I'll Get You New Novel (& Indian Music Video)
I woke up early this morning thinking I’d be productive and get some writing done. Then I sat at the computer for an hour tweeting, stalking random people on Facebook and looking up Indian pop songs with ‘supposed’ translations.
Man. What am I doing?
I’m working on this novel called “Tunnel Vision”. You’ve probably seen posts here. It’s killing me. The novel sometimes feels like a dysfunctional relationship. Like, if the novel were a man I were dating, I’d feel like, oh, I’m not smart enough or good enough or devoted enough to understand all the mind games. It’s making me crabby. What I need is some serious one-on-one time with the novel. Like a romantic getaway in a cottage somewhere, only there won’t be any romance or love oil. Just me staring at the endless blank space that is Tunnel Vision’s future and thinking “Good god…what on earth happens next.”
I don’t have time for love affairs with new novels, healthy or unhealthy. This was my day yesterday:
4:30 AM Cats woke me up by head banging against door and then jumping on me and biting my face.
4:31 I flung cat across room and then jumped up immediately feeling horrible saying “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
4:35 Fed cats wet food to assuage guilt.
4:36-8:00 Random things like packing the kids lunches, wiping noses, putting cough medicine in juice and then mixing it, fixed breakfasts, rubbed cats, worked on computer, took a shower, wiped more noses, struggled into coats, into car, then daycare and then off to work,
8:01-11:20 Graded papers, tried to look professorial, taught a writing class where the students basically just wrote and I pretended I was helpful.
11:30-12:40 Shoved a sandwich in my face. Ran to River City Studio. Recorded a webisode.
12:41-6:00 Drove an hour to Muskegon. Narrated for an audiobook for two hours where I tried to channel South Carolina accents and might’ve ended up sounding just slightly relaxed and/or drunk. Drove home.
6:00-8:30 Shoved a sandwich in my face. Went for a walk with a friend of mine and talked writing and relationships and why we do what we do, and when, like Rob Gordon in “High Fidelity” do you stop fucking around and commit?
8:31 End of day. Kicked back with Kealoha and watched Dexter AND Boardwalk Empire.
Where’s the time for Love Fest with “Tunnel Vision”. Hmm. It’s right now. And I’m blogging.
I’m going to conquer this novel. By God, if I have to dress up in a big old dress and wax all “Gone with the Wind”…this novel will not defeat me! I will go on, as god is my witness…I will go on!
But not today. Maybe…oh…I dunno…next week.
A Short Story--What I Want to Know about my Mother
This is a story that was published a year or so ago in "Kalliope" a journal for and by women. I think they're defunct now. At any rate, this is one of my favorites. I'd entirely forgotten about it until a friend of mine was digging on the site and re-earthed it. I like the poetic feel. Most of my stuff lately is comedic, but sometimes, I like the lyrical quality of words. I wanted, here, to write a story about understanding, and loss, and longing...and this is the result. Hope you enjoy it.
This is a story that was published a year or so ago in "Kalliope" a journal for and by women. I think they're defunct now. At any rate, this is one of my favorites. I'd entirely forgotten about it until a friend of mine was digging on the site and re-earthed it. I like the poetic feel. Most of my stuff lately is comedic, but sometimes, I like the lyrical quality of words. I wanted, here, to write a story about understanding, and loss, and longing...and this is the result. Hope you enjoy it.
Tanya
What I Want To Know About My Mother
I was conceived in the parking lot of Zaagman’s funeral home, because as my mom says, love, grief, what’s the difference? They both break your heart.
This isn’t something my mom tells me today, when I find her in Little Bo’s Bar, but a sort of mantra I’ve heard throughout my life. This was her response to everything, from when I broke up with a boyfriend, to when I broke my arm. Love. Grief. Love. Grief.
