Hindsight

There is no particular moment when loss becomes common place,
love becomes a black and white movie,
or a person becomes a memory.
Things like that just happen to the living.
Even the optimist realizes that

eventually

the glass overflows and the liquidity of life
drips all over the morning paper.
Even she has doubts about the outcome of belief,
envisions romance in color,
and wishes there were a moment,
 
Identifiable,

when she would recognize a memory for what it will be-
before it formed.
                         ~MNH June 2006

Fifteen

A woman's outline was painted urgently onto the body of a girl
  in slashing red brush strokes.
She didn't notice then: the adults observing,
  deconstructing meaning in thoughtful stage whispers. 
It wouldn't have mattered.
She had no appreciation for art or animus
  and no patience for the obscure.
Yet she believed all abstraction was obscure.

   Girls mature faster...
 A vague warning when she first heard it,
  but by then she knew it as a vile lie.
Already the boys wanted mature things
  with an urgent curiosity once kept hidden behind oak trees.
Now it slithered up their legs, tangled in their hair,
  and marked them with its musk.

   The girl?

She wanted only to know
  how pigment gave art life,
  and why the woman was so frantic to escape
  that she rained in long, sad droplets from the girl's pores.
She wondered why a vine grew from nowhere
  binding her innards before emerging through her throat.
In retrospect, she will note the moment
and call herself ma'am.

                      ~Mari Nichols-Haining

Sarah Kay at Ted - If I Should Have a Daughter

Sarah Kay. I have nothing to add.

How to Start an Argument Online

How to Start an Argument Online

1. Express an opinion.
2. Wait
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Twenty-six and Five. (Or: Unscripted)

The day had been foreshadowed by that year,
  so my words were well rehearsed.
Yet I hadn't thought to practice your response.

Then:
  you were curled on my left thigh, your head against my chest.
Two siblings hugged a leg, while another,
  only nine,
  sat beside us. Afraid to listen.

 He knew.
He understood the meaning of the groaning sobs
  that escaped despite myself as I cradled the phone.
I didn't even try
  to learn how not to cry.

I spoke. Then you.
 He's dead-- ...?
 you were repeating more than asking.
Then you deflated into me.

Santa came on schedule one night later,
yet noone tried to catch him sneaking in.
You were all too busy with grownup concerns
too large for me to reach and too strong for me to fight.
And with grief.

Perhaps it was the grief who stole my memories
  of your sixth birthday only a week later.
     I pray I made a cake.
But that entire year is lost to me now
  --hidden in hole dug by the details of a moment.

My senses are my memory.
  Without effort, I smell blackened tomato soup forgotten on the stove;
  I see the shadows in the corners flinching from our grief;
  I hear a thousand pieces of your sister's heart;
  as they fall like rainstick seeds inside her chest.
 I taste the anguish in her questions
  and feel your brother's fear when he pulls away,
Angry and overwhelmed.
 
And you.
 Your tears still cauterize where they fell into my heart,
 watering the animal fierceness of maternal instinct.
Yet as important as wrestling bears (or battling grief)
  is my duty to show you life and beauty
  and teach you to recognize and to feel.
Because life is emotion, anguish and elation alike.

But your tears still fall,
  and I still want to make this a dream and let him wake you up.

I am achingly helpless.
Rehearsing this would have been a mockery.

  ~Mari Nichols-Haining

You'll always remember that first rejection.

In between school, solving mysteries with my best friend, and staining my skirts, I decided I would be a famous writer. I had no intention of waiting until I grew up though. I was seven years old, and Laura Ingalls Wilder was my inspiration.

A month after I made that announcement to my family, I finished a story. I called it The Sunday Run. It was about a Golden Retriever who chased the family car whenever his people drove to church. Every Sunday night, his paws were bloodied and he'd be near death, yet he would break out of the fenced yard to do it again a  week later.

Having recently learned that 'creamed' could mean dead, I thought I was particularly clever when I wrote about the dog eventually finding God after being creamed by an ice cream truck--on a Thursday--while chasing Mormon missionaries on bikes. By the time I finished writing it, the story had become non-fiction and I sobbed for at least an hour at the memory of  the dog I never had. Seeing my red, swollen eyes when I came out for dinner that night, my Mom asked me what was wrong. I gave her a made up a story about being sad for some fictional school friend whose father had died,  not only because I was creative like that, but also because it seemed less involved than telling her about Thumper. I realize now that I probably was not a fun kid to raise.

