It pains me to type this, but as I am preparing to attempt a post-blizzard flight from the East coast back to LA, I also realized that once I get back I will be devoid of internet until Time Warner can come out and install it in my new apartment. So keep checking back for new postings, and I will be using this time in the dark to think up something really spectacular.
AAA Vacation Guide
“Philadelphia isn’t as bad as Philadelphians say it is.”
—Billboard on Interstate 95
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
I love this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It reminds me of one of my favorite Christmas memories, when my family was traveling in Florence. We ate dinner on Christmas Eve at a place called Buca Mario that consisted of bread, olive oil, wine, and several courses in between. Then we walked back to our hotel full and sleepy and later awoke to hear bells ringing all across the city for Christmas.
Hearing church bells is one of my most favorite things. And while we're on the subject of favorite things, I suspect it comes from a scene in The Sound of Music (the first movie I ever saw). There's one part where they show a boy ringing a church bell just before Maria marries Capt. Von Trapp. That sound is just so joyful, but I think I like it because it also evokes something "old world" to me.
Well, if James Lipton ever asks me his list of questions, I guess I've got one down!
There is a tradition in my family to go to the Washington Chorus Christmas concert every year at the Kennedy Center. Parts of it are sing-along, so they give you a program with all the words to the songs. Then there are some songs that only the choir sings and you sit back and listen. During one of those, I was reading the words and realizing what great poetry some of these songs are on their own. My favorite was "The Dream Isaiah Saw." Here are the lyrics:
Lions and oxen will sleep in the hay,
leopards will join with the lambs as they play,
wolves will be pastured with cows in the glade,
blood will not darken the earth that God made.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
life redeemed from fang and claw.
Peace will pervade more than forest and field:
God will transfigure the Violence concealed
deep in the heart and in systems of gain,
ripe for the judgement the Lord will ordain.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
justice purifying law.
Nature reordered to match God's intent,
nations obeying the call to repent,
all of creation completely restored,
filled with the knowledge and love of the Lord.
I always wonder about songwriters and what their processes are. Is is melody first and then lyrics? Or do you start with a poem? Then I found some information about the history of this song: Commissioned by the Bach Choir of Pittsburg in memory of those who perished on September 11, 2001, "The Dream Isaiah Saw" refers to the 8th Century BC prophet Isaiah's vision of God's creation restored to peace and harmony through the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:1-5). It is the panoramic view of the future Messianic Kingdom. Thomas H. Troeger, professor at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and director of its homiletics program, wrote the poem “Lion and Oxen Will Sleep in the Hay” in 1994. The composer Glenn L. Rudolph (composer, conductor, and tenor soloist with many choral organizations in Pittsburgh) began to set this poem to music toward the end of July, 2001. Nineteen days after September 11th, he completed this choral work. It captures the contrast of the chaotic world we live in with Isaiah's dream calling for us to "walk in the light of the Lord."
Ever notice how advertisers get a little lax around the holidays and rerun the same ads year after year? I can think of three commercials off the top of my head that have been repeated for maybe five to ten years. Penny pinching? Do they think if they play them enough it's tradition? Are these really classics and I'm just a Scrooge? You decide.
Exhibit A, the fainting M&M:
Exhibit B, the carol of the kisses:
And finally, this kid must be in college by now:
Winter-Time
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.
Close by the jolly fire I sit
To warm my frozen bones a bit;
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore
The colder countries round the door.
When to go out, my nurse doth wrap
Me in my comforter and cap;
The cold wind burns my face, and blows
Its frosty pepper up my nose.
Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding-cake.
I was given a commission to write a little rhyme for an invitation to an office secretary's retirement party. I thought it might be fun to post the info I was given and show a line-by-line process of constructing the poem. This is what I was told:
The woman's name is Peggy Abruzzi.
She's had 34 years of federal service.
She hates the winter commute to the office.
She doesn't want to make a big deal about her retirement, just wants her friends and colleagues around her.