She’s probably repeating those words in her mind even now when she nods to the waitress and another cold beer materializes in front of her. It’s the nonalcoholic kind, but you’d never guess that by looking at her. She stubs out her cigarette, her one remaining vice she says, grabs a stick of gum from her front pocket and unwraps. My mother is a mixture of mint and smoke and coffee and something strangely sweet like frosting.
“What’s your obsession here with conception, kiddo? What’s it matter how you start?” She swigs the beer. Her lips are the color of white asparagus. Her hair is two toned—a foot of watermelon red with an inch of white roots.
I shrug my shoulders and stop looking at her. “College?” I offer as if this explains it. She picks at a cuticle. She doesn’t ask why I’ve come here, or acknowledge that we haven’t spoken in two years. She just cocks her head and I see her mouthing something weird, until I figure out it’s the lyrics to the music playing dimly in the background. Then I can’t take it anymore. I have so many things to ask her. Most of the questions begin with ‘why’. Why hasn’t she loved anyone since my dad? Why doesn’t she return my phone calls? Why won’t she come and see me in my new house, with Mike, with our dog, Annabelle? I can’t ask these things though and so I say, “What I want to know, Mom, is just something about you. Just…anything.” It’s like pulling a plum out of my throat.
She picks something from her teeth, studies it and then looks at me. She answers quickly, as if she’d been just about to tell me this spontaneously on her own. “Your dad had the sexiest knees.” She laughs, a short laugh, but deep, and something rattles in her chest. It’s another sign she’s dying. No doubt she’d say I need to get over myself and stop obsessing. “That was just like your dad,” she continues, smiling to herself. “Taking something funky like knees and turning them into something else entirely.”
I try to smile, but it just a thin line across my face. I’ve asked her one simple thing, to hear something about her, to know something concrete, and what does she do? She tells me about my dad. Over the years I figured out that the man she’s talking about, the one she calls my dad, was lying in a closed coffin the night I was conceived. The guy in the parking lot, the one who really gave me his DNA, was just his stand-in. She doesn’t talk about this either. The things she doesn’t talk about, the silence between us (as they say) could fill books. I can’t even fill a story with what I know is true about her.
Mom reaches for the bowl of nuts. “Want some?” she asks, and because I don’t know what else to do, I take one. Just one.
* * *
I know my mom is not dying from lung cancer or late nights; she’s doing the slow disappearance of the broken hearted. It’s taken her over thirty years to reach this point and I figure any day now she’ll be as good as invisible. I can guess that she hasn’t had a lover since 1994, and my mom is the type of person that needs loving. She wilts without attention. She’s wilting right now, right in front of me.
“You want to know Some Thing?” she asks and leans forward. She pronounces it just like that too: Some. Thing. And I nod.
Already my mind has spun on without her and this next part happens in no-time, meaning it happens not at all and only in my head: I say “Yes. Anything. Tell me just Any Thing.”
“I was a single mom, and I loved you.” This part I already know. The next part I’m surprised by. She continues: “That’s what you’re really looking for, isn’t it? Not something about me, but something about you. So there you go, there it is. You’re all right kiddo. Go on and be happy. You had a mom and she loved you and you still have a mom and maybe you’re not friends but you can’t have everything, can you?”
But that isn’t what I want to know at all, not at all. I want something true. And because this isn’t real, because in my head she tells me everything, all the details that will somehow fix me, she says, “Something concrete then. In 1976, you were three, and I worked at the co-op down the street from the Stone Shop, you remember, the place you’d go where the man, Arnold, would polish the Petoskey stones you found on the beach. He’d come over to the co-op, I’d put you in your crib, turn the closed sign and we’d go at it, in the back, standing between a tub of natural peanut butter and a garbage bag of carob chips. I never even liked that man, but he made me a nice necklace so I figured, oh, why not?”
In my mind, this is what my mother says, but today, in Little Bo’s Bar, when I grab a nut to eat, she tells me something different.