Anyhow, sadly I had also just learned the word credibility, and I quickly determined I didn't have enough of it to tell my own story yet, fiction or not. But, longing to see my name on the cover of a book,  I switched role models and decided to admire Dr. Seuss. In a single afternoon, I wrote an atrociously-rhymed  alphabet book on wide-lined school paper, carefully illustrated Apples, Bears, Coconuts, Dogs (and so on) to go with the text, then designed and drew a book cover, making sure "By Mari - age 7" was prominent. I also included a letter  that went something like this:

Dear Random House,

I'm a kid who writes lots of stories like Laura Ingalls Wilder. Please  make this book and send me one. I have lots more stories all kids will like!
Love,
Mari -age 7

(At that age, I devoured Highlights for Children and the Scholastic newsletters. Kid-produced content always included the child's age, so assumed it was mandatory.)

After triple folding all 28 pages and using an unheated-iron to crease the whole thick mess in half lengthwise, I crammed it into a small personal envelope, stole far too little postage from my mom's wallet, and secretly mailed it off to Random House. I found the address on the back page of my favorite Little House book.

A few weeks later, mom brought in the mail and asked why Random House was to writing me. After I confessed, she stuck around while I opened the envelope and tried to make me feel better by pointing out it wasn't a form letter. The moment she left the room, I tossed it out. My very first rejection letter. It was kindly hand-written  by a (probably bemused) editor, who told me  there were plenty of alphabet books already published but to keep writing and send her something when I got a little older. I wasn't really upset; embarrassed is a better word.

Thus, at seven and three-quarters, Jodi Foster became my new inspiration and I decided to become a child actress instead. I assumed there was much less rejection in Hollywood.

Of course, by the time my 8th birthday rolled around, I was trying to figure out how to get NASA to let  a kid into their astronaut program...

Summer nights

An assidental theme

A random page from the sketch pad. I just noticed the unplanned theme. Freud would claim it means something...

Modern Words

Because of words
like doth and thee 
fame forgets to comfort me.

Thine and o'er 
and ere left out-
It's my vocaulary's drought.

Dryden's 'tis 
Shakespeare's 'gainst 
with eloquence expressed their angst.

Alone I stand
with does and do.
Frozen bards. No poet's hue.

No poet's voice
sings modern verbs
No poet's tongue speaks modern words.

A rock.
No poet with me stands.
Yet behind my pen--

a poet's hands.

-Mari Nichols-Haining

Lingering distractions

Well, Blogger appears to be back! This post disappeared for a while, along with all the comments. Though the post has been restored, the comments weren't.  If yours is gone, I'm sorry!

Lingering distractions

Between the waking and the sleeping
were the tiny daily deaths, interrupted
by instances alive with light.
Lingering distractions.

But between the birthdays and last days,
came you, and the instances became years;
All while the dying fell to memory in shards
 just dull enough to handle.

I hadn't thought to value the safety of love
until it granted me the refuge of reflection.

I had forgotten how an entire conversation could be had
in the rapid wordless exhale of a kiss,
or how a story could be told
in the whispering of fingers on my back,

or that electrons in the atmosphere could be excited
by two people simply passing in a hall.
I recall,

and am grateful now for more than love
 and moments that span much longer
 than dawn and dusk or a planet's orbit or a lifetime.

Now, I delight in the human ability
 to define the undefinable
 and to believe, with unpretentious fervor,

  in us and this emotion.

                     Mari Nichols 

I'm five hours late for One Shot Wednesday. Here's hoping it's still Wednesday somewhere!

Just more words

Unfinished

In the years before the gods died
the earth spun slowly,
It was a detail he'd recall in his later years,
when the sky had blurred to faint arcing lights.

But in those early Falls, the stars  demanded notice.

On the warmest nights he'd count them, pixel-by-pixel,
from the front seat of a parked station wagon,
until the numbers picked a cadence for his dreams.