So where to begin? Well, I thought the best place to start would be her name. What rhymes with Abruzzi? All I could think of was "cutesy." That gives an idea for the first line. Let's try this out:
For fear of writing something too cutesy,
you're invited to celebrate Peggy Abruzzi.
But that doesn't really make sense and it sounds a little Hallmark-y. How about this:
At the risk of writing something too cutesy,
let's take a moment to salute Peggy Abruzzi.
All right. Suddenly I stop and think I'm really kind of crap at this sort of thing. I think it's going to be a long road to the finish. I don't know the first thing about federal service- not even what rhymes with it. I can't very well say she's been nervous all these years. Hmm. A flash of inspiration. What if I flip the words around? Like this:
She's spent 34 years federally serving
That works. And then I can rhyme "serving" with "deserving." That sounds like appropriate retirement party talk.
She's spent 34 years federally serving,
and we can't think of anyone more deserving
Great! Now I'm encouraged. I have a direction to follow. What is she deserving of?
to be surrounded by colleagues and friends
on the day her _____ service ends.
I know that I want a word to describe what kind excellent work she's put in and also that she's appreciated. Something like "valued service," but that sounds like a sale at a supermarket. I go to the thesaurus and look at words that can substitute for "valued." How about "esteemed"? That conveys respect and high regard.
to be surrounded by colleagues and friends
on the day her esteemed service ends.
Now I just need to get some info in there about when this shindig will be held. That's basic party invitation phrasing (I don't know the exact date, so I'll leave that for the person who requested the poem to fill in):
So on December ____, stop by, wish her well.
This is a useful line for two reasons. First, it moves things along and gets the point across. Second, it ends with the word "well," which should be easy to rhyme. Some possibilities: swell, gel, tell. I don't want to lapse into '50s slang, and I'm not familiar with Peggy's hair gel rituals, so I latch onto "tell." This might require some fancy maneuvering of phrases. I know I have one last piece of information I want to deliver, which is that Peggy hates the winter commute. What I want to say in these last couple lines is that there's a silver lining to her retirement. She'll avoid the winter commute from now on. But how to put that in a sentence that rhymes with "well"?
So on December ____, stop by, wish her well.
We'll miss her, but there's one bright side to tell
Eh, it's a little clunky but let's see how it plays out. Two more lines and I just need a word that rhymes with "commute." Aha:
as we give her a final salute,
here's to her last winter commute!
Not ideal, since we've already used "salute" in the second line, but let's put the whole thing together and check the flow, yo.
At the risk of writing something too cutesy,
let's take a moment to salute Peggy Abruzzi.
She's spent 34 years federally serving,
and we can't think of anyone more deserving
to be surrounded by colleagues and friends
on the day her esteemed service ends.
So on December ____, stop by, wish her well.
We'll miss her, but there's one bright side to tell
as we give her a final salute,
here's to her last winter commute!
Hey, it's not terrible. All in all it took less than half an hour, and with a little polish it will serve its purpose of making Peggy Abruzzi feel special.
I was watching the 1949 version of Little Women this weekend, and I suddenly realized that every adaptation of the book- nay, even the very book itself- infuriates me. The problem is Jo. She's a great character whom a lot of girls look up to: a headstrong, outspoken writer who struggles against society's expectations of her to get married and stay home and knit. Clearly she is a representation of the author, Louisa May Alcott.
In case you are unfamiliar with the plot, Jo is best friends with "Laurie" Lawrence. His character is developed as charming, handsome, fun, and basically the peas to Jo's carrots. Laurie loves Jo, and Alcott seems to be setting them up as the perfect match through most of the book. But in the second half, it becomes more and more clear that Jo does not feel the same about Laurie, until she finally rejects his marriage proposal and breaks his heart. She goes off to New York, hoping that it will give him time to get over her, and it's there that she meets the wretched Professor Bhaer.
