So you don’t get why people my age are going to miss David Bowie

Everywhere around me, there are people shaking their head while I gnash my teeth about the loss of David Bowie. From the morning I woke up and saw the news alert to right now, my sky looks very different. I expect it will every day.

I am older now than most of those around me. I am on the tail end of a life that has been filled with ups and downs. Imagine the transitions I have seen – from the staid early sixties and “the perfect family” illusion to the gunslinger seventies and the raised fist 80’s to the disillusioned 90’s and beyond. One of the earliest conversation I remember having about Bowie was at a dinner table while my authoritarian father dictated a laundry list of how awful Ziggy Stardust was.

Ah, but David, as Ziggy, was the first barrier breaker that gave those of us who didn’t fit in a voice – a real voice that was not only a celebration of difference but a call to action.

David Bowie 1970’s Ziggy Stardust period

Remember, “when the kids had killed the man, I had to break up the band.” Bowie never advocated standing still – he had us moving forward, no matter how different, how isolated, how disenfranchised we were. Moving, living, changing, surviving.

“And these children that you spit on as they try to change their world are immune to your consultation – they well aware of what they’re going through. . .” (Changes)

And we did try to change our world and sometimes we did. And sometimes we didn’t. We tried to be heroes – just for one day. And we grew and we changed.

And as we changed, so did David. He showed us that we do not have to be stuck with the first persona upon whom we stumble. By the time he had become the Thin White Duke, I had shed my Diamond Dogs and moved into working within the system. I had not and have not finished my changes, just as David never stopped growing and performing.

Those of you that are behind me – cluttered with punk rock that disappeared without a trace, grunge that shot itself out of existence, rap and hip hop that has alienated you from the majority – your idols did not make it nearly 50 years as a relevant artistic force. They could not change and grow – they burned out, like meteorites passing by a thousand Space Oddities.

Bowie never stopped. He lived a decent life, after he got Ziggy out of his system. He was the Man who Fell to Earth and I was lucky enough to live in the same time frame. He married a supermodel but never boasted.  He had children he raised as a father, not a child support machine. He played Live Aid in 1985. He produced a play in his last year of life. He dropped a farewell album two days before his death.  He never, ever stopped changing.

Now he has returned to the stardust from which he came and we who loved him are richer for his being. He showed us that we could be different and still make a difference. He showed us that we can change without abandoning our core identity. He showed us that we could be happy and different at the same time. And that we could take arms against our sea of troubles – not just passively sit as they washed over us and erased us from our time.

You may not miss Bowie. You may not understand Bowie. You may think of him as Ziggy for eternity, never realizing that he, like all of us, had the choice to grow and change. He did, and most of us did – and my corner of the universe was richer for Bowie. He was truly a hero.

 

I hope to see him  in the stars when my time comes. I would like the chance to thank him for showing that we all have a place on the Earth and in the stars.

 

 

 

 

 

The Kansan

Staring down from 30,000 feet, the clouds look like towering marshmallows mushrooming up and down. They create a canvas of texture, with peaks and valleys as high as the Himalayas. I am settled in my assigned seat, in its upright position, peering out of the window with the idle curiosity of a window-seat veteran.

As the plane hurdles through space, it hits a bump of air. It always surprises me that there are bumps in seemingly invisible air – bumps hard enough to jolt all of us and cause more than a few to gasp nervously. My seatmate in the middle, a lanky schoolteacher from somewhere in Kansas, grasps both the armrests tightly. I watch his knuckles whiten and his face flush with the effort of concealing his panic. It gets no better when the bump is followed by another, more insistent bump, as if we are hitting potholes in the sky. The Kansan audibly gasps, swallows hard, and his white knuckles turn a little whiter, but his fingers are reddening from maintaining a death-grip on the armrests. The man asleep in the aisle seat stirs but does not wake.

A voice identifying itself as the captain (I have no way of verifying this information), crackles almost inaudibly over the speakers. With a ding, the fasten-seat-belt light pops on and I hear a mumble about turbulence. I feel the plane lift below me, signaling an attempt to rise above the invisible bumps in the air. It is not particularly successful, as the jet rumbles and shakes even more. My seatmate is nearly strangling himself in his efforts to stay quiet.

Taking pity on him, I lean closer. “It’s just turbulence,” I assure him. “It won’t last.”

