by the Cambridge English dictionary

Some days - actually, MOST days it feels like I’m surrounded by yokels: the guy who always leaves his motorbike right outside the gate of my yard (I told him at least five times to pull it up one length and leave it beside the wall, NOT the gate. He smiled, apologized, said ‘of course’ and the next morning I found his bike blocking the gate just the same); the flyers delivery boy (who’s really not a boy, but an old fart over 50!) who sticks flyers into the door shutters or ornaments in the fence, so that they fly everywhere at the slightest breeze, covering the neighbourhoods in paper (I guess that’s why they call them ‘flyers’); thousands of drivers who live in this godforsaken urban pimple on the skin of the Earth and who park their cars on sidewalks, so that everybody - able-bodied, wheelchair-bound, moms with prams and everyone else - has to wad into the traffic to pass; those in charge of the large and wonderful park-forest near the center who bemoan people littering the paths and the rest of the park without even once thinking of placing some trash cans in the park (there are a few near the entrance and exit, but almost nothing for miles in between. In some more civilized places not inhabited and ruled by yokels, people may carry their trash to the nearest trash can, but that’s NOT HAPPENING in the yokelland!); and so on.

As you see, Yokel is the word which has the right amount of absurd, ridiculous, hilarious and idiotic to enfold it them all. Plus, it sounds ridiculously funny.

Hope you’ll like using it too!

#yokel #word of the day #writing #amwriting #bumpkin #stupid #vocabulary #dictionary #words

[journeymanwithpen]

"The ruling of the dumb people can't be overcome because there are so many of them, and their voice counts as much as ours"

— Albert Einstein

(Even truer today, don’t you think?)

#quote #life quote #quoteoftheday #einsten #aphorism #wisdom

[journeymanwithpen]

Knowing when not to talk is as important as knowing what to say when the time comes.

#thoughts #quote #amwriting #writers on tumblr #writersociety #writer #life quote #musings #wisdom

[journeymanwithpen]

An Ember in the Ashes

Confession: I love a good read on my run. Every morning, quite early I put on the running tights barely appropriate for a man my age and I lose myself in the rhythm of my feet on the path, wind in what’s left of my hair, but most of all I lose myself in a story. An app on my phone reads me a book. For many weeks, my companion was amazing Sabaa Tahir and her quadrilogy (is there such a word?) “An Ember in the Ashes”. It’s a fantasy series, so if that’s not your cup of tea, you can stop right here.

It’s so packed with action, every chapter a cliffhanger. It’s full of magic, war and, above all, love. It made miles (or kilometres) pass too quickly. It made me not wanting to stop running, just so I can hear what happens next.

It’s one of the best running stories I heard in years. But, whether you listen on your feet, or read it under a comfy blanket, trust me - it’ll keep you going.

#reading #books #literature #lit #recommended #goodreads #fantasy #storytelling

[journeymanwithpen]

Conflict

It seems to be so easy to answer fire with fire - an inconsiderate remark with rudeness of my own - it’s wonder we don’t fight all the time. Maybe harsh tone invites the like in response.

In truth, by exercising a little restraint, we can answer with humour and defuse potential conflict before it starts. It’s in us, the power, the magic to choose battle or love.

#quote #thoughts #musings #conflict #fight #peace #wisdom #amwriting #writing