Guess what. She ends up marrying old Bhaer. Oh, Louisa. We don't care about the Professor! He's middle-aged and always poorly cast in movies. He and Jo have a teacher-student relationship, and it's incredibly boring. She's fascinated by his thoughts on philosophy. She ends up darning his socks. In the movie, she sews a button on his coat for him. What happened to the unconventional young woman who rejected traditional domestic roles? Alcott herself ended up never marrying. Why not the same for her heroine who was so adamant in her rejection of Laurie that she probably would never marry?
Look, even if she had to marry old Square Bhaer, could we at least have gotten a more interesting, better developed sense of character? In a book that is 47 chapters long, Bhaersy only enters in number 34. Compare that to Laurie, who appears from chapter three onward, and you've got a lot to compensate for.
At the Smithsonian American Art Museum there is currently an exhibition from George Lucas' and Steven Spielberg's personal collections of Norman Rockwell paintings. The exhibit is titled "Telling Stories," and upon visiting it I finally understood the "big deal" about Rockwell's work.
I always took his art for granted, I guess because it seemed so ubiquitous and accessible, like Thomas Kinkade's stuff which is on every card, calendar and cross stitch. But Rockwell's paintings are certainly more than just fairy houses. What I finally appreciated today was not only the fact that he tells a story with each one, but that he brings the audience into the story halfway through the telling of it. Take, for example, this picture:
Just that look on the teacher's face conveys her love for each and every one of her students. She is so touched by their birthday wishes to her--even from the class clown with the eraser on his head. Clearly her class adores her, too.
And then there's this one:
Rockwell was a master of giving you all the information you need in just one frame. You can tell immediately by looking at this what is going on. And he was so good at giving us images of everyday American life. Even though these kids' clothes are old-fashioned, this scene has played out time and again in school gyms for decades.
So with my new found respect for Norman Rockwell, I will leave you with one of my favorites:
The others bent their heads and started in.
Confused, I asked my neighbor
to explain—a sturdy, bright-cheeked girl
who brought raw milk to school from her family’s
herd of Holsteins. Ann had a blue bookmark,
and on it Christ revealed his beating heart,
holding the flesh back with His wounded hand.
Ann understood division. . . .
Miss Moran sprang from her monumental desk
and led me roughly through the class
without a word. My shame was radical
as she propelled me past the cloakroom
to the furnace closet, where only the boys
were put, only the older ones at that.
The door swung briskly shut.
The warmth, the gloom, the smell
of sweeping compound clinging to the broom
soothed me. I found a bucket, turned it
upside down, and sat, hugging my knees.
I hummed a theme from Haydn that I knew
from my piano lessons. . . .
and hardened my heart against authority.
And then I heard her steps, her fingers
on the latch. She led me, blinking
and changed, back to the class.
There was a fly stumbling around in the kitchen this morning. It was moving awfully slow. It even landed on the floor a few times. I figured it was not meant for this world much longer, but I didn't have the heart to kill it. There's a door leading outside to the backyard on the other side of the room. That was when I started trying to herd the fly toward the door. Have you ever tried herding a fly? Well, try herding cats and then multiply the difficulty by 10.
Dish towel in hand, I waved it around yelling, "I'm trying to save you, fly! Can't you feel the cold air blowing in? Go, go!" Well, a few minutes later he finally went. I watched him zip out and then I shut the door on Old Man Winter and went about my business.
Cut to lunch time. I'm in the kitchen again and what do I hear? That old familiar buzzing. What the heck? Now, I know for a fact the first one went out, and the door was locked up tight after it. This had to be . . . the first fly's sister/cousin/stepmother? For a minute I entertained the idea that I was at the beginning of a horror movie where flies start to show up one by one until there's a big reveal of a scary guy opening his mouth and thousands of flies swarming out. Still, I was trying to avoid killing it. I figured since I got the first one outside, I could do the same for its relative (or minion of Satan). Well, this one had a little more pep in his step (zing in his wing?), and he just would not go.
By the time my family arrived home later in the evening he was still buzzing around. I ventured out the back door to cut some rosemary for dinner, and when I came back my dad was folding up a dish towel, looking pretty pleased with himself. I looked at him, questioningly. He assured me the fly was taken care of. He had "whacked" him. Oh.