But he had lived too much since then to consider
whether he should wonder where they went.
Instead he gave his effort to the forgetting,
as he had much to forget.

There was the night the heavens kneeled
and with misdirected kindness, whispered,
"Go home. You are a man. The Gods have died."

And so he did. And so he was.
Too abashed for questions.

Had he been watching from the Ford
he would have noticed then
the long melancholic droplets converging
into rivulets racing sideways down the pane,
leaving him nothing to count.

But he wasn't watching.
In time, the comets were just a habit;
even their fecklessness went unnoticed.
No matter. In truth,
their final leave was concealed years before

in  Providence's passing...

~Mari Nichols

This was my contribution to  One Shot Wednesday, the Web's poetic flashmob.

Of course, I have a thick skin and constructive criticism is always welcome. As always, I encourage (read: beg for) all comments.

The handy homeowner isn't.

Dear Basement,

This isn't my basement, but it's
a fair representation.

I really hate you. I'm tired of fixing your guts: from the furnace and the pipes, to the cable wiring and gas lines.

If it weren't for you, I may have been able to fool myself into thinking maybe I could actually do it all. Well, "it all" in the "I am woman, hear me roar" sense;  not the literal all-inclusive "all" sense, if you know what I mean.

You win. Are you happy?! I'm admitting I can't.
Please leave me alone now.

Signed,
One tired, wet, annoyed and not-so-handy Homeowner

P.S. Oh yeah! And your walls were not meant to be permeable.  Is that really so hard to understand?

a graduation

a graduation      (for Heather)

   

The moon has been your guide in the land of the rising sun
   and your companion on the shores of human genesis.
In Hiroshima, you didn't filter the far-off echoes of a once-withered earth
   before turning to walk with the ghosts,
   or begging to hear from slaves, scholars, and immigrant children.

A pilgrim, you’ve learned to listen to their stories
  and shamelessly tell your own, 

  drafted with sacrificial goats, political rallies,

  and volcanic hikes to views shared with the gods.
You understand not many can speak of finding serenity
while finding cracked, thirsty lips
  on the dying brown people, in the cracked thirsty earth
  of a dying brown desert.

You’ve learned about oppression and depression and life
  from books filtered through your experiences,
  and from life filtered through nothing but its living
  and your passion.

As you speak of this, they will declare you learn’ed.
And though I'll photograph the moment
  through the lenses of my unearned pride,
  my contentment will be in knowing

  you've also learned that love finds the music,
  magic weaves the forest canopy,
  and a rhyme can feel alive.

I believe you’ve discovered people needn’t be taught fantasy,
  though all dreams must be encouraged;

  and finding a child who believes in unicorns
  will excite your hopes in hesitant times.

Woman, my child, that you also understand
  how travelers must be brave yet humble

  and getting lost can mean a new route home;
  that the luxury of having can’t compare to the riches of giving,
  and that in exchange for loving passionately
   your word can call an army to encircle you;

That you understand means you are ready.

   Humbled, so am I.

Love,
Mom
———-


The intro, moved down here based on feedback :)

In a few weeks, my daughter will graduate college. She has an impressive resume: she's been playing the violin and cello since she was in elementary school, she earned her black belt in Karate her senior year of high school and then left immediately to re-do that senior year as a Rotary exchange student. She learned Japanese from her classmates in a public Japanese high school and followed that up a few years later with learning Wolof from her Senegalese exchange family while she improved her French as a student at the university there. She spent school vacations teaching a college course to male inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary, working as a maid in Yellowstone, doing a senate internship in Washington DC, and sunburning as she left water and food in the Arizona desert when she worked and camped on with a border humanitarian group. And of course, she spent the academic years working with ESL students in an elementary school while carrying  full course loads and writing for her college newspaper.

That she has experienced so much of life thrills me. But it's who she is that makes me proud. I'm proud of her for seeking out the experiences, for grabbing life by the horns and riding it like a wild bull. I'm proud of her for being able to love with all of herself and for leaping into the unknown as though she was a 500 pound sumo wrestler and not a 5'4" waif. And the relationship she has with her sister and three brothers makes me choke up every Christmas when they're all home. Her experiences throughout her college years have definitely helped mold her into a strong and capable woman, but she has been a force of pure stubborn joy since the day she was born.

