She listened to the radio.

Actually, she drove mindlessly, returning from another visit to another store, another merger causing another reorganisation.

In the merchandising business, change is good – new clothes lines every season, new displays, new employees – a merry-go-round of ups and downs.

This visit felt different.

It felt the same.

She saw herself sitting on the back of a camel crossing an endless desert of mergers and acquisitions, the policies and procedures rewordsmithedonceagain to reflect both previous and current owners.

And there were always the concerns from upper management – “Are we going to hit our numbers this day/week/month/quarter?” – like woodpeckers ramming against her skull, digging, digging, digging, building a headache that drove her to unfamiliar hotel rooms night after night on the road to yet another store whose facades must change the next day.

When would it end?

An urgent voice came on the radio.

“It appears a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.  More details as it develops.”

She shook her head to wake herself up, driving so early from Detroit to get back home at a decent hour that she hadn’t taken the time for a good breakfast.

The announcer described the momentary confusion – “We interrupt your smooth music morning commute to give you the following information.  First reports from New York indicate a small plane, possibly in the fog, has exploded into the side of the World Trade Center.  One moment…no, now they’re saying that the size of the explosion indicates it had to be a larger plane.  Video footage shows that the skies were clear at the time of the crash.  We’re being told that smoke is billowing out of one of the towers.  Wait a minute…let’s go live to our correspondent on the ground in Manhattan.  Jeneva Jones, what do you see?”

She looked out the window.

How many pilots in the sky at this moment were possibly having a heart attack or lost control and were potential crash victims in the making?

Is that why she decided to drive from store to store instead of fly?

As she drove further south, the radio stations changed but the news did not.  Plane after plane seemed to be in attack mode along the East Coast.

When she stopped for gas, panic had infected everyone.  Rumours of invasions and security checkpoints spread from traveler to traveler, no one exactly sure what was going on.

She called her husband.  They assured each other that her plans to drive straight home were the best in the current situation.

The closer she got home, the more she knew what she was going to do.

She was going to quit her job.

It might be days or months before her next (dream) job became available, but she knew she had to change.

This day – the 11^th of September, 2001 – had answered the question she was afraid to ask, “Is what I’m doing right now the most important thing I could be doing for myself and others if we knew we were going to die today?”

In that next job, she was going to dedicate herself to the people who mattered – the workers, the volunteers, the customers – and avoid a job that forced her to pay attention to those who don’t matter – the worrisome managers and owners who only know how to cover their trails and cater to fickle stockholders and market analysts.

Unnamed Novel Which Reveals Much

(20^th September 2011 – )

I was raised to believe that all women are ladies unless they demonstrate otherwise.  Of course, that begs the question, what is a lady?

I suppose a lady is a woman who uses her brain as well as the rest of her body to connect socially with the rest of her species.

But is that all?

What if there’s more that we can’t see that defines living, which, in turn, means a “lady” is more than the appearance and actions of what we formerly called a single person?

How often do supernovae wipe out all living things on nearby solar systems?

If we had an inkling that in 3,000 years our planet would be bombarded with the explosive material of a supernova, would we act differently today?

Would women be more or less ladylike in their urgency to get us (or some of us (or some living things)) as far away from our planet and the future exploding star as possible?

NOTE: Jargon determines the genre/category of stories/books/novels.  This novel could easily fall into the science fiction lot and be lost forever, if scientific jargonese dominates too strongly.  I want this to be an ordinary story about ordinary lives 1000 years from now, where technology is happenstance, background, not the main character.

= = =

I forgot my notes.  Tonight, at the 20-Plus Member reception for Huntsville Botanical Garden members who’ve donated and/or kept up their membership for more than 20 years, I met new and old friends.

A new friend, Paula, is like a restaurant menu item I never sampled but wish I had.  I think she’s the president of the Huntsville Botanical Garden, also formerly of the Parisian retail store chain (director of stores?).  Details, details, details…like when did the garden start making scrapbooks of newspaper articles, 1984 or 1985?  Yawn.

Paula, you keep climbing the social ladder, stepping over the good, solid folks like Harvey Cotten, who’s done more for plants than you could ever hope to remember, say, a few Latin names.

We all have our place.

I’m so, so bored with this planet.  There has got to be more than fundraisers at my age, surely.

Putin and Berlusconi, let’s have a get-together.  We’ll invite folks like Kirstie Alley with a taste for life after age 50 and go from there.  Forget all the whiners and do-nothings (they know who they are).  Let’s be men and women of action, who make money the old-fashioned way – we take it from those who put their nose to the grindstone and never look up at the big picture.

I want to be a kind, generous person who remembers all seven billion of us make important contributions to this planet’s chance of expanding outward but, some days, my patience wears thin.

Get it over with, willya Rick, with the humble pie eatery and just take over this planet like every leader before me – there is no escape! 😉

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I’ve been asked to give my opinion on SLS, the revised NASA proposal for long-range space exploration.  Time will tell.

