June 2023 Reading

Every year I forget:  summer is not a time when I get stuff done.  I just don’t.  Reading is no exception.  I read four books in June.

One of those books was a picture book.  It’s called Strong by Rob Kearney and Eric Rosswood.  It is an autobiographical picture book about the only openly gay professional strongman in the world (according to the book flap copy).  Rob, despite his obvious strength, felt he needed to hide himself in dark and subdued clothes for competing.  In the story, he learns that to be truly strong, he also needs to show his true, bright, colors.  It’s a very sweet book and I love it.  I mean, what’s not to like about a book about someone who loves weights and wants to be himself?

 

I read two nonfiction books.  One of them was left over from my year of butterflies.  Johannes Goedaert wrote Of Insects in the seventeenth century, and it was translated into English in 1682.  The editor of the English edition is pleasantly snarky about Goedaert’s over-reliance on his art and his laziness in describing the colors of the various insects he observed.  Much of the book is about butterflies, but there are also descriptions of the lifecycles of various flies, grasshoppers, and the like.  There are occasional places where Goedaert lapses into the error of spontaneous generation and he doesn’t fully understand the way parasites that lay eggs in caterpillars work, but it was an interesting read nonetheless.  I’m glad I read it, but wouldn’t exactly recommend it.

 

The other nonfiction book has been on my shelf even longer.  Yoga:  The Art of Transformation edited by Debra Diamond is a fancy, coffee-table-style book that looks at various pieces of art depicting yoga or yogic practices.  The pictures, not surprisingly, are fabulous.  The text is informative, portraying the complicated history of yoga as it has been interpreted through time.  I liked it, but did not find it to be a serious page-turner.

 

Finally, I read one fiction book.  I don’t always love Neal Stephenson’s books, but I do always find them thought-provoking.  Termination Shock is both a book I very much enjoyed and one that made me think.  The opening sequence made me laugh out loud.  A novel about climate change seems like a hard project, but likeable characters and compelling events do the trick to make it hard to put down.  (Brent is currently reading it and liking it, too, and we don’t always enjoy the same books; it speaks to the appeal that two such divergent readers are both liking it.).  Highly recommend.

 

June total:  4 books

Summer total to date:  4 books

Year to date total:  47 books

June 2023 Flash Lit 10 - By the Bye

“By-the-bye, what became of the baby?” said the Cat. “I’d nearly forgotten to ask.”

“It turned into a pig,” Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back in a natural way.

“I thought it would,” said the Cat, and vanished again.  Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 6

 

 

 

Larry looked into Portia’s little eyes and smiled.  She grunted back at him, which was all she ever really did, being a pig.  But he thought it was an affectionate grunt at any rate.

 

He made sure she had enough water in her trough and scratched between her ears.  She leaned into his hand with all her weight.  “Steady on, baby,” he said.  “You’ll knock me down!”

 

Portia grunted again and Larry thought it sounded like a chuckle.

 

He took off his hat to let the breeze cool his head for a moment and rubbed a hand across the few stubbly hairs left on his scalp.  Portia butted up against his legs again and he resumed scratching.

 

“I know you’re lonely, baby, now that Everett is gone,” Larry told her.  Everett, the old boar, had died over the winter of extreme old age.  Larry knew he should get another pig to keep Portia company, but he just couldn’t face coming to the pen every morning and finding a different porcine face looking back at him.

 

It would be like coming into the kitchen and seeing a woman who wasn’t Josie standing at the sink.  He’d rather see the space where Josie should be.

 

Portia decided she’d had enough scratches and trundled over to the mud puddle to cool herself off.  She flopped down with a grunt that this time sounded like satisfaction.

 

Larry, released, trudged back to the house, shucked off his wellies, and washed up before making himself a cup of tea.  He sat at the kitchen table with its faded red checked cloth and tried to remember the shape of Josie, but he couldn’t summon it.

 

It had come to this, he thought.  I talk to my pig and I can’t remember my own wife’s outline.

 

The phone rang.  It was Larry’s niece Christy, who called every so often mostly, Larry thought, to make sure that Larry was still alive.

 

“By the by,” she said, after telling him all about her kids’ soccer games, her husband’s new job, and the ins and outs of trying to find someone to help out in her gift boutique, “I heard that Chas Bond is looking to buy a farm.  If you’re interested in selling, I mean.  He’d even take the pig.”

 

“Absolutely not,” Larry said.

 

“You treat that pig like it’s your baby,” Christy said.

“She is,” Larry answered, and hung up.