“I used to love zucchini. You can do a million things with it. Shred it, add some flour, it becomes a crust for pizza. Pour in a vat of sugar and you’ve got zucchini bread. Dip it in parmesan and fry it and you’ve got heaven. After your dad died,” she lifts her hands and opens them and it’s as if I can see a small, dark ghost the size of an apple floating away from her. “I haven’t touched the stuff. Makes me gag.”
I nod. I nod because this is what I want to know about my mother. I want to know that my mom loved zucchini once upon a time. I want to know who my mom was before Zaagman’s funeral home, and I want to know about my dad who was not-my-dad, and who was she before she decided that there was no difference between love and grief. It is my idea that there really is a difference between love and grief, there’s got to be, and it’s something fundamental, but I can’t tell her what that difference is. Love is a good thing, isn’t it? Love feels good. Right now, looking at her, not looking at her, I love her so much it’s painful. So much it hurts. She doesn’t seem to love me back. Instead of saying anything I just nod.
“You doing okay?” She works on her broken cuticle again.
I could tell her a million of my own things now. In my mind we’ve already had this talk a seventeen times. I could say; “Mike runs marathons and I’ve started running too, early in the morning, just him and me and our dog around the lake. It’s so quiet that the only sound is our feet hitting the pavement at the same time, to the same beat, and our breathing, perfectly the same.”
I could tell her what I really want her to know about me: Mike and I are talking of our future, of having a family, we’ve secretly already been trying to for a year, but nothing’s happened. Not yet, but I’m sure soon. It’s got to be soon, doesn’t it, because right now the only thing growing in me is a sort of ache, an emptiness that not even my love for Mike can seem to fill. I could laugh here. I could shrug my shoulders and say, hey, it’s no Zaagman’s funeral home parking lot, but maybe soon I’ll have my own conception story to tell. I could tell her I miss her and that maybe we’re not friends, but we’re something. Mother, daughter, that’s got to mean something doesn’t it. I say: “I’m doing fine.”
“Well, then, that’s good. Isn’t it. Doing okay. Doing fine. That should be enough.”
We sit. She finishes her beer. Reaches into her pants pocket, pulls out a five dollar bill, and leaves it on the table without saying goodbye.
* * *
I go back on my own.
Ten years, twenty, past the shoulder pads and hair teased into a tidal wave she wore in 1984, past the loom she warped in 1973 and never got around to weaving, past her blue party dress in 1961, the shiny one, the one she lost her virginity in. I pass my mother crying in the elementary school playground because her best friend told her she hated her, past her skinned knees and a broken tooth of her first really good fall on wobbly legs. I slink up the steps of the Ohio farmhouse to the place of mystery, where my mom’s mom rocks back and forth on the old iron bed thinking maybe this time she’d get pregnant, it is bound to happen soon. That’s the point where my mom starts. She starts with a wish that is both hope and fear, love and grief, whatever you call it. She starts with a yearning. An ache. This is the one thing I share with her. It’s the only thing I know for sure.
Me, Spouting Off and Being Grumpy
I was Mrs. Nice Girl when I was married: quiet, submissive, and just plain gray. Now, I just want to be Tanya: complex, colorful, quirky Tanya. So. Mrs. Nice Girl? Forget it. Forget it! Here’s where I find my voice.
All right, people, through this whole divorce, I have (honestly) been the kindest, sweetest I could possibly be. After all, I did the leaving. There are a lot of good reasons for my leaving. Really, really good reasons. Just ask my mom. And my sister. And everyone in my family. And my friends. And the mailman. And my lover. Okay, don’t ask my lover, he doesn’t exist, but you can ask the mailman. Leaving was good. And terrible. But right. You know what I mean.
And through this, I’ve said everything as gently as I could, I’ve used “I” statements, I went for joint custody because it’s better for the kids, I tried not to take any money or ask for too much support (I get $100 a month), and you know what? I don’t want to be Mrs. Nice Girl anymore. I was Mrs. Nice Girl when I was married: quiet, submissive, and just plain gray. Now, I just want to be Tanya: complex, colorful, quirky Tanya. So. Mrs. Nice Girl? Forget it. Forget it! Here’s where I find my voice. Here, P, is where I tell you the whole truth. Right now, I’m pointing to my ass, and telling you to kiss it.