The Fly
Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,
The last few days AMC has been running the old movie White Christmas back to back to back. I hadn't watched the entire thing before, but I was lying in bed with a case of too much time difference between East and West coasts, so I thought, why not? It stars Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. On Danny Kaye alone I was sold.
Well, despite the fact that most of the second half of the movie hinges on the passive aggressive nature of Rosemary Clooney's character, it's not bad. The songs are so catchy, they've been in my head for days. Irving Berlin composed all the tunes. I was once in a play in high school and this girl acting opposite me had the line, "Could Irving Berlin have done better?" She was a bit over-the-top, so now whenever I hear his name I think of her saying "Irrrrrrving Berrrrrlin." Anyway, Berlin was amazing. I never realized how many hits he really wrote: "White Christmas," "Happy Holiday," "God Bless America," and you know how I feel about "There's No Business Like Show Business." Come on.
According to Wikipedia, he wrote over 1,500 songs in his entire career. The man was such a genius of a songwriter, he's been compared more to the likes of poets Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg. I thought I would go ahead and post some of his lyrics from White Christmas here as poems. They really just seem effortless. Enjoy.
When I was mustered out
I thought without a doubt
That I was through with all my care and strife
I thought that I was then
The happiest of men
But after months of tough civilian life
Gee, I wish I was back in the Army
The Army wasn't really bad at all
Three meals a day
For which you didn't pay Uniforms for winter, spring, and fall
There's a lot to be said for the Army
The life without responsibility
A soldier out of luck
Was really never stuck
There's always someone higher up where you can pass the buck
Oh, gee, I wish I was back in the Army
[2nd chorus for female:]
Gee, I wish I was back in the Army
The Army was the place to find romance
Soldiers and WACS
The WACS who dressed in slacks
Dancing cheek to cheek and pants to pants
There's a lot to be said for the Army
A gal was never lost for company
A million handsome guys
With longing in their eyes
And all you had to do was pick the age, the weight, the size
Oh, gee, I wish I was back in the Army
Gee, I wish I was back in the Army
The shows we got civilians couldn't see
How we would yell for Dietrich and Cornell
Jolson, Hope and Benny all for free
There's a lot to be said for the Army The best of doctors watched you carefully
A dentist and a clerk
For weeks and weeks they'd work
They'd make a thousand dollar job and give it to a jerk
Oh, gee, I wish I was back in the Army
Three meals a day
For which you didn't pay
A million handsome guys
With longing in their eyes
I thought that I was through with all my care and strife
But after months and months of tough civilian life
Oh, gee
I wish I was back in the Army now
Sisters, sisters
There were never such devoted sisters,
Never had to have a chaperone, No sir.
I'm there to keep my eye on her
Caring, sharing
Every little thing that we are wearing
When a certain gentleman arrived from Rome
She wore the dress, and I stayed home
All kinds of weather, we stick together
The same in the rain and sun
Two different faces, but in tight places
We think and we act as one
Those who've seen us
Know that not a thing could come between us
Many men have tried to split us up, but no one can
Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister
And Lord help the sister, who comes between me and my man
Funny side note: Can you totally tell how Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen are the real dancers? Look how angry Rosemary Clooney looks when she first comes out on stage in the Army song. She seems to be concentrating on getting the dance moves down and forgetting to smile! And poor Bing sure is trying, but he's got nothing on Danny's energy.
The other day when I was waiting for the airport shuttle to pick me up, I was getting angry because it was a half an hour late. I called the company twice and was assured the driver was "almost there," "almost there" but cars came and went and my blood pressure continued to rise. When the van finally pulled up I rushed down the driveway and loaded my stuff inside. I was already in a bad mood, exhausted from moving right up until the hour I had to leave, and I really wasn't planning to tip this driver. Then he struck up a conversation. I was surprised that I was the only person in the shuttle. The driver asked if the company had called to tell me that he was running late. I said, no, but I called them. He told me they gave him this assignment at the last minute and he had to hurry down from Burbank. They told him he had to be here by 10:30 and he said, there's no way with traffic, but I'll be there as soon as I can. We proceeded to have a really nice conversation the entire way to the airport. The company let him give all his other passengers to someone else so he could rush me to my plane once he picked me up. I was ashamed by my bad attitude. Here I was ready to unleash my stress and frustrations out on someone who was only doing their best to help me.