If you're reading this Heather, congratulations on all that you've achieved so far. I'll see you soon. You'll be able to spot me in the crowd pretty easily, I'll be the one sitting with a ghost beside me and we'll both be beaming while watching the woman you've become. Enjoy the next few weeks; they will be both an ending and a beginning.

It's true. You've only just begun.

With all my love,
Mom
----------

-
One Shot Wednesday: A poetic flashmob.

Mother & daughter, a dialogue in poetry

Mari and Heather - June, 2006

5/14/2011: Update, in response to reader feedback:  

I received an email that suggested this would be richer with some context. I appreciate the feedback! As requested/suggested: when I wrote this, the deaths in our immediate family included two infant sons and Heather's dad. When she was 7-years-old,  he made me a widow and left behind our gaggle of half-orphaned little ones. Heather is my second eldest child.

---------

This started when I posted a poem as Facebook note in early 2010. Heather, my talented and beautiful daughter, responded with comments that were much more than comments. Her responses are in blue.

On the Anniversary of a Death in the Family

~Mari Nichols-Haining

You have asked:
     And where are the people?

    Where is the rhythm of hands and feet

    pounding life and beating holes into your words?
You have asked,

although you did not speak those words.

And I have answered with a mumbling sadness

that crescendos into the corners

and fills the spaces between the breaths.

I have answered:

   They have fallen into the face of the leathered ocean,

   swallowed by the different symphony of the desert.

   They died with the lilacs and geraniums and

   conversations laced with caffeine.

I have mentioned the romance of poverty then,

the salt-white Bakersfield heat a painted backdrop

for barefoot towheads, shirtless in overalls.

I haven't told you of the drowning though,

as words rose up into a monumental wave

and swallowed the poets and artists

and lovers. Always the lovers.

But you have asked.

A response:

Heather Nichols-Haining

Mother,

my scarred knees are tired

of pleading to God Almighty

at swollen geranium-covered graves

of too many friends

after maybe too much coffee.

That golden whiteness fills my memories

of the meaningful days

and I swallow your romantic poverty

as if I was starving

(and what if I am?!).

The lovers weep and the children grow

and the poverty disappears

and in the end all we can do is ask:

Where did everyone go, Mom?

The devil raids our innards

as if he's got any right to be here

and even that's better than the alternative,

because at least he pisses us off.

But I've always loved the beach,

(and haven't you taught me that?)

despite and because of the crude waves

and the fierceness of their eternity.

~Heather Nichols-Haining

My response to your response...

 ...my lovely daughter  
                          ~mnh

Oh sweet woman-child,

I haven’t forgotten how to bandage up your skinned knees,

and with more than muscle memory and love

I can kiss away the scars and blood and pain

but leave the grains of sand

embedded

in your memories.

That is where they belong.

Where did they go? My child,

they went to where the whiteness turns to gold

and to a place where little children learn to roar

but never forget to dance.

They walk with you along the shore

and they whisper through the seashells

urgently. Urgently

reminding you

to tell me about eternity.

There, on that beach and in that forever,

the lovers never really weep

although the children always grow.

And every day is meaningful.

Where did they go? My sweet,

they never really left.

We stayed up too late too many nights

to learn this by rote and heart.

But don't you remember?

  (and haven't I taught you this):

they carry your heart with them.^*

~Mom

A response to your response to my response to your beautiful piece of art:

As we wander the golden globe in search of them,

our restless feet munching the ground beneath,

a generation and maybe eternity

between the two of us,

what've we got

besides mocking seashells

and anxious seaside dances?

Of course, there is that golden dust, .^*

that sand stuck in my hair

despite the work of your tireless fingers.

And of course we've got all those hearts,

and the persistent lovers,

the stories told way past bedtime,

the people breathing white geraniums.

I cling to the stories now,

as my scalp once clung to golden sand.

They're dirty, gross, gritty

but I like the feel of your fingers

kneading through my scalp.

I even like the grit.

These are my stories

and my sand

and even the calling of the seashells

lends flight to my soul.