Here’s my letter to you:
Dear P,
The other day you told me you were getting remarried and I thought, duh. Two weeks after I moved out, you were on Match.com. Two weeks later I ran into you on your first date, literally, with our kids, though we had an agreement that you wouldn’t introduce our kids to anyone we were dating. You said you weren’t dating. Two weeks later, your relationship was “Very Serious”. On Halloween, you brought your girlfriend and her kids and our kids into my house and I took a family picture of you because the kids wanted one. And now six months later, you’re getting married. Well. Yes. Good for you. That wasn’t enough though, you had to keep going.
Then you told me that you had a deep connection with your first wife, and with your new fiancée you have found a love you didn’t think was possible, and then you said you married me because you wanted kids.
So. I was right. When I told you I felt like you didn’t honor me or cherish me, when I felt like you just wanted a wife and a cook and someone to be a mom to your kids, I was right. And it’s nice to hear you finally admit it. You never took the time to know me. You never read my writing, you never wanted me to act. You wanted me to stay home and cook…and I did, because I thought that we’d have a good family.
But you were controlling and a general asshole, and now, I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry that you weren’t able to spend even two weeks alone before looking for someone to take over my role.
Last night, I had to meet your fiancée. She seems perfectly nice. Already she’s organizing your schedule, taking care of you, and now I feel sorry for her too. I hope your connection is real. I hope you haven’t misled her the way you misled me.
I’m tired of being nice. I’m tired of being a victim.
I met with a trainer at the gym today and he said: “Tanya, you’re doing a great job. You just need more confidence.” I wanted to hug him. He was talking about working out, but for me it meant a lot more. I need more confidence. It starts here. I release you, P. You never knew me. That’s your loss. Our kids will be great. I love them deeply….but you…you are a stranger to me and no longer have the power to hurt me. You took a lot from me in our marriage, and now, I’m taking it back.
***
Readers, I hope you’ll forgive my digression here, but sometimes, you’ve just got to tell the truth. The truth is, I am free from a really bad marriage and someday, sometime, I’m going to have the happiness I want. I wish this for you too.
Excuse Me While I Pontificate
Me, basically throwing a tantrum, going off on why love is easier for men.
My body hurts. I mean, seriously, all over, my body hurts. It aches. I can't turn my neck because there's pain. And my legs feel like they belong to an alien (District 9-like). Even my eyelids hurt. I know the trouble. I think it's a symptom of my heart. I mean that metaphorically. My cholesterol is pretty decent. I mean, I'm having trouble, still, with love. And the absence of it.
Now, yes, that's overly dramatic. I know that. I recognize it. BUT MY HEART HURTS!!
I very specifically have not written about this in my life. I'm teaching now and I'm divorcing and there's a whole host of other reasons. But because I'm not writing about this, I feel I can't write at all. Now, fuck it, it's time to put my cards on the table, lay it all on the line, dance the watusie so everyone can see my bad, terrible awkward moves.
Here's the thing: in May, I left my husband. There are a million reasons for this, but the biggest reason is simple: I wasn't happy. I wasn't honored. I wasn't cherished. And I believe that in a loving relationship, you should be loved, wholly, for who you are. I was not.
Since then, it's been wonderfulterrible. And now, with the paperwork filed and the custody with the kids worked out, I find that I am single again, and still, as I have been my whole life, in search of love. Now my ex is already in a fully-committed relationship. He met her June 4th and they're already talking marriage. Instant presto! Wife #3. I'm not bitter about that, exactly, just bitter that it was so easy for him. I have had two practice mini-relationships that have only bruised the outer edges of my heart. Why does it seem so much easier for men? Why can my ex simply sign in on Match and find another soul mate? Why can't I even get asked out on a proper date? Why, yet again in my life, have I heard the words: "You are an amazing person, Tanya, and if it were any other time in my life...."