The Kansan turns to look at me and I can see a wildness in his eyes. He is not only frightened; there is something else going on with him.

“Are you okay?” I ask him, knowing the answer.

“No.” The Kansan drops the word flatly.

“I’ve been on lots of flights with turbulence,” I assure him. “It will be over soon.”

“Define over,” the Kansan challenges me.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Over as in the plane stops jumping over boulders in the sky or over as in falling out of the sky,” the Kansan grits out the words.

I think back on my first years of flying regularly and my nervousness over turbulence. I pull out a distant memory of an early panic attack and remember the clammy, nauseous feeling of imminent doom. It was awful and I remember struggling though it alone, trying not to disturb my neighbors. Now, instead of nausea washing over me, I feel sympathy welling up.

“I mean the turbulence, of course,” I assure him. I glance back out my window and see the tale-tell signs of lightning below us. Somewhere, there is a terrible storm wreaking havoc on the land. It is not much kinder above, as the plane rocks wildly from side to side and I steady myself by grasping the Kansan’s arm. I look above me, wondering if the oxygen masks are going to drop, but the compartments stay closed. I have little confidence that I will use the oxygen mask properly. A thousand safety lectures and all I can think of is “breathe normally.”

Yeah, right. That’s going to happen.

The Kansan shifts in his seat and ventures a look out of the window.

“Whoa! That’s a big storm down there,” he comments. “We must be lightning in a bottle.”

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“When I was a kid,” he starts out, “We’d have these big storms in Kansas.  Tornadoes, even.”

I nod dumbly. Kansas. Tornados. Shaking in the sky.

“Most of the time, we’d run for the cellar,” he continues, “but a few times, we were caught out – you know, exposed.”

I continue to nod, not really understanding.

“One time, my daddy and I were caught in our truck on the highway. You could see the funnel cloud coming and hear the whooshing wind that you’ll never forget. We couldn’t run. We couldn’t hide – we were just out there.”

“That sounds awful,” I say lamely, much more concerned with the jostling aircraft’s imagined structural integrity.

“It was bad.” Somehow, the Kansan has taken the lead in this relationship based on contemplation of mass disaster. “We holed up under an underpass on the highway, hoping to stay safe.”

“And did you?”

“That’s the funny thing,” the Kansan says. “I had my eyes closed most of the time, hanging on to the dashboard in the truck while it bucked like a horse at the rodeo. I tried not to look, but I heard my dad saying something and I had to open my eyes.”

“What’d he say?”

“Lightning in a bottle,” the Kansan tells me.

“What?”

“Daddy said we were in a jar, held in the hand of a giant child – like a Greek god, only a child. And the kid was shaking the bottle, making the lightning brighter. Just for fun, you know.”

I don’t say anything because a) it sounds ridiculous and b) I’m trying not to barf.

“Shaking the bottle just for fun, making the light brighter. Laughing. Not really caring about what else went on in the jar – just as long as the light got brighter.” The Kansan stops talking and grips the armrest again. “Little son of a bitch is shaking mighty hard.”

“What happened in the tornado?” I ask.

“That kid got my dad,” the Kansan says. “They found me and the truck. Never did find my daddy.”

“That’s horrible!” I gasp. “I’m so sorry!”

“It was a long time ago,” he says tightly. “I’m just hoping it isn’t my turn now. Feels the same. Up and down. Side to side. Nowhere to run.”

I start wishing I had never started this conversation. I am no longer the savvy airplane veteran. I am a frightened kid being thrown around by an unknown force.

My eyes are pulled to the window. I swear I see a face smiling in the clouds as the plane lurches sickeningly and the oxygen masks drop.

Is there a right way to write?

There is much literary hullabaloo regarding what writers should write.

Naturally, there is the school of thought that writing is an art and should be pursued as an art. Finnegan’s Wake or Middlemarch fall into this category – beautifully wrought words pieced together to enhance the soul. As a serious student of the greats (see my other blog, Bookends), I understand this argument and truly wish that I could contribute to this body of work.

But writing is hard work and it is hard, hard, hard to break into. You have to get a good manuscript. You have to get an agent who is willing to rep you. You have to get a publishing company. You have to do the book tour. You have approximately a snowball’s chance in hell.

So what does a writer do? A writer writes and hopes like bloody hell he or she can find a foothold into a very insular industry. So, we descend to the plebeian and look for that toehold.