Over and over this year, I have been struck by the good nature and simple human kindness displayed by strangers. Another example: On my flight, the overhead bins were completely full by the time my section was boarded. I had a laptop bag and a large purse, but they couldn't both fit under the seat in front of me. I was debating whether I was really going to have to check my laptop when the woman beside me offered to let me put my purse with hers under the seat in front of her. Who does that? Nice people, apparently!
I know I have a terrible tendency to myopically view things when life gets too crazy or times are tough, but meanwhile all around the city doors are being held open and even postal workers have been greeting people with a smile. Then I watched this video a friend posted on facebook, and boy did I feel sheepish. Yes, I'll try to be better in the new year.
The God of Loneliness
It’s a cold Sunday February morning
and I’m one of eight men waiting
for the doors of Toys R Us to open
in a mall on the eastern tip of Long Island.
We’ve come for the Japanese electronic game
that’s so hard to find. Last week, I waited
three hours for a store in Manhattan
to disappoint me. The first today, bundled
in six layers, I stood shivering in the dawn light
reading the new Aeneid translation, which I hid
when the others came, stamping boots
and rubbing gloveless hands, joking about
sacrificing sleep for ungrateful sons. “My boy broke
two front teeth playing hockey,” a man wearing
shorts laughs. “This is his reward.” My sons
will leap into my arms, remember this morning
all their lives. “The game is for my oldest boy,
just back from Iraq,” a man in overalls says
from the back of the line. “He plays these games
in his room all day. I’m not worried, he’ll snap out of it,
he’s earned his rest.” These men fix leaks, lay
foundations for other men’s dreams without complaint.
They’ve been waiting in the cold since Aeneas
founded Rome on rivers of blood. Virgil understood that
death begins and never ends, that it’s the god of loneliness.
Through the window, a clerk shouts, “We’ve only five.”
The others seem not to know what to do with their hands,
tuck them under their arms, or let them hang,
naked and useless. Is it because our hands remember
what they held, the promises they made? I know
exactly when my boys will be old enough for war.
Soon three of us will wait across the street at Target,
because it’s what men do for their sons.
Well, since I have just come off a mechanically beleaguered plane, the temperature outside is 24 degrees, and a warm bed is calling my name, I'm just going to leave this final chapter right here for all you nice people and go to bed. Voila:
The world he knew disappeared and with it everyone else. The Brute hung in the air like the dust on a shelf. He tried calling out. He tried a whisper, a scream. He breathed out really hard, but it was like a bad dream. For the Brute was unable to utter a sound. There were no more words; not a soul was around. He just hung there in sadness, alone in the dark. Time ambled by, but then an idea sparked.
The Brute realized he didn’t like being alone. He missed all the people, his school and his home. He felt very sorry for the things he had done, and he wished extra hard to take back every one. He squeezed his eyes shut, conjuring all the bad words. He shut them in a box and marked them “unheard.”
Suddenly he imagined he felt the sun on his face. He pictured patterns of leaves in the sunshine like lace. He heard his named called, but he kept his eyes shut. He thought, if this is a dream, I choose not to wake up. And then someone shook him. He blinked and he looked. Miss Wilson! She gave him another great shook.
“No sleeping in time out.”
The teacher’s face was stern.
“I wasn’t asleep!” The Brute uncurled like a worm. Then he remembered, “It was so awful, my dream.”
“I should think so,” said Miss Wilson. “You’ve been very mean.
The Brute took in the playground and saw the girl he’d made cry. When the bell rang, he ran toward her. He poked her and said . . . hi.