Bollocks. That's what it is. It's all bollocks. (I use the English term here because they're so good at fun words that make you feel better.)
Love should be easy. It should be joyous. It should transport you out of your own life for a few moments into something magical. As each day passes, I remind myself that I'm doing good things. That who I am as a person doesn't need to be confirmed by someone else. Still, I want someone to look at me, only me, and be grateful I'm there. I want passion. I want conversations over dinner, nights at the movies or theater, I want someone to call me unexpectedly just because I am on their mind.
Maybe it's too early anyway. Maybe I just need to focus on my kids, my work, my life. Maybe I need to just watusi a little more in the privacy of my own home.
You can know what's good for you, but it doesn't make it any easier. Who really wants to eat Raw Food and drink kale smoothies simply because it's better for you. Being alone is probably a kale smoothie for me. Great for my heart. But what I want, what I really want right now is a donut. With frosting. And sprinkles. In short, I just want a little of everything. I don't think that's too much to ask.
You can now order Easy Does It
I'll post a few more chapters here, but if you've read Blunder Woman, if you like my work, one way to help out is to purchase "Easy Does It" by Tanya Eby on Amazon.
"Easy Does It" is now available to purchase.
I'll post a few more chapters here, but if you've read Blunder Woman, if you like my work, one way to help out is to purchase the book. Just check me out on Amazon by searching for "Tanya Eby".
And if you can't do that (money is money after all) then tell a friend about my work. Send them to my website, or have them buy YOU the book.
At any rate, thanks for your comments and support. Look for new projects coming soon as I get back into the swing of things and return to my writing life.
As ever...
Cheers,
Tanya
Playing With Myself---But Not In A Naughty Way
I'm starting to get that tingle again. Not in any sexual way, though I suppose if some Freudian were analyzing me they'd think it was exactly in that sort of way
I'm starting to get that tingle again. Not in any sexual way, though I suppose if some Freudian were analyzing me they'd think it was exactly in that sort of way.
Well. Okay. Maybe it is 'exactly that sort of way' too.
Here's what is happening: I'm emerging.
It's that simple. Something is changing in me and I feel like I'm just starting to wake up again. I don't want to go into too many details here, but I've recently moved into an apartment. It's beautiful. It's a wee bit vintage and a whole lot girly and it's mine. The kids love it too. Beyond that, something else is happening. I want to write again. I went for a run this morning, on my own, a cool morning where my arms felt numb. For the first time in a long while, new characters were introducing themselves. I was a bit annoyed because I was trying to run and it's very hard to focus on breathing when your mind wants to focus on writing...but I managed.
So. Something is changing, stirring, tingling....starting. And I feel like I'm starting to play again. To have a little bit of joy all to myself. There is one woman I met this morning (a new character) that I'm excited to get to know. Her story is a lot like mine right now, with a few notable differences: she's a lot better talking on the phone and she doesn't drool when she's nervous. Hell. Wait a minute. Now that I say that, I think she probably does drool when she's nervous. Well, maybe she's a blonde instead of whatever hair color I have. I don't know yet.
You may meet her soon. Apparently, she wants to be in a book called "Playing with Myself: A Femoir". 'Femoir' being either fiction/memoir or a memoir for the ladies. We'll see. And if she doesn't come out to play, I'm okay with that too. Because, yes, I'm having a whole lot of fun playing with myself right now.
You can take that to mean anything you like.
Cheers.
SciFi Story -- The Greening
y the sounds of the hooves on her gravel driveway, she counted at least five horses, though there may have been more Extinguishers on foot. Attracting attention during the Change was unwise, but she still wanted to see. Her smooth fingers parted the blinds less than a breath apart.
Here's something a little different. A scifi story I wrote last year. Let me know what you think.
