Tag Archives: creativity
Two
Two names entered my thoughts while I absentmindedly looked out of the study window — William Jennings Bryan and Sarah Palin.
There’s a new story in my thoughts but I’m held back by the desire to protect my social heritage and family ancestry.
And, boy oh boy, I wish I was more inclined to spellchek and grammatically-cirrectarian my blog entries — I guess I know that language is alive and well-worth butchering in realtime.
Earbud, ‘ear, phone, come ‘ere
She couldn’t remember the first time she killed one of her new friends because she had never stayed in any one town long enough to make old friends.
Everyone was a new friend to her.
As a traveling nurse’s aide, she frequently moved from one community to another, her belongings easily fitting into the eight-passenger van that had been willed to her by a former homebound patient, the only time she allowed herself to be connected with a murder victim.
She didn’t think in terms of killing and murder. Those were just the words she knew that the law used to describe what she did.
She had renamed herself Chromcalsia in community college, a trick on the chrome calculator that her boyfriend at the time had, a relic of the presmartphone days that he proudly carried around with him.
But when people asked her where her name came from, she told them it was the name of an ancient queen in a videogame that her mother loved to play and no, she didn’t know the name of the videogame.
Chromcalsia looked at her schedule for the day — a roster of lonely old people virtually locked into solitary confinement in their homes, no visitors except for the occasional physical therapy assistant and nurse’s aides like Chromcalsia.
Her first few months on the job, in a small town outside Lincoln, Nebraska, had been the best and worst.
She loved the smile that beamed at her after she walked into a patient’s house, having used a hidden key in a fake shell or fake rock next to the backdoor as instructed because the patient was bedridden or confined to a special recliner.
She wished she was talented enough to write down the patients’ stories, tales about fighting in wars, raising children in strange environments, inventing new gadgets or their observations about world events that happened decades ago but the patients recalled as if it was still happening, their demented thought sets out of touch with reality, calling her names like Doris, Ann or Sylvia because that was their daughter’s name or their granddaughter’s name or a niece or the nice nurse who tended their wounds in a foreign war.
She saw a lot more women than men.
She enjoyed them all.
She didn’t enjoy the bad side of her job, realising through vital sign measurements and smells that the patient was dying a long, excruciating death, with no one to provide daily comfort to help ease the pain.
Chromcalsia was not allowed to visit patients for social visits.
So, she spent as much time as she could during her official visits to find out what each patient wanted most of all.
Besides companionship, the number one wish was a quick, painfree death because the world was falling to pieces and the patient couldn’t stand to see the local community so devastated by a global meltdown.
Chromcalsia had tried to convince her first patients that the world was a wonderful place but it didn’t work — either their thoughts were so fixed they couldn’t process her view or they just couldn’t accept that a wonderful world would put them in such miserable conditions.
Having come from humblest of humble conditions, what her community college boyfriend called the slums, Chromcalsia laughed to herself when her patients, with a telephone, a clean house, cable TV and home healthcare, would say the world was going to hell. She learned to nod her head and agree, providing verbal affirmation of what the patients wanted to hear.
As an experiement one day, she texted a note in a patient’s file that went straight to the physician assigned to the patient, requesting extra pain medication.
Chromcalsia could not pick up the prescriptions for the patient but she could administer the medication when she was in the patient’s house.
She arrived to see the patient in extreme pain, moaning and begging Chromcalsia to end her misery.
Chromcalsia was scheduled to visit the patient three times that week so the first day she doubled the patient’s pain meds, doubled that again the second day and on the third day she convinced the patient that the remaining pills in the bottle had to be taken the next day.
The patient was so delirious that Chromcalsia was surprised he remembered what she told him.
Back at the office the next week, Chromcalsia was informed that one of her patients had unexpectedly died of a drug overdose.
She smiled to herself, knowing she had helped a man do what he wouldn’t have done for himself, his body emaciated from multiple surgeries to repair gastrointestinal damage from a roadside bomb.