So today I was reading an article about the life of Ian Fleming, who wrote the Bond books. I never knew this, but the books are loosely based on his real life as a spy for British Naval Intelligence during WWII. One of their plans to foil the Nazis was to dress as German soldiers and pretend to be injured so that they could kill their rescuers. Pretty badass. But word daggers? Badasser:
The Brute drew himself up to his full height and yet, both he and they knew he was really no threat. Until he shouted out words that just popped in his head. The words sounded strange and filled the children with dread.
“I AM BIG. I AM TALL. I WILL SQUASH YOU LIKE ANTS.”
There was a stunned silence. Brute continued his chant.
“I AM BIG.” Was he bigger?
“I AM TALL.” It was true!
His growth spurts were quick. Ten feet taller he grew. He grabbed the word daggers in one meaty fist. He chucked them at trees. Not a single one missed. They stuck to the trunks. They skinned leaves off of twigs. They turned into graffiti, cruel and glaringly big.
The Brute smirked at the kids, though they could barely see. He lifted one foot up the size of a tree. His classmates ran screaming. Their screams clawed at the air.
“Come back and make fun of me now!” he dared.
The Brute stomped the ground. Like an earthquake it shook. He plodded around. He scoured each nook. But the children were quick. They knew how to hide. The Brute paused and let their whispers act as his guide.
The whispers were vapors as fragile as ghosts. They curled into crook’d fingers that beckoned him close. Closer and closer The Brute followed them out.
He deserted the school for a dark, wooded route. The whispered words emitted a faint, glowing light. They made monstrous shadows that played tricks on Brute’s sight. They flashed different images based on what was said. Then the words stopped and pointed. Into a cave they led.
The Brute stomped his way in. There was an intake of breath.
“I know you’re in here,” he snarled. “Or did I scare you to death?”
There was a shuffle, a scurry, a silencing shush. Every sound echoed, bounding off walls with a push. Finally one brave soul piped up loudly and spoke:
“Go away! You’re a freak!”
And with that, chaos broke.
The Brute lunged at the words, but they clamped on his nose. “Freak” balled up and blinked red with a clownish-type glow.
“Now you’ll be sorry,” The Brute howled with rage.
“You sound like a sick cow!” a familiar voice waged.
It was a harsh blow. It nearly knocked him out. He shook his head, disbelieving. He gaped like a trout. The words bounced off the walls. They zoomed and they flew. The Brute filled up with venom.
He spat out, “I hate you!”
A huge echo swung forward, pounding him to a pulp. Then “hate” rose up and gaped, swallowing Brute in one gulp.
I was going to introduce this next installment a la Masterpiece Theater, but then I got sidetracked reading an article about former M.T. host Alistair Cooke. The poor guy died back in 2004, and before he was cremated his body parts were chopped up and sold for profit by "rogue morticians." Geez. Sounds like the plot to a CSI episode. So I guess this is more in the vein of Halloween than Christmas, but The Brute continues nonetheless:
The Brute bolted up, blinking. The sun had gone black. No one knew the reason. There was no great crack, no explosions, no fizzle, no fireworks shot. Simply what once was there happened now to be not. The world grew quite cold. People huddled together. The Brute stood alone while they debated the weather. As the children’s teeth chattered, their breaths froze in the air. But what The Brute saw was strange. All the words remained there.
Good words and bad words and gossip and jokes. The words tumbled out of their mouths as they spoke. They floated up to the trees, took a perch, looked around. Their movements were graceful. They made not a sound. Rude words cracked open, flashed their innards and leered. Some jokes came out moldy. One or two had on beards. A “thank you” dropped lightly. It curtsied and bowed. Gossip tended to slither and leap bough to bough.
The Brute wondered if this was something he should mention, for none of his classmates was paying attention. They were all playing tag with the flashlights they’d found. A boy in his haste knocked The Brute to the ground.
“Idiot,” The Brute snarled, “I’m standing right here.”
The sentence took off like a shot at his peer. The words chugged along like a train on a track from The Brute’s mouth to boy’s head in two seconds flat.