June 2023 Flash Lit 9 - On the Up and Up

 

But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said “Queens never make bargains.” Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 9

 

 

 

Rowan looked at the rose bush doubtfully.  “Is it even, you know, alive?” she asked.

 

“Would I lie to you?” Ellis responded, holding his hands out wide.  Rowan thought he looked exactly like a magician showing that there was nothing up his sleeves.

 

“Yes,” she said.

 

Ellis pouted theatrically.  “I go to all this trouble to pick out a very special red rose bush just for you, and it is on sale and you act like I’m trying to pull a fast one.”

 

Rowan sighed.  “Fine.  I’ll take it.”  She picked up the suspiciously light plastic pot with the suspiciously gray-brown prickle of a plant in it and gave Ellis some cash.  Then she stuck the pot in the passenger seat of her car and drove away, mostly convinced she had just given Ellis money for nothing, and money that was about to go up in smoke.

 

The plant crouched there defensively.

 

“It’s not your fault,” she told the plant.  “And, you never know, you might be fine if we get you some water.”

 

Rowan dug a hole for the plant next to the mailbox.  An ancient trellis arch, rusty, spanned the gate in Rowan’s fence.  “In case you need support,” she told the plant.

 

Over the next weeks, the plant did need support.  Also water, fertilizer, and a pint tub of ladybug friends to protect it from aphids.  Rowan chatted to the plant when she came to collect the mail.  She told it about her sister’s trip to Europe as the postcards came in and about how annoying it was to be getting bills eight months later for the cable service she cancelled at Thanksgiving.  Sometimes she just stroked a leaf on the way to her car.  The leaves multiplied and the stems lengthened.  It even produced a few buds.  Rowan watched them curiously, wondering what sort of roses she might have.

 

One dewy morning in June, she walked out her front door to find red and white striped roses on the trellis, stretching up and up.

 

Rowan laughed.  “Ellis was only half lying,” she said.

June 2023 Flash Lit 8 - Time to Time

“No, no! The adventures first,” said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: “explanations take such a dreadful time.” Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 10

 

 

 

“Hurry up, Char,” Griff complained.  “This is the boring part.”

 

Char flicked her long blonde braid over her shoulder and leaned in closer to the spinning gears on the wall.  “I’m cogitating,” she said.  “Get it?  I’m thinking about cogs!”

 

Griff gave his customary groan.

 

Char darted a bright blue glance at him, “Well, that was a mechanical response.”

 

“I’m not going to encourage you anymore,” he said huffily, turning his broad-shouldered back to her.

 

Char stroked the ridge of his shoulder blade where it winged out through his t-shirt.  “I’ll behave,” she promised.  “Mostly.  I’m just interested in how it all works.”

 

His gray eyes, close set around his sharp nose, narrowed.  “It doesn’t matter how it works.  The exciting bit is that it works.  I can show you if you’ll just keep moving.”

 

The wheels and pulleys and levers and wires in the tunnel gave way to a long hallway with polished black and white marble tiles on the floor and a row of red doors on either side.  Char counted a couple hundred tiles, saw many more stretching away from her, and wondered if the hallway was infinite.  “It’s a good thing we have plenty of time,” she joked.

 

“Here we do, but at home time is passing,” Griff said, walking swiftly, his hard-soled boots clattering on the floor.

 

Char’s soft shoes didn’t make any sound as she followed.

 

“This one!” Griff cried.  He stopped so suddenly that Char nearly crashed into him.

 

“How do you know?” she asked.

 

“I just do.”  He turned the bright brass knob.  “You might want to hold my other hand.”

 

Char was tempted to snort.  But then, he had promised adventure, so maybe it would be wiser just to hang on.

 

The door opened outward, which was a good thing, because immediately on the other side of it was a hillocky meadow tufted with wild oats and poppies and a purple sort of wildflower that Char didn’t know the name of.  A breeze ruffled Griff’s hair and made the wisps that had escaped from Char’s braid dance.  Griff breathed in, deeply.  “Smell it!” he said.

 

Char, obediently, sniffed the wind.  “Oh!”  That was all she could manage as the scents triggered image after image.  She smelled grass and flowers, of course, but also the sun on warm earth, the possibility of rain later, and… and… “Toast!”

 

“It’s here!” Griff said, pulling her along until they came to a long table set under a spreading tree.  “It’s all here!”

 

“A very merry unbirthday to you!” Char said, plopping into one of the many chairs around the table.  It was just like she remembered, that time when they were seven.

 

Griff picked up a pocketwatch from the table and said, “It’s tea time.”