I found a note scratched onto the walls of a quarry that is not obvious to the naked eye because one must take multiple photographs of different parts of the wall and overlay them correctly.

That was my excuse for missing a high school reunion.

The words of the note sit here in front of me, pointing to a place where I can (or might) find the door that leads me out of the novel into which I’ve written myself.

One of the former rotating leaders of the Committee buried instructions in children’s reading books so that some day, when a new, grownup leader, took over, s/he would, like me, suddenly have, in a dream, full recall of the instruction set, and thus find oneself in a quarry similar to mine, with the right equipment, to escape from the living dream of perpetual, hesitant, nonmonomaniacal leadership.

One hundred million comedians out of work and, although I have the coolest comedy gig on this planet – making subtle, satirical, sarcastic edicts daily to unseen billions – I’m willing to give it up without a golden parachute?

What am I, crazy?

[Don’t answer that question.  It’s supposed to be rhetorically posed, not debated in Rhetoric, Stoicism, stochastic, or scholastic style.]

Does anyone remember the first bird who squawked, “Polly want a cracker”?  Was the parrot named Polly (assuming it was a parrot) or was the bird speaking for a person who said the phrase so many times the bird joined in?

If beauty is truth and truth your duty, then why do pirates bury their booty?

More than one person has requested that I release a new novel into the world.  I’m not sure why.  Novels are evidence that, for a short time period, I was completely out of my mind (Minds don’t exists so I guess I should say that novels are proof my thoughts are organisable such that nightmares are becoming, neither cautionary tales nor light bedtime reading.  (“Becoming what?”  Nothing.  Just becoming, as in evoking delight.)).

To go into that mindset without medical aids, to see the hidden meaning behind the nod from a blonde at the front corner of Beauregard’s, or the extra baked potato at Tim’s Cajun Kitchen, or the echo of voices in a bedroom with wood flooring…

Do you want to know what this universe is really all about?

Do you want to know why I want us to get off this planet as soon as possible?

I’m not sure that you really want to know.

I’m not sure that I want to split myself into multiple personalities and explore storylines that may or may not be real, putting pebbles in ponds both imaginary and epicureal.

If only I can find that door, the escape hatch from this leadership position which cages me in this blog.

As in times past, a muse holds the key.

Or, rather, the muse is the key.

Time to write my exit…

Can you burp your national anthem at 13, holding six guys at bay who want to date you but one is too short, the other doesn’t use acne cream and a few are possible candidates if they act right?

Does your moving company know you at 40 better than your family?  In your constant relocations, do you leave boyfriends behind you like discarded furniture?

Would you put Optimus or Decepticon symbols on the background of your mobile phone screen?

In writing a book-sized story, where one wants to place an interesting character, would a muse inspire you with her minor in fluids and her major in propulsion systems for a master’s degree?

What about the blue-eyed dancer who saved a song for you on the parquet at the mill while you were enjoying a gravel dance floor with your wife next to an old gravel quarry?

Speaking of parquet, would your insurance company drop you after a claim against water-damaged wood flooring in your house, forcing you to buy expensive home insurance?

= = =

Every one of these questions is a good theme for a short story.

= = =

A name like Gabriella is enough to push one into writing a song for the ages.  I’ll compose that melody soon.

= = =

How many people have met their second spouses at their twentieth secondary school graduation reunions?

= = =

Sometimes, one states the obvious and, sometimes, one writes on universal themes to allow room for wandering imaginations.

I wrote myself into my own novel, a wish that few are granted, and now that I want to get out, I can’t.

Some say that God is a loving god.  I know better.  God has a sense of humour that sometimes includes love.  Occasionally, God is simply the mysteries of the universe yet to be described scientifically.  Usually, God is a character in its own story that likes to grant wishes to others, no matter how mundane or bizarre.

Do you like to swing?  Swing dance, that is?

Me, I’m a salsa dancer at heart.  More intimate.  Less flailing around.  Like an exotic chocolate – rich, thick, memorable on the tongue.

Swing is the exercise that allows me to enjoy the calorie-heavy taste of the dessert on the dance floor called salsa.

= = =

Don’t call your government changes “austerity.”  Euphemisms are free for the taking – use the ol’ positive mental attitude vocabulary words and call them “lifestyle enhancements” or some such, especially while you’re reorganising.  Remember, it’s not “bankruptcy” anymore; it’s “debt consolidation.”  They’re not creditors; they’re financial investors with a keen interest in your monetary wellbeing.  Creative bookkeeping is a high art, not a low crime.  Okay, maybe that last one is getting carried away. 😉

= = =

I owe a debt of gratitude to many people, including the bus drivers last night who transported us from the Huntsville Hospital carpark to the Moon Over Three Caves charity event; the Publix employee who cut up fruit into a bowl by request; Michael, Michelle, Connie and Shelby; Redstone Arsenal gate security personnel; and more this tired guy can’t remember easily on an early Sunday morning.