There was howling. It seemed like the boy had been stung. The Brute watched it all happen. He knew what he’d done. He had not raised a hand, but the fact remained true: his words were what bruised the poor boy black and blue.
Questions popped up, hopping this way and that. Through the crowd they scurried. They darted like rats. One circled The Brute, sniffed his ear hole and hair. He swatted it off with a series of swears. The swears formed in a cyclone of prickles tiny as peas. They swirled and they roiled. They exploded like bees.
Only one target was set in their sights. The Brute’s eyes grew wide. He prepared to take flight. But from every direction the prickles advanced. They flew up his nostrils. They prickled his pants.
The Brute sneezed and swatted at what no one could see. The children all stared, some were grinning with glee. Their bully was making a fool of himself. The children all whispered, “Look at the elf!”
Their giggles erupted while The Brute tore at his clothes. They mocked as he picked prickles out of his nose. The words soared above them. They pointed and dived. They crystalled like ice and sharpened like knives.
The Brute raised his head up, eyes tearing in pain. But then his eyes narrowed:
Last year for Christmas I was flat broke and couldn't even begin to imagine how to afford presents for everyone. I racked my brain and finally decided that since I had been working on a children's story, it might be fun to turn it into a book. I asked a friend of mine to do the illustrations so that I could put it together and give it as a gift to my family.
The story is about a pint-sized bully who watches the mean words he says come to life and physically hurt people. When I wrote it, it first came out as a poem. Later I restructured it into more of a manuscript format, but I kept the rhyme. I think it makes it less scary for little kids.
Sometimes it's good to change things up a bit, so this week in honor of the holiday season I decided to post an excerpt of The Brute here each day. Illustrations by the fabulous Angela Springer.
The Brute
The Brute was a bully who stood up to his name. He stood only three feet but there was something untamed in the way that he spoke and how he made people feel. He chewed them up, spit them out, everyone was a meal.
He tormented his classmates with bellows and booms. He snuck up behind them, crouching in rooms. And the boys and girls trembled for they knew what came next. Each word The Brute spoke took the shape of a hex.
Susan ran crying when he said her thighs thundered. He called Walter four-eyes and laughed at his blunders.
Poor Josie’s arm hairs were thick like a sweater. The Brute even told Evan that Clare liked Jake better. The Brute had no friends so the words lifted his spirits. The meaner he was the less he had to hear it from anyone who had the gumption to tease or turn up their noses or tickle his knees. So he went alone to recess each day, scanning the yard for the weak and the strays.
Now one afternoon played out a fine scene. The Brute’s lunch had settled. He was full of baked beans. The sun was half-hidden, clouds lined up for miles. A chill thinned the air, his lips curled to a smile.
“Play time,” called The Brute. “Who wants to play?”
But nobody answered. They all ran away, except for one girl who sat alone on a swing. She had headphones on. She had started to sing. In no time at all The Brute closed on his prey. He crept up behind her. Too late she yelped, “Hey!”
He took her music. She took it right back. They squared off with each other. He prepared his attack:
“You sound like a sick cow. You’re hurting my ears.”
Bull’s-eye for The Brute. The words brought her to tears. But the girl was not finished. She knew what to do.
“Miss Wilson!” she cried, and between each boo hoo she told the teacher The Brute’s terrible words.
“That’s it!” said Miss Wilson. “I can’t believe what I’ve heard. You won’t have any friends if you keep up this way,”
The teacher warned The Brute, “You’ll regret this one day.”
Instead The Brute sneered and made public a vow: “I’d rather be alone. I don’t care anyhow.”
She marched The Brute to a bench. On the sidelines he sat. He curled his hands into fists. On the bench he lay flat. He glared up at the sky and swore things dark as night until it suddenly seemed someone turned out the light.
I have a serious book problem. Here I am packing, transferring all my junk from one residence to the next, hustling things on Craigslist, celebrating like it's New Year's Eve when the Department of Sanitation agrees to pick up my old box spring mattress, and then what happens? I pause for a minute and suddenly panic that I won't have anything to read on the plane to DC next week. I won't have any books because I packed them all! Horror of horrors, this will not do. I remember that I have a $20 gift card to Barnes & Noble. Packing break!