We dance with the beating waves.

~Heather

To Heather (who is one of my most beautiful pieces of art) 

I’ve wondered how it is that we can take
a generation of our time, squeeze it through a sight of thumb and forefinger
to make it small
  -as long as we are one eye blind -

yet still the words, and all that is the story,
overflow these thimble memories.

I love you,  ~Mom

^* Heather and I spent many of her childhood nights reading poetry to each other. Here, I referred to one of my favorites, ee cummings' ' "I carry your heart with me "; Heather recalled  Robert Frost's  "A Peck of Gold."

Remember that PSA? "Words hit harder..."

Before I launch into what's currently on my mind, I'll give you a very brief tour of my romantic life:
I met my first husband when I was in the third grade. We went to different schools, but were both in the school district's gifted program, so we ran into each other through the years at district-wide 'gifted events' (science fairs, field trips) and competed against each other in Math Bowls every year. That said, I didn't really know him until we went to high school together. A very rapid synopsis goes like this: we married insanely young (we were 16. Seriously), had four beautiful children, beat the odds and were still happily married when he had a sudden and unexpected brain hemorrhage. We had been married for ten and a half years when he died. Our youngest child wasn't quite a toddler.

I remarried much, much too quickly and before I had fully grieved Ron's death. Joe (not a very original fake name, eh?) was absolutely nothing like Ron and I was glad--marrying someone too similar would feel like I was trying to replace him. In retrospect, this is silly. If you find all these fabulous traits that you like and have a proven compatibility with, why would you decide it's best to marry someone without them?!

A side note: All of that aside, I loved Joe. When we decided to have a baby, we both believed we'd be married forever. I know that despite my best efforts, our beautiful daughter may someday find this blog and read this post. If she does, I want her to know that she was conceived by two people who loved each other and wanted her very much. 


Despite that love, our incompatibility became more and more obvious as time went on. By the time he asked for a divorce, we were tainted by the weariness that came with hanging in too long and the pained effort of trying to get along with each other every single day. To be sure, we had some really great times. But we were (and remain) a portrait of extremes. Our good times were really good, but--and I think he'd agree with this--when he's mad, he's very very mad. And when he's very very mad he's also very, very frightening even if for no other reason than his size and his verbal lashings.

To this day, what's more intimidating than his size are the extremes of his words. I remember a PSA spot that used to show up on daytime tv. The tagline was "words can hit harder than a fist." I can attest to that, although now that we've been divorced for years, they don't usually bother me as much anymore. The words that get to me now are those that describe me as the exact opposite of who I am. People say I shouldn't let it get to me, because I know who I am and my friends have no doubt about who I am. And maybe they shouldn't bother me but they do, because if he believes what he says when he's angry, he never knew me at all. It's eerie to think  I went to bed every night, had a child, and tried to create a life with someone to whom I was a stranger. Because I told this man my most intimate secrets, protected insecurities, and deepest fears, he can cut me to the core in five words or less. He doesn't consider these intimacies 'protected' when he's angry, so he doesn't have a problem using them to hurt me when he’s angry.

Our marital problems were not all his fault, and my therapist has made a good deal of money on my role in our falling-apart. I've analyzed and dissected my own character flaws to the nth degree, because I never thought I'd be divorced and wanted very much to make sure I never made the same mistakes in another relationship. I wish I could redo a lot of things, but I believe our basic problem was that we are simply fundamentally incompatible. Even if we had a rewind button, we'd fail again.

He has plenty of good traits, but his worst one--and the one that still affects me and those around him--is black or white thinking. When he's angry with someone, he believes that person is deliberately doing things to him, can't see any good in the person, and forgets all he really knows about him or her to focus, magnify, and extend that person's bad traits. Most of the time, he'll eventually calm down and apologize for what he said, but too often, the damage is done.



I do nearly the opposite. When anger is eating at me, I very specifically tell myself that whatever happened probably didn't happen with the specific goal of hurting me. It's like this: there's no point in getting mad at my child for throwing a ball through the kitchen window while playing out back. The kid would really rather it not have happened and it wasn't done with malice. When I'm really angry with someone I love, I often journal and list everything I like about the person. It's not selfless--I hate conflict and dislike my own discontent when I'm angry. My thinking is that the person will probably remain in my life. I love them after all, so I tend not to lose track of people and keep them around for a very long time. Many of my good friends I've known since elementary school. There are only two people with whom I used to be friends until we had a 'falling out.' One of those fallings-out was because she didn't like my (now ex) husband, and we've since reconnected.