Chromcalsia talked to other nurse’s aides about what happened, feeling around to see if they had done anything similar.
One or two stated out loud that they wondered if their joking suggestion to a patient to end it all had led to a drug overdose.
In every case, none of the aides had been suspected of foul play, the overdose taking place days after their last visit.
That sealed the idea for Chromcalsia.
From then on, as she moved from one town to another, she decided which patients of hers were in the worst shape and assisted them in finding a peaceful way to die to prevent a more horrible ending that their medical conditions indicated was waiting for them.
To keep suspicion off of her, Chromcalsia planted the idea of assisted suicide in the thoughts of her coworkers, who in turn planted the idea in their patients’ thoughts, half-jokingly.
Enough patients understood in their delirium what they were being told that they followed the instructions told in jest, statistically taking the heat off Chromcalsia.
Chromcalsia made sure she never financially benefited from her patients, leaving town whenever a patient mentioned leaving her something.
The passenger van was the one exception because the patient made the statement in front of Chromcalsia’s supervisor on the day of Chromcalsia’s first visit with the patient. She thought he was joking. The supervisor later told Chromcalsia the patient told the supervisor that the next nurse to come help him was going to get the vehicle.
Chromcalsia did not fantasize about herself being an angel or anyone other than the kind of person she wanted to know when she was at death’s door without friends or family to quietly assist her comfortable exit from this world, no matter how wonderful it really was.
Dozens? Hundreds? Chromcalsia thought for a moment but wasn’t sure of the count. It wasn’t her goal to meet a number.
She parked the van in front of the office building. Two days off before she’d start looking for a new town, spreading the love and joy that had surrounded her from birth, her mother telling Chromcalsia as a toddler, while her mother was dying of stage four breast cancer, that she was a special child whose very presence was what dying people wished for, a magic elixir, a sedative that made dying worthwhile.
Chromcalsia was going to spend the rest of her life living out her mother’s image of her.
The enchanting rustic automata and ‘organic mechanic’ of artist Blair Somerville
Modeling models in modules, modes and nodules
Giving the Creative Arts Department free rein is not, I remind them, the same as giving them free reign.
Free rain, on the other hand, is fine in limited quantities.
Today, I stopped by their cubes, covered in bubble wrap so they can throw books at each other just to duck and hear the “pop, pop, poppety pop” of compressed air escaping through sheered plastic sheeting.
I asked for an update.
After two weeks of work, this is all they had to give me:
Umm…I’m not prone to violent outbursts except when I’m prone to violent outbursts.
Concentrate…ommmm….meditate upon the nothingness of the universe…remember I’m not paying them anything…the Kickstarter campaign will help them recover their costs…IF THEY ACTUALLY PRODUCE SOMETHING TANGIBLE!
Okay, on to other projects. I’ll let the Creative Arts department know I’m serious by denying them more than four mochalattafrappaccinocarpediem drinks a day.
Or should I double their intake to 24 a day?
Decisions, decisions!
The best leader doesn’t have say a thing to get his underlings to do his bidding
They say a true leader is a coach. Rick is neither — he’s a storyteller who compels his readers to follow their own path to whatever they enjoy the most — pain, bliss, or painful bliss or blissful pain, numbness, joy, they choose it — whatever they do, they’re accomplishing Rick’s goals without knowing it.
That’s a true leader — Rick is the best mob boss in the business.
Think about that the next time you kill someone or steal in the name of justice — you just did what Rick told you to without question.
Mob bosses have different hobbies.
Rick likes to dance.
But Rick likes to dance with his girlfriend — let him make you jealous one more time.