I know exactly what I want. In the store, I make my way up to the third floor-- fiction/literature. The escalators are kind of weird in this one: when you step off on one level you're supposed to turn and walk behind you to the escalator that continues up to the next level. I always forget and walk across to the other side of the floor to the escalator going back downstairs. On my way, I pass the music section. Then I am hit with a sudden, intense desire to own Keith Richard's memoir. There they are, dozens of them stacked up, 30% off. An employee hands me a copy. Hardcover. Huge. Not intended for travel, but I'm determined to read it.
Now to continue on my original mission to find the third book in the Stieg Larsson triology: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. A few weeks ago I had finished the second book, and it kind of left me hanging. I finally locate it and am dismayed to find that it, too, is only in hard cover. Yeesh. These are going to be taking up all the space in my carry-on luggage. The good news? It's also 30% off.
So, let's recap. I-- a person who is trying to get rid of stuff-- now own two new hard back books and have nowhere to put them, not even in my luggage, and certainly not in my home as I have pretty much exhausted all the space on my bookcases both in my room and the living room. . . trip to Ikea, anyone?
I have had a fascination with sign language for a long time- I think since I went to summer camp at age 9 and took a workshop to learn some of the basics. Basically the only thing that stayed with me was the alphabet and the sign for snake, and now I regret not learning more. In the same way that an unknown foreign language like Italian sounds like music to my ears, uninterpreted sign language seems like a dance. It's beautiful. Now I didn't realize until today that there is American Sign Language (ASL) and Pidgin Signed English (PSE). PSE is not a true language like ASL and lacks the rules of grammar and structure, but it is fairly commonly used. I learned all of this because of a video on Gawker.TV:
This woman is using PSE and apparently includes some outdated signs. For some reason I was surprised to learn that signs could be deemed "old-fashioned" as one person in the comments pointed out. Then someone else posted this video as a response to the one above. This is modern sign language and it is a.ma.zing. Seriously, this made my day:
This guy started signing to music as part of an assignment for a sign language class in college. He posted the assignment on youtube and it went viral because, well, clearly. I love this! It makes me so happy. Maybe I should send the video to my grumpy neighbor.
For some people, the world exists only to complain about it. The woman downstairs is one of those people. In Greek mythological circles she might be termed a harpy. She is constantly trying to snatch everything good and reasonable out of the air.
First she complained she could hear us talking too loudly with the windows open. Valid. We shut the windows. Then we were stomping around too hard on the floor when we walked. She called my roommate Lady Minotaur, spitting the words at us as if they were some great insult. Can you imagine what it would be like if we actually wore our shoes indoors? Then her issue was with the fan my roommate had set up in her bedroom during one hot week of summer. Apparently it was shaking her walls. Our apartment is on the top floor and has so many windows it's like a greenhouse up in here. My roommate tried all sorts of ways to rig the fan so that it was cushioned from the floor. That wasn't enough. The harpy demanded that the landlord install a ceiling fan. He did but also suggested that maybe apartment living isn't for her.
Now it's effing cold and I have a space heater turned on during the hour or so before I go to bed. I close the door and my room becomes a hotbox and then I turn it off until the morning (fear of electrical fire). This teeny tiny heater sits on a portable table on top of a rug. Guess what. It's causing a "humming sound" that's disturbing her highness. The landlord sent me an email today with the subject line "Help." He asked if I would mind putting a pillow underneath the heater or something. Because I like him and don't want to cause him trouble, I said sure. But what I really wanted to say was to tell the wicked witch that I'm only living here for 8 more days, so suck it up. Better yet, tell her to come up and ask me herself.
There is a happy ending to this story. I call it divine justice. The landlord informed me that our apartment has been rented by some very nice people. A family. With two kids. God, I hope those kids wrestle and scream and jump up and down on the floor. What can you say? They're just kids.