 

“You were right,” Char said.  “It doesn’t matter how it works.  I’m happy.”

June 2023 Flash Lit 7 - Over and Over

The rabbit sighed.  By now, she should know how to do it.  It wasn’t that hard, he thought, to show up on time for him to be late.  He had been doing it over and over every magical summer day for a hundred years.

But then, he reflected, catching sight of himself in a puddle from the morning’s shower, it was different for children.  Every time, the child was genuinely surprised by the pocket watch and the waistcoat pocket.  He adjusted his waistcoat, since he was thinking about it.  It wouldn’t do for the child to find him untidy.  Unusual was all right.  Unorthodox was pushing it.  And the goal, of course, was to be underground.

 

That was where the roots were, the ones that nourished and entangled, the ones that absorbed all the damp and kept the soil from blowing away.

 

It was an ecosystem.  It didn’t work without the child, even if the child couldn’t remember to turn up on time.

 

The rabbit checked his watch again.  The shiny oily buttery surface of it mesmerized him.  He was so lucky to have it, to hold it every single day.  Waiting for the dilatory child was nothing compared to the immenseness of his joy in his watch.

 

The orderly sweep of seconds progressing to minutes and on to hours seemed to fuel his own body.  He trembled to think of what would become of him if the watch ever wound down.  It was, in fact, unthinkable.

 

He unthought it, like he did every day.  And then the child was there and he said, as always, “I’m late.”

June 2023 Flash Lit 6: Four by Four

“I’m sure I’m not Ada,” she said, “for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a very little! Besides, she’s she, and I’m I, and—oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I’ll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!  Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 2

 

 

Ally looked up despairingly from the smudges on her worksheet.  Mrs. Kim was busy at her desk, looking for her glasses, which were perched on top of her smooth black hair.  The blackboard was also smooth, but not as black as Mrs. Kim’s hair.  It also had a grid of numbers, white against its surface.  The grid was supposed to be helpful, but Ally didn’t understand it.

 

Annabelle, in the seat in front of Ally, hunched over her paper, twirling a curl around one finger as she spiraled her pencil down the row of problems.  Ally knew better than to ask her for help.  Annabelle knew lots of things, but couldn’t explain how she knew them.  She was like Google, spitting out answer after answer.

 

Next to her, Maya was drawing boxes on her worksheet.  She drew the fancy kind, squares offset from each other and connected at the corners so that the cubes shifted toward or away as Ally looked at them.  Maya didn’t care if Mrs. Kim got angry that she hadn’t even tried to multiply four by four.

 

Ally’s eyes filled with tears.  She hated disappointing Mrs. Kim.

 

“Ally?” Mr. Charles the student teacher asked.  “Do you want me to explain?”

 

The relief that filled Ally’s belly as Mr. Charles kept speaking spread out from there.  He seemed to conjure fours out of the air, spin them, grow them, arrange them.  In the space after his voice ceased, Ally understood.

 

“Sixteen!” she cried.

 

Her blue eyes caught his brown ones, smiles multiplying.

June 2023 Flash Lit 5 - Two by Two

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, “Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we’re doing our best, afore she comes, to—” At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called out “The Queen! The Queen!” and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen.  Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 8

 

 

Bil cursed.

 

Fifi shrugged, “She’s the client, you know.”

 

“But I was almost done!” he cried.

 

“Just fix it,” Fifi said.  “We need the money and the cachet.”

 

“Fucking cachet,” Bil sneered.  “This isn’t what I want to do, painting sentimental fucking roses for rich bitches.”

 

“Do you like eating?”  Fifi didn’t wait for a response.  “Do it.”

 

Bil glared, but he took the first panel back to his easel.  He hunted through the chaos for the brushes he wanted.  It was bad enough to have to paint roses, but red roses were about as clichéd as it was possible to be.  And he had to do it twice.  On two-by-two canvases.

 

He found his smallest brush in a pickle jar of cloudy water.  He rolled it along a cleanish piece of paper towel and dipped it into his newly mixed red paint.

 

Fifi slipped out of the studio to call Mrs. Card to let her know her commissions would be done by the end of the week.

 

“Lovely!” Mrs. Card said when the paintings were unwrapped in her overcrowded living room.

 

“I’m so glad you like them,” Bil said.

 

She never noticed the tiny letters in the shading of the petals spelling out “Fuck you” over and over.

 

June 2023 Flash Lit 4 - One by One

 

But when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.”  John 8:9-11

 

 

 

“No,” Maggie said.