I can see a couple of opportunities to sell the reading public on your mad writing skills. One is the Amazon Kindle self-publish route. Give something away for free so that, perhaps, you can get people to buy your next product. There is an incredible amount of freedom there. You can write your Ulysses and hope that it draws an audience.

The other is to identify contests where you might draw the eye of an editor. I am currently competing in the Harlequin Romance So You Think You Can Write contest. And yes, I think I can write. The same brain that turns out masterworks of literary substance can turn out a marketable romance. Face it, if the appallingly horrible Fifty Shades of Grey series can draw a massive audience, romance is a market worth exploring. So, I’ve written Tangled Web, a charming little romance that I wouldn’t be appalled if my daughter read. Since there are approximately a bazillion entries into this competition, because everyone thinks they can write, I will probably receive little notice from the general public.

It isn’t so bad. Romance writing is harder than it looks.

Writing is a tough business. Breaking in is difficult, even for the most talented of writers. How many great manuscripts are rejected by jaded junior editors? So, I enter the contest and hope for the best.

For a good giggle, here it is:

http://www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com/manuscripts/tangled-web/

Vote, don’t vote, read the entries – I think we all think we can write.

 

Journal Prompt Challenge

My friend Cristina (also mean, Mel) gave me #187 from the following journal site:

http://creativewritingprompts.com/

#187: Write a poem, story, etc. based on this metaphor: A minute of failure. . .

A Minute of Failure

A minute of failure

                A lifetime of regret

Trickling blood from fingers

                Draining hope.

 ***

A minute of failure

                An hour’s remorse

Self-medication of choice

                Drowning memory.

 ****

A minute of failure

                An instant of light

A moment’s reflection

                Turning the tide.

 (c) September 16, 2012

Featuring Smell Attempt #1

My mean friend Melanie set me the challenge to write a piece featuring a smell, but not in an ordinary way.  So, I tried this piece. I don’t know. Capturing smell is hard.

Smells Like Sorrow

It was a morning. It was such a normal morning, I can’t even remember what day of the week it was. I was younger then, and sick, so I had stayed home from work. I curled up with my coffee cup, inhaling the steam as if it were the elixir of life. It’s rich, deep aroma, somehow laden with promise, comforted me as I reached for my other two morning staples – the remote control for the television and my trusty cigarettes. The flare of my match released the smell of sulfur in the room and the tobacco smoke permeated my lungs with the evil combination of heat and nicotine. Exhaling, I was vaguely aware that the by-products of my addiction lingered sourly in every fiber in the room.

Huddling in my robe a little deeper, I pressed the button that brought the older RCA to life. Someone had left the volume too high and I frantically pressed the arrow key until the volume was a comfortable level. The initial noise – a Kellogg’s Pop-Tart commercial – woke the cat, who stretched lazily and then slinked her way onto my lap to rub her face against mine. Her purr was a more than adequate substitute for the dustiness that seemed to cling in her fur and the faint tang of cat food on her breath. A couple of rough licks of her tongue were enough to remind me to go back to dry cat food. Little Friskies Seafood Feast was fishy smelling enough when served. A cat with halitosis was no way to wake up in the morning. Knowing she hated it, I took a long drag on my cigarette and doused her with the smoke. She shook her head, flattened her ears, and fled from suffocation by deadly gray vapor.

Settling on the television, I started to flip to the early morning talk shows – the shock jocks who woke us up with lurid stories of adultery with farm animals and similar every-day situations. But I never made it to the shock jocks. The channel passed CNN all news, all day, and a tall building was billowing with dark gray smoke that could only mean disaster – fire, explosion, gasoline, ash, cinders, and death. Stopping, I waited, but the graphic crawled across the bottom: “Live from New York City. . .At approximately 8:45 a.m., a plane crashed into”. In horror, I stopped reading the crawl and looked at the time. It was 9:01. My eyes widened in horror as I watched a second plane fly into the second tower. From my musty, dark living room, dusty cat at my feet, coffee and cigarettes within my reach, I knew I was watching history.

With a slightly shaking hand, I struck another match and lit my second cigarette. Blowing it out, I had two thin gray lines of smoke and the faint smell of sulfur all around me. I exhaled a gray cloud of smoke as the first tower crumbled, filling my lungs with the dry odor of death by inches as I watched death by seconds.