Modern yet classic
Lyrics are everywhere for the two of us, you and I — to Abi and her beau:
Don’t you worry there my honey
We might not have any money
But we’ve got our love to pay the bills
Maybe I think you’re cute and funny
Maybe I wanna do what bunnies do with you
If you know what I mean
Oh, let’s get rich and buy our parents homes
In the south of France
Let’s get rich and give everybody nice sweaters
And teach them how to dance
Let’s get rich and build our house on a mountain
Making everybody look like ants
From way up there, you and I, you and I
Well, you might be a bit confused
And you might be a little bit bruised
But baby how we spoon like no one else
So I will help you read those books
If you will soothe my worried looks
And we will put the lonesome on the shelf
Ooh, let’s get rich and buy our parents homes
In the south of France
Let’s get rich and give everybody nice sweaters
And teach them how to dance
Let’s get rich and build our house on a mountain
Making everybody look like ants
From way up there, you and I, you and I
Ooh, let’s get rich and buy our parents homes
In the south of France
Let’s get rich and give everybody nice sweaters
And teach them how to dance
Let’s get rich and build our house on a mountain
Making everybody look like ants
From way up there, you and I, you and I
Songwriters
LAMILLA, SORAYA / NICHOLAS, TONY
Torn between two lovers, feeling like you can rely on the old man’s money
There’s always the misconception that the Mafia is either fake or real.
So we turn to a band’s name for identification purposes:
Charles Pettigrew died of cancer on 6 April 2001, at the age of 37.
[Eddie] Chacon is currently residing in Los Angeles and fronting the electronic duo, The Polyamorous Affair, with Sissy Sainte-Marie. In 2009, The Polyamorous Affair released their album, Bolshevik Disco.
Call forth the phrase, “Dagnabbit rabbit!”
Unobtanium beer is pulling a sentence out of a dream: “I want a case of pickled anger.”
Why? Because of a new storyline, a new personality that says, “Hey, you know what? I don’t need nobody to speak for me. You know why? Cause I own my own business. I’m what they call connected, like in ‘the mob,’ know what I’m sayin’? I’m puttin’ on a show wit’ my girlfriend ’cause that’s just what I wanna do, show her off, tellin’ you fellas that she’s off-limits. You wanna touch the merchandise? It ain’t for sale. She’s spoken for. Yeah, she says she polyamorous but you get close to her, you burn. You know what I’m sayin’. I don’t need to spell it out in frank’n’beans or nothin’, do I, Lee?”
But then, the dirigible crashed into the Alps, spilling Earhart and Lindbergh onto the icy peaks.
The Mad Hatter spilled his tea.
To get out of the oxygen-thin heights, the daredevil flyers decided to put on a dance, mixing the cream components of melted white caps into the overflowing chocolate rivers flooding the Bavarian valleys, creating three new flavours that the people had wished for but never seen — dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate — not to mention Bavarian cream cheese, creamier and cheesier than ovarian, Ovaltine or oval saltines.
Yeah, it’s a crazy night for mixed-up storylines, seeing as the dance rehearsals went well, as intended, throwing the scent off the trail and the hound dogs off their common sense, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle waiting for Conan the Barbarian and Conan O’Brien to share their opinions as constructive criticism disguised as front page news stories, as, as, as, pretending that Jay Leno has any intention to call up Rich Little or Benny Hill to serve a substitute role for Jimmy Fallon who wishes Phyllis Diller was not related to Matt Dillon, Marshall Dillon, dill pickles or pickled relish.
Shaking the pepper shaker out of the Shaker’s household of a head-hold on the no holds-barred barista barristers barred windows, Windows 8.1 claimed ownership of the UI of iOS 7 which laid claims on the gold rush of iPhone sales diverting our attention in the divertimento window of opportunity in opportune opera tunes out of tune with the times listed in the back section of the New York Times hidden behind paywalls that are walled-in nonwalls with narwhals and ne’er-do-wells in wishing wells and cockle shells.
Love is a four-letter word.
Word is a four-letter love.
Letters are words of love for is is is an a.
The typewriter rhythms of grandmothers with multiple mobile phones and boyfriends saying “meow meow meow” like dorks worried they’ll be forgotten when they leave the day before their birthday — what else is of importance when conversations become fermented in the likelihood that a man’s wife is disinclined to dance the blues when she has a costume to finish for her dancing husband, the mannequin, when drunk Jenga games turn skyscrapers into pick-up sticks?