Anyhow, if I want to get over the anger quickly, it's good to remember why I love these people. In theory, this is a great idea and it works. But being too eager and willing to forgive is not always a good trait. Taken too far and done too many times, it can turn you into a doormat. Forgiving the kid who threw the ball through the window is all well and good, but if they've done it five times and each time you just repair it, say "that's okay Johnny, it was an accident", and buy them a new ball, you can be pretty sure it's going to happen a sixth. Eventually, you need to put up barriers or forbid Johnny from playing ball in the back yard! 

All of that preliminary stuff was leading up to something, but I typed more than I meant to and I can't even remember exactly where I was going with this. Broadly, I was writing about love. Relationships. Ex wives. New lives. It doesn't really matter now anyway, because I'm out of time. Even if I remembered right now, my lunch break is over and I have to get back to work.

It'll come to me and I'll write more, I'm sure. So consider this, my unedited Part I, a cliffhanger.

For now..back to work..

Excuse me while I lacrimate.

I'm not a emotional mess, usually. And I'm  not depressed at all. But there I was this afternoon, doing the dishes and minding my own business, when Marry Me by Train came on the radio. By the end of the song, I was a sobbing mess. Later, I burst into tears over a stupid car commercial, and a few days ago I broke down while complaining to Sears about the furnace part I ordered never arriving.

I wish I could blame that time of the month. If cyclic hormones had seized control of my tear ducts and all of this was entirely normal, I'd feel less insane. But the scientist part of my brain demanded proof. Sadly, after searching PubMed, I could really only blame my period and the corresponding hormonal fluctuations if I were taking hormones (e.g. on the pill). That's not to say my hormones aren't raging out of control or that I didn't get a kick of prolactin anyway, but I concluded this isn't PMS. That was actually an obvious conclusion, since the P stands for "Pre" and not Post. And because I've been doing this whole monthly thing for long enough to know it's not a normal cyclic thing for me.

I'm not pregnant. I'm not menopausal. I'm not particularly sad. So what the hell is wrong with me these days!? I was about to go search Google and PubMed some more, but the UPS guy is at my door and that has me a little verklempt.


 *J Psychosom Obstet Gynaecol. 2003 Dec;24(4):247-55. Self-reported crying during the menstrual cycle: sign of discomfort and emotional turmoil or erroneous beliefs? 

Error 400 (a poem)

(This page is safe to view at work)

Bushtit - ©2007 Walter Siegmund. 
Available under the Creative Commons ShareAlike License

Error 400**
    ~Mari Nichols Haining
I admit we are sharing a moment unplanned
if you followed a link, I quite understand--
you were searching for boobies or a fuscous bush tit, 
not photos of birds or a writer's weak wit.

But sit for a moment. You've been Googling hard
though some of your search terms are...shall I say scarred?
     (I'm aware you've been wondering if Morgan Freeman is dead.
     But men with dark thoughts about "blonde thoroughbreds"?!
     He's not, as I write this, just slightly banged-up.
     And there's a chance someones looking for ponies or pups.)
The internet is huge, with its chatter and chitter,
and Spaces and Faces and blogs all-a-Twitter.

yet if you stop for a byte, the stories unfurl
among hyperactive places in this deficit world.
Still, if Google misled you and you're determined to go
here's a tip: change your settings, set your filter to low.

**Error 400: An HTTP client error. 400 Bad Request - The request cannot be fulfilled due to bad syntax.

The monsters have taken names

Back then, the gremlins under my bed were not a concern.
What I feared were the stuffed bears that shape-shifted after dark
and the demons who threatened from corners
where the walls and dust and shadows intersected.

The monsters in the closet were less threatening than empty spaces.
Those voids hovering between the church dresses and Sunday shoes,
wedged between the boxes of clothes I'd grow into
and a summer of childhood I'd never wear again,
those voids scared me into insomnia.