Two thin gray lines in my soul, dryly reminding me that life and death were inexorably mixed. The dry, acrid scent of sulfur lingers in my nostrils and becomes forever a part of the memory.

(c) September 16, 2012

Six Word Challenge #3

My final challenge comes from a fellow writer and friend Christina, who can be found at her blog, Quiet Content. She didn’t make it easy on me:

Spackle

Flay

Presumptuous

Tiny

Surge

Woman

 Reflections

The cement was hot against my feet. I never wear shoes, so you would think I wouldn’t notice, but I did. Maybe I noticed it because I am a stranger in a concrete jungle. Everything is concrete and aluminum with nothing soft – no green grass, no warm breeze, no gentle hands.  No, nothing here is soft.

 I roll over on my back, trying to get a glimpse of the sun. The concrete under me is hot and the ceiling above me is spackled with dirt and goodness-knows-what-all else. I can’t say much for the accommodations. I know it sounds presumptuous and pretentious, but I have no idea how I could fall so far, so fast. One day, I was safely in my home, immersed in the tiny details that make up a normal life. I had my routines and rituals and I was happy.

Gradually, the temptations of the world had begun to gnaw at me. I wondered what lay beyond my home and my quiet life. A surge of rebelliousness welled from deep within my stomach to infect my brain. There were things I wanted to try and the unwelcome desires began to flay my soul. My descent into my present hell started with baby steps – tiny indiscretions that could be written off as rebelliousness or stubbornness. But one step led to the next, and the next, and the next until I was almost savage in my quest for new experiences. There was almost nothing that felt beneath me and I reveled in my ability to sneak away from the safety of home and explore the darker side of my soul.

 Now, I am surrounded by squalor. There are strange sounds coming from many things beyond my sight. I hate to admit it, but I’m scared. I curl up in the corner of the bed and stare intently ahead, hoping for a miracle – something to transport me back in time, to the safety I knew before my field trip to the dark side.

 I hear someone walking outside. Their shoes clip-clop steadily and I hear a jingling of keys. Just outside, the footsteps stop and my woman opens the door. She lifts me into her warm arms, cradling me and crooning soothing sounds.

 I silently and solemnly swear that I will change as I cover her face with kisses.

I will never dig a hole under the back fence again.

(c) September 9, 2012, 4:20 p.m CST

Six Words Challenge #2

My new words were submitted by a scientist and university professor:

Book

Yacht

Stupendous

Enigma

Alert

Crush

 Shipwrecked

The sea rocked sickeningly, slapping her with salty cold water with a menacing regularity. She clawed her way higher onto the overturned yacht, her fingers frantically searching for purchase on the slick fiberglass. How long had it been? A minute? An hour? Not so much as a day, she thought. She could not remember a sunrise or sunset. Time was an enigma – a riddle that could not be easily solved. The watch on her wrist had stopped working when she hit the water and was permanently frozen at 11:24. The numbers did not matter anymore, only the crush of desperation as she struggled to avoid the slapping waves.

 Somewhere, in some book or manual, it had said not to go to sleep. Or was that for concussion? If she had been brave enough, she would have taken a hand from its precarious grip on the boat and felt her head. She knew she had a headache. Whether it was from the salt or the stupendous pitching as the once pretty little sea craft fell victim to a rogue wave or shock or concussion was a mystery to be solved later.

 Calling out for her companions, she heard her own voice and did not recognize it. It was hoarse – weak – and terrified. She strained, staying alert, to hear any cry of reply, but none came. She was alone. A green signal beacon floated just out to sea, drifting away in the current. Theoretically, it should guide rescuers to her location. A bit of flotsam struck her legs, still submerged in the sea. With a cry that no one heard, she kicked it away. A deck chair, where she had lounged in the sun only a few days ago. Then, she had  an ice-cold glass of water with a slice of cucumber muddled into it.

 “If I get out of this,” she promised herself, “I will never drink water again.”

(c) 8 September 2012

Six Words Challenge Part #1

I challenged three friends to give me six random words to write a blog entry around. Three friends responded – two writers and a scientist.

Here is the first entry – words submitted by my friend Melanie – a writer who can be found at Overreader:

Words

Crimson

Icicle

Coaster

Particle

Asparagus

Admonition

Snow Bound

 Adele shivered and pulled