Seduction is not the answer.
The madness of one’s thoughts rules all.
When one dives into the abyss, what is money or love or love of money?
The clock watches the watcher who counts the hours before the next dance practice, wondering if spaghetti dinners are more important than uninvited guests entering the bed chamber.
But a tired perspirer whose partners don’t make him a manwhore make the whole man slimmer, if not younger.
The tick-tock-tap of the plastic keys play songs that drummers and lead singers, even two-to-three weeks’ preggers, can feel the lead beat in one’s core bouncing into the floor rather than bouncing back on one’s heels.
Type, type, type, tap, tap, tap, the music paces itself out of nothingness, into existence and back into the background noise of a universe in flux.
Time lost to hair dye and leather straps, slapped wrists and insanity at the end of madness one step away from workplace report revisions and shoe holes.
Waves in oceans turning water molecules and colloidal suspension into conflict, resolution, drama, comedy and tragedy as atomic energy is recycled, the medium medium tasting like one’s breath fresh with the cigarette taste of a lover’s lips or the scent of bath gel.
The substitute role of a trumpet player or the renewed role of a professional’s professional plays into one’s hands on the keyboard of life.
Microcosmic cosmic revelations.
Word.
The difference between fun and work, if there is any
In this moment, looking at the internal vocabulary, searching for new ways to express myself without resorting to a thesaurus, listening to the replay of conversations, realising how many details I’ve forgotten that make stories more real, feeling my face and neck break out with small infected pores that are commonly called acne…
“Learning never ends.” [from a 15-cent stamp on an envelope dated 15 Sep 1980 sent from my father to his mother containing the following poem]
Lineage [for Evelyn]
Only moments agoOur only son
Gave his oath
To his country
As his grandfather
Did fifty-one years ago
As his father
Did twenty-six years ago next month
Ah, tears well in my eyes
A lump is in my throat
For him, for we three
Grandfather, father, son
For the why we each serve our country
For patriotism, love of country
For ____ why —-?
— RLH 9/15/80
A line whispered into my ear from a dance partner. “I flew to New York for the weekend. I walked 10 miles a day, wearing poor shoes for walking the first day, and my flats for the second day. This dancing tonight, bending my knees…phew! it’s killing me!”
Multiple storylines begging to be continued — the Martian tales, the Mad Hatter chronicles, the Wondering Wanderer, the Wandering Wondering, the thinker, the doer, the tinkerer, the inventor, the investor, the Kickstarter campaign…
If I don’t write them down, they don’t get lost, they simply never exist except in the vast universe of my imagination which entertains me for as long as I live with this stimuli-driven central nervous system of mine.
I finalised the West Coast Swing routine with Abi today — enough so that we can play with the routine and keep it in time with the music — that in itself would be celebration enough for a lifetime.
But a second routine, with Jenn, has not been finalised less than two days before our premiere performance on Saturday, with scant time to polish our moves.
There is much I have learned in the past two years of dance lessons with my wife. In our 27-plus years of marriage and 40 years of knowing each other we have aged together, aligning our storylines so that one of us cannot tell the tale of our lives without including the other.
In the past few months of dance lessons with Jenn and Abi, the learning has changed pace.
I could never have imagined that I would once again know a person whose physicality was without bounds, but that tangent will wait until another day…soon.
Tonight, as I prep my thoughts for trippy dreams, I look at the faces of my two dance partners and see their futures written in features that change with aging skin and graying hair.
When I danced with one, our connection running from her big toe through her foot, calf, thigh, ribs, shoulder, upper arm, forearm, wrist, and fingers, down through my fingers all the way to the floor, I felt the warmth of a loving mother, a powerful lover and an equal dance partner that, although we have danced untold times, I had never felt deep within myself like I did today, willing to share with my wife that I took on Abi as a new lover today but in a way that surpasses sex, in the way that Monica and I, who never kissed, could say we were lovers the night we melded our thought patterns and saw how our differences made us one an evening in Knoxville during the early 1980s. I felt Abi simultaneously as a child, a young adult, a middle-aged mother and an elderly grandmother fighting for every last breath before she dies.