 

“What do you mean, no?” Bill said.

 

“I mean NO.  I don’t want to do this anymore.  It’s not right,” she said.  “It’s not right.”

 

Bill smoothed his wavy hair back from his forehead.  “You know that means I will have to call in the loan.”

 

Maggie crossed her arms over her chest.  The cracking feeling in her heart was just the beginning, she thought.  Once Bill called in the loan, Jason, her husband, would ask why.  Bill would tell him.  He would tell Jason that not only was he going to take away the house, but he’d already destroyed the home.  Or Maggie had.

 

But looking at Bill’s smug face and his soft, banker’s hands, Maggie just couldn’t do it anymore.  She couldn’t look at the ceiling and think of Jason.

 

The trial took months.  Every day, Maggie forced her spine upright, put on a fresh dress.  She wrapped herself in an old raincoat for the dash from the car to the courthouse and once inside shoved the rotten-vegetable spattered coat in a plastic bag until the next trip through the angry crowd.

 

The first day had been the worst.  Jason’s large extended family had been among the tomato-throwers.  She had seen her neighbors’ faces distorted with disgust at her.  Even the woman who had poured her cup of coffee at the local café for years flung a mushy apple at her.

 

Bill’s lawyers were just as slick as he was and at least as expensive.  Maggie’s lawyer, Jenny, was neither slick nor expensive, but she was driven.  “We can win this,” she said.  “The truth is on our side.”

 

Maggie didn’t care much about the truth.  She just wanted peace.  The mob wasn’t going to give it to her.

 

But, as the weeks went by and the testimony trickled out, the crowd also trickled away, one by one.  Bill’s illegal and unorthodox practices around Maggie’s and Jason’s loan did not draw the kind of attention Bill liked.  Some other husbands in the community, also struggling to pay their bills, began to look at their wives differently.  Some other wives, thinking about their children, wondered what they might do in a similar situation.

 

Jenny said, characteristically deadpan, “People in glass houses, you know.”

 

Maggie thanked her when the verdict came in and went to gather up the shards of her own life.

June 2023 Flash Lit 3 - Step by Step

Ana’s phone buzzed in her pocket.  Another text from Elle, probably.  She knew Ana was at work and couldn’t answer.  “And here,” Ana continued, using her laser pointer to indicate the appropriate row in the spreadsheet projected on the conference room wall, “you can see how this new sales push has impacted our profits.”

Ana needed this presentation to go well.  Her management chain had been very clear on the fact that there were going to be layoffs and only the best of the best would get to keep their jobs.

 

Then Ana’s phone actually rang.  That was only supposed to happen in a dire emergency.  She looked at the grimace on her boss’s face and shut the phone up.  “Sorry about that,” she said.  “As I was saying…”

 

The phone buzzed almost continuously through the rest of the meeting.  Ana’s blood pressure inched upward with every tap of the haptic.  Even so, she kept her voice calm and professional.  By the time she concluded her talk, heads were nodding around the table and several of the managers asked her to send them more information.  Her own boss even told her she had done well on the way out the door.

 

Flushed with the praise, Ana collected up her things.  She didn’t see the officers gather in the doorway until she turned to leave.  “Anastasia Tremaine, you are under arrest on suspicion of child abuse.  You have the right to remain silent…”

 

“What?” she cried.

 

The next few hours were difficult, to say the least.  Finally, she found herself in a holding cell, reunited with her sister Elle.  “I tried to warn you,” Elle said.

 

“What is this about, anyway?” Ana asked.

 

“It’s Cyn,” Elle replied.  “She went to the police about how we treated her.”

 

Ana paled.  “That was years ago.”

 

“Not long enough,” Elle said.

 

At the trial, Cyn smiled at her therapist when she heard the verdict.  “Step by step,” she said to herself.

June 2023 Flash Lit 2 - Side by Side

 “I wonder, now, what the Rules of Battle are,” she said to herself, as she watched the fight, timidly peeping out from her hiding-place: “one Rule seems to be, that if one Knight hits the other, he knocks him off his horse, and if he misses, he tumbles off himself—and another Rule seems to be that they hold their clubs with their arms, as if they were Punch and Judy—What a noise they make when they tumble! Just like a whole set of fire-irons falling into the fender! And how quiet the horses are! They let them get on and off them just as if they were tables!”

Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they always fell on their heads, and the battle ended with their both falling off in this way, side by side: when they got up again, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off.