The Greening
by Tanya Eby
The Extinguishers were coming. She could already hear the horses. ``It is Beautiful. It is Beautiful. It is Beautiful.'' Triva quickly whispered the mantra. Maybe she would believe it soon. Maybe it was even true.
By the sounds of the hooves on her gravel driveway, she counted at least five horses, though there may have been more Extinguishers on foot. Attracting attention during the Change was unwise, but she still wanted to see. Her smooth fingers parted the blinds less than a breath apart. There, by the barn, illuminated in the cool blue of hazard lights, stood a group of men clad in woolen grey suits, working with a crowbar at the door. The women, in the same woolen grey suits, held the torches. Now that The Greening was happening, she found she had to see everything, if only for a moment. She pushed the blinds aside.
One of them saw her and scowled. Triva could feel the quickening of her heart. Perhaps though the man was not scowling; if she were lucky it was just a squint. She recognized him. It was Dinesh Janpouri from three doors down, who used to design computer networks. Triva worried he would point her out to the others, but instead, once he knew it was her, he smiled and waved. It was a small wave, a wave of the fingers only, but still. There it was. There may have been sympathy on his face, but she couldn't be sure; his emotions were masked by the blue of the remaining lights and the shadows inching in around them. Triva was careful she showed no sadness. They both silently nodded their acceptance for The Greening, a time when they would lose all connection to technology and enter a world of darkness.
``It is Beautiful,'' he mouthed.
"Beautiful," she said. She wondered if either of them really felt that. Dinesh returned to his work.
A young boy standing near the men, hair cropped unevenly short, about eight years old, held the yellow and grey flag. Triva did not need to see the flag to know that it read: Return to Darkness! Return to Freedom!; and the omnipresent reminder, the words everyone in town had been repeating for weeks to prepare them: It is Beautiful. Triva had been saying it from the moment she woke up every morning, hoping that the truth of it would grow into her. Sometimes she thought that perhaps it had started to, but then she would listen to the coffee maker drip and think, ``Never again,'' and become very sad.
She closed the blinds and went back to her leather couch. She pressed the triangle on the cd player and adjusted the volume. She wanted to hear Van Morrison one last time. She wanted to hear him softly, barely a whisper, telling her that it was a marvelous night for a moondance. In this way she could close her eyes and imagine her husband Will in the kitchen, singing to himself as he spread rhubarb jam on his morning toast. It had been two weeks since his last toast, and Triva knew that eventually the remaining jam would go bad.
It was hard for her to picture Will in the fortress city he'd fled for, but Vegas was the closest one, and if you wanted to live somewhere still bright and humming, your options were scant. Probably, he hadn't even made it. Names of the Extinguished were posted all through towns and cities, drawn on printing presses with uneven lettering. Or even if he had made it, they probably hadn't let him in. Being college friends with a low-level city administrator was not going to be enough to get him in. If the Extinguishers had gotten a hold of Will, then he was at one of their Freedom Camps, marching, plowing fields, memorizing slogans and working until he was so exhausted he believed. She wanted to understand his choice, but she did not. It was so much easier to stay, wasn't it?
``I can't live like they want us to,'' he had told her on his last night at home.
``Neither can I,'' she'd said, ``but I'm going to. They say The Greening is just a transition. After that, it’s beautiful, Will. Maybe it is.''
``I suppose,'' he'd said, looking out the window at the gray afternoon. He wiped his hand across his brow as if trying to erase something.
"I have things to offer them," she'd said. "I can protect us. The Extinguishers are trying to learn the old ways from books, but I...we possess something infinitely more valuable. Practical experience. I can teach them. Winter is coming, you know. Everyone is afraid of the first winter of the New Life." He shrugged, and shook his head.
Will knew her secrets. He loved her rhubarb jam and ate canned peaches in December that were as sweet as July. Their table was covered with material she'd created. Triva thought he would stay. Not because he was starting to believe in the Movement, or was even willing to try, but because he loved her. He would stay. Of course he would.