Jenn, with whom how many dance partners can easily brag how much better they dance than I, our connection is like…being a kid all over again for the very first time.
I want to have fun all the time — Jenn is more willing to let me just be crazy with my dance moves when I shouldn’t be than Abi — I do them both a disservice by not taking our dance practice more seriously.
I know the two of them are not the same even if our goals for this week are.
Jenn and I are not lovers on the dance floor and I cannot predict a future where we will or will not be. I have not set a goal for such an event.
Instead, it is within the pure bubble of unadulterated fun that I want to place the memorised routine with Jenn.
She was willing to come to the studio tonight, tired after a trip out-of-town, to nail down our moves but I was outside myself with mirth, unable to concentrate but wanting to make her visit not be a total waste.
When I held Jenn in my arms, I felt an older woman and saw gray streaks in her hair — I heard the voice of her husband, Gilley, speaking through her, wondering if I also heard her father and mother, maybe even her grandparents find their way to me through her.
I used to keep these observations to myself, thinking I was crazy, sensing different personalities in the sight, sound and touch of other people, wondering how much mass media representations of ghost stories, ESP and other paranormal phenomena were imprinted in my thoughts as fuzzy labels upon my irrationally-explainable emotional states rather than scientifically-testable experiences.
But I remember I am a storyteller, a tall tale spinner, exaggeration my best feature rather than my facial profile or wishful hunk of a body.
Jenn sensed a mouse in me when we first started dancing, my feeling intimidated by the laughter welling up from inside my thoughts at the silliness I felt, unable to justify why I was standing with my childlike friend trying to take ourselves seriously as adults with little time for fun before our showcase routine in two days.
Abi demands that I first treat myself as a strong dance leader seriously, putting fun second after I’ve shown my dance partner, the follower, that she is the only connection I feel with the universe, the rhythm of the dance music our source of energy. Her demands I have given into reluctantly but willingly like a latent masochist, a glutton for punishment.
Jenn asks that I take command of the dance floor.
Every leader and follower is different.
Tonight, the older woman in Jenn needed her strong, lifelong male partner to hold her up and I failed to match that need.
My distraction was the leftover euphoria of discovering what a West Coast Swing connection with Abi truly means.
The world will not end because I was unable to settle myself down and concentrate on Jenn in a dance studio dominated by my wife, Abi, Chris and his dance partner.
Jenn and I have another hour, maybe two, three at the most, before we dance our Lindy Hop routine together.
For two years I wondered what dancing with Jenn would be like, seeing how well she matched up with other guys, some better skilled than I and some less skilled.
I have learned that Jenn’s strengths come from her deep knowledge of physical skills, including track-and-field events for which she spent long hours training.
I can neither compete against her dance partners nor against her years of physical training, or more recently, her hours of physical therapy recovering from car smashups.
I will dance with Jenn and Abi again after this weekend’s showcase. Of that I am certain.
What I have before me, in the next 40-plus hours and the next 40-plus years, is a challenge to discover what this 51-year old body can do as it gets older that it never learned to do at a younger age over many days, weeks and months of arduous practice, both for the sake of my wife and for the sake of any dance partner I walk out onto the floor.
The challenge for me with Abi is how fast can I learn from her the years of training she’s had with the best dancing instructors on this planet.
The challenge for me with Jenn is how fast can I learn from her the years of the aforesaid physical training, minus the pain and physical rehabilitation, if I can help it, and training she’s had with some of the best dancing instructors on this planet, including Abi.
The challenge for me with my wife is how patient I can be to help her improve her physical stamina to be just as much fun as Abi, Jenn or any number of dance partners that I encounter in this adventure that started what seems like yesterday.
How can I convince myself that focusing my attention on the art of dance moves is fun, rather than mundane work that I abhor in any endeavour?
What is life without challenges?
treetrunkdings 