Through the Looking Glass,  Chapter 8

 

 

            Al thought the back seat was probably the worst place on earth.  He wasn’t quite tall enough to see much out the window, not that there was much to see out there anyway.  His legs stuck to the maroon vinyl seat.  His dads wouldn’t let him roll down the windows since the air conditioning was on, but the vents didn’t reach past the front seats.  Worse, his dads were arguing.

            Daddy was driving because Daddy almost always drove.  Al could see Daddy’s knuckles gripping the steering wheel.  All Al could see of Papa was the back of his head.  There was a little lighter patch of skin below Papa’s slicked down hair because he had got his hair cut yesterday.  Papa wanted to look nice for the visit to Granny.

            “Separate rooms?” Papa said, incredulously.  “After all this time?”

            Daddy shrugged.  “She’s set in her ways.”

            “So you’re saying that our marriage means nothing to you?” Papa said, his voice rising in that way it did just before he started to cry.  Al knew it was all right to cry when he was sad, but he still wished Papa didn’t feel like crying.

            “Darling,” Daddy said, taking one hand off the wheel and putting it on Papa’s knee, “of course not.  You are the world to me.  It’s just one night.”

            “One night of your mother pretending that you’re still going to bring home some nice girl with big hair who wants to pop out ten little copies of the two of you.”  Papa sighed.  “At least she loves Al.”

            Al thought about that.  Granny, who always smelled like peaches, hugged him tightly every time they visited.  Sometimes Al came away with an imprint of her tracksuit zipper on his cheek.  She gave him Hot Wheels.  “Just like your Daddy always liked,” she said.  This puzzled Al, because Daddy still liked Hot Wheels; they drove them around the kitchen floor together all the time.

            “I’ll talk to her,” Daddy said.  “I want you to be happy.”

            “Thank you,” Papa said.  He leaned toward Daddy and kissed his cheek.  Then he whispered something in Daddy’s ear and Daddy laughed.

Al knew the argument was over.  He looked at his dads, side by side, and knew everything would be all right.

June 2023 Flash Lit 1 - Back to Back

 “I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly: “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 10

 

BRABANTIO            What profane wretch art thou?
IAGO                         I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter

and the Moor are ⟨now⟩ making the beast with

two backs.

Othello, Act I, Scene 1

 

Morning came, foul-breathed, headachy, and irritatingly sunny.  Leesa squinted groggily at the untidy room.  Untidy did not even begin to cover it.  There were the usual scattered clothes, dirty and less dirty, in heaps on the floor and the expected cups of dregs and plates of crumbs, but that was a level of chaos any fourteen-year-old could achieve.  It took dedication to tumble books on and off shelves, back to back, higgledy-piggledy, to crush out an orange crayon in an ashtray, to half fill a suitcase with rocks and then fill the other half with random cords and cables, dusting the whole with pizza coupons and rose petals.

She sighed and heaved herself off the lumpy futon.  The man—Ian maybe?—seemed to be gone.  Small mercies, she thought.  Her breath hurt.  Leesa touched the base of her throat, the place where he had pressed his thumbs.  She shuddered.

She had to stop doing this.  Maybe Ian had nearly killed her.

It was time to be someone else.

If only she knew how.

She wanted to go back to sleep, so that was probably not the best first step.  Instead, she put on some not-too-filthy sweat pants and a t-shirt she didn’t remember having, washed her face, pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and surveyed the wreckage.

Maybe Ian had, in his rage or enthusiasm, smashed a lot of dishes, but there was one coffee mug hiding in the dishwasher.  Leesa virtuously scrubbed the pot before making coffee.  The Old Leesa would have left it.

New Leesa found the trash bags and the broom.  The broom was virginal, unused, its white bristles about to suffer endless indignities.  Leesa felt sorry for it.  Almost as sorry as she felt for herself.

As she swept up the shards on the kitchen floor, she noticed that there was change in the mix.  Maybe Ian must have broken her laundry money jar.  She picked quarters out of the sharp bits until she had enough for a load, then left that mess behind to gather up a trash bag of random clothing.  New Leesa would be efficient.

Efficiency sucked, she decided, around four.  Sure, the dishes were done and she had clean clothes.  The building dumpster was full.  The floor held no hazards.  Also, her whole body hurt.

She cleaned most of the bathroom and then showered and scrubbed the tub at the same time.

New Leesa combed her hair, put on some lipstick, and slid into her jeans fresh from the dryer.  She put on a black cami under her red jacket.

When she sat down at the bar down the street and ordered a mai tai, the guy on the stool next to her said, “You look like you have a good story to tell.”

“It’s always the same,” she said.