"You already sound like one of them," he mumbled. Triva knew at that moment he was already gone.
When the time came, she would show the Extinguishers' her mother's things and what she'd learned as a girl. She would show them the canning jars and how to preserve their harvests. She would show them how to turn wool into thread with the spinning wheel, how to be careful to keep it even or the thread would clump in places and be thinner than a hair in others. She would teach them to warp her mother's loom that was now her loom, how to warp it so tight you'd think the threads would ring with music if plucked. She would teach them the difference between warp and weft, how to dye, how to tend. She would teach them how to survive in a world without light. But not yet. Power came from waiting for the perfect moment, when they needed her the most.
She was torn between admiration, sorrow, and fear when she realized that maybe her mother was right about Will. And if one-tenth of the rumors about the ultranew technologies percolating through the fortress cities were true, once he was living there his life would become unimaginable to her. Of course, there were no new technologies. Technology was dead, as dead as gods and goddesses, as dead as fairies and nymphs. Technology was a myth spontaneously invented by a despairing populace; the Extinguishers said it was so. So it was.
Triva hummed a little, but it didn't help her nerves much. She could still hear the cracking of wood as they tore the doorframe loose. How much easier it would have been if Will were outside instead of their neighbor Dinesh. This was just a pointless wish: the fantasy of a child. The world could not keep dreamers any more.
It was better, she thought, to keep her eyes closed through this, even though later, when there was no more light save the flickering of a candle, she would miss the electric glow. Maybe some day she would stop missing it. This was what the tracts all promised.
She breathed. The refrigerator hummed. Van Morrison sang, and her pumping heart accompanied him. Van the man. She would never hear him again. Something told her she would never hear Will again either, but she shook the thought away from her as if trying to warm a chill. It was sad, but this was not the kind of thing you could admit, not out loud.
How long would it take them to destroy a generator? Would there be explosions painting the night and burning for days, weeks, like they'd had in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles? Would they use explosives like they did on the White House? No. Of course not. Those were tools of technology, used before The Greening. Now, they would use something more in keeping with their ideals of ``getting off the grid'' and returning to a simpler, better life. In days past, revolutionaries used muskets, swords, even rocks, depending how far back you went in time. Crowbars and brute strength then, she thought. That's all they needed to turn the world around. And brute strength was effective.
All in all, it was a surprisingly quiet act.
A horse whinnied. The gravel crunched. And then there was the soft pop, like a gum bubble bursting. She opened her eyes in time to see the lights flutter and then go out. Van Morrison had stopped mid-song, but if she tried, she could hear Will's deep voice calling to her, finishing the last sad chords.
She did not light the candles. She simply sat in the darkness, listening to the ticking of appliances that would never run again. She listened to her own breathing and the sound of the horses and men marching on to the next house. After a time, she got up, walked blindly to her bedroom and thought, so, this is what it feels like to be free.
It is Beautiful. It is Beautiful. It is Beautiful. She tried to make this her only thought. Every time, it felt like a lie.
*
She slept. She did not know for how long because of the deepness of the dark around her, but when she woke, the world was purple either with dark setting or the dark lifting. It was peculiar not knowing which. She thought she should feel something beyond emptiness, but that's all there was to her.
Maybe it would take a while for her to feel the beauty. Her only other option was to bemoan what she still saw as her loss, and if she did this, she would live and die bitter. She lay in the corner to pet her cat, who didn't seem to notice anything different, and wait and hope for the beauty to begin, the return of nature and, with it, happiness. In her mind, Van was still singing. ``The leaves on the trees are falling...'' She prayed this singing in her mind would never fade, but knew that when some day she sang this song to her child, it would be in her own voice, not his. It hurt to think that, but she comforted herself that children seldom like the same music as their parents anyway.