Even then, it was too obvious a betrayal
when a snake formed from the trinkets on my most loved bookshelf
taking my diary key for a tongue,
while my Just So Stories and Little House became angry eyebrows
over stern lips from The Great Brain and Nancy Drew.

Now, in my unkeyed  journal
I've written my fears without mention of closets or trinkets or books.
But obvious, too, are my lies by omission --
without darkness or shadows now
the shape-shifters remain animate; the voids still hover.

While my demons avoid the cobwebs and corners now,
my serpents don't bother to hide among the books,
        and the monsters have taken names.

       ~Mari Nichols Haining

Check out other poetry posted on this blog.

Hungry for more? A host of talented contributors participate in  One Shot Wednesday - it's a online poetic flash mob. Go check it out!

And as always, comments, constructive criticism, and links to other writing are encouraged and appreciated!

My house hates me

Forget 2012. Did I miss some big 1/1/11 doomsday prophesy?!

You remember the blizzard that wreaked havoc on the airlines last week? If you lived in my neck of the woods, you were probably waiting it out inside with a nice cup of hot chocolate. Maybe you popped some popcorn and watched a movie with the family. A few logs crackling in the fireplace? For ambiance of course, because we all know that the average fireplace isn't really going to heat much more than the three teenagers vying for marshmallow-roasting space in front of it. So the thermostat was still set to keep you comfortable, right?

Of course, the furnace has to actually work for the thermostat to do any good. Aye, there's the rub.

Mine didn't, and it didn't LOUDLY.   Imagine every time the blower started up, you heard 100,000 angry bees buzzing simultaneously in your basement. Actually, make them wasps, because being a little more worried than usual is part of the experience I'm recreating for you here. So are you imagining that? Pretty loud buzzing noise you have there, eh?

Now imagine those wasps are roaring around a monstrous A380 jet engine and you'll get a better picture. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little. A commuter jet then. You get the point though: it was is really damn loud.

It seems the problem may be a teeny little capacitor no larger than a flip phone.  
The good news: A replacement capacitor runs about 20 bucks. It could be worse.
The bad news: it's worse.

While I was the down there, I noticed the water lines leading to my condenser furnace had been turned off.  I sat down to ponder how that happened and realized the answer when a dream woke me from my nap (did you know your body starts to shut down at 37 degrees? Seriously not cool.).

Forty

When it was young, The Story wanted to tell her
    with elegant wrinkles in the final chapter.
Gentle lines that framed her eyes with wisdom and sadness--
    not cracks that split her face and whispered of capture,
    nor crevices to remind a gentle reader
    of furrows like dried Arizona mud,
dug by the wild madness of the sun.

By the time The Story became the story,
    it asked the narrator to leave editing
    to the children or to another day. She agreed.
She could let the climax stay, though discrediting
    her truth: lives not plotted intersect long before merging.
She feared only that the gentlest would read
   of destiny between the lines.

Soon enough, a studio was completed
in one bare room marked by a red glass door,
  somewhere between the attic and the root cellar.
There, the story danced on the parquet floor
   while waiting for her to begin transcribing.
Instead she paused to ask, "But who will write the end?"
    as though she hadn't wondered it before.

And as though it hadn't also considered this,
the story shrugged and gently, gently offered
                                                              "Destiny?"
   before mutely deciding she needn't write at all.
With an elegant pirouette, the final elegy renounced,
   it danced her through a vast hall.
Spinning, she found it easy to ignore memory
   as it fell from the stairs and dared her to catch up.

Now danced, she doesn't care to understand
   why life tried so hard to convince her.
Instead she paints rivers and moist Arizona mud
   on glass with colors that wouldn't dare to occur.
She ignores the narrative when it chants
   and she can't find the straight lives that once intersected
   so she doesn't try to paint the people or their truths.

Through gently wizened creases, she sees the irony
  of pigment drying on stiff brushes
   as she tells The Story, climaxes too.
Words pause, hopeful she'll give them consideration.
In time, the end will offer its own narrative
 but she'll be too busy painting life between the lines
   to hear the storyteller.
------
Loosely related: Before this, came Fifeteen.