The song went on, but it wasn't Van Morrison any more. It was Will, and Triva was stunned at how real the sound of it was in her mind. This was a rumor about the Beauty. When there was nothing electronic to turn the senses toward, they became more vivid, and that included the inner senses. It was starting already, and she stopped feeling sorry for herself long enough to be fascinated by the change, and to wonder how it would affect reading. So many dusty books in the basement. She would be spending a lot of time with them now. Maybe it would be all right.
``Triva!'' The voice was too vivid, startlingly so. She heard static, then distant beeps and muttering crowd voices, and the Will in her mind said it again . ``Triva. It's me. I'm in Vegas. Triva! Triiivaaa!'' More static. Then his bearded face started to form in her mind's eye, looking as frustrated as it always had when the TV or the computer would act up, and he was called upon to fix it. ``Is this thing working?'' he said, then another voice said something she couldn't hear and Will said, ``Oh, got it, okay, thanks.'' He looked down and did something, and there was a satisfying beep. In the lower left of her mental field of vision, bright flashing neon letters came into view: ``Message From: MGM Grand, Las Vegas, NV.'' Will nodded, and looked up at her with a look of intense concentration, smiling now but sad too. She thought she could hear a slot machine paying off in the background.
``Honey,'' he said. ``I made it.''
It was a dream. It had to be. But she was awake. Maybe this was a side effect of the stress of Blackout, the last mental spasm of her desire for all the things she would never see again: electric light, computer technology, her husband, fun. She had never been to Las Vegas, never especially wanted to go, and found it odd that this was the form her dying desires had taken.
"Triva," he said. "Hello? Hello?" He laughed. "Come on, aren't you glad I'm okay?"
Go away, she thought. You're not real. But he didn't seem to hear her. The look on his face was one of frustrated but hopeful listening. He scratched his beard, and looked like he was going to laugh. "You wouldn't believe this place," he said, shaking his head. "You'd hate it. Or you'd love it. I hate it or love it too."
Will! She tried to think it as loudly as she could, but he still showed no sign of hearing her. Wiiiiiiiillll!
His face started blinking on and off, and he said, "Crap. It's going to cut out. Triva! Damn it, damn it, damn it. Open this message! It'll give you instructions! Open it, and..." He said more, but the static was louder than his voice, and she couldn't make out one word, and his face was obscured with a fizzy wavering scrolling diagonals.. Then, abruptly, the sound and the hazy image stopped, leaving her whole field of awareness feeling eerily dark, moist, and quiet, especially her head. It was a relief, as if a dangerous invader had finally left her alone. She could hear and see and feel her body, the world, and a cooling layer of sweat between them.
She had a message. She didn't know she knew this, but she did. It was already stored somewhere in her mind. All she needed to do was feel around for it with her attention, and it would come forth. It would come forth. And with the message, perhaps Will, perhaps an escape to his new life, to lights and sound and comfort, perhaps it would all come forth. She would not have to sit in silence. She would not have to show the Extinguishers her knowledge. The loom, the canning, could sit and gather dust, and she would not help them. She would not help them go on.
Her house was quiet.
She had never known such quiet.
She walked out onto her porch and breathed deeply. This was what The Greening felt like. There were no more telephone poles or wires lacing the trees. No more traffic or airplanes. She could hear the birds and the wind as if the earth herself were breathing. Her life had become one of loss, one of ‘no mores’. She had Will, could feel his message rumbling in her mind, but everything else, everything she knew was gone. With the loss, though, came something else. Something new. A quickening within her. A thrum. An energy.
She closed her eyes. She thought deeply, wiggled the message with her mind until for a brief moment she saw a flash of red in front of her eyes: MESSAGE DELETED. And then slowly, as a flower unfurling in the first rays of the sun, she felt her mind shift and the words floated out of her as if someone else were speaking, as if they were words born from her, for her, and she said into the cool morning "It is Beautiful", because it was.
A Recipe for Flaming Turtles
Light the Liquor, Swirl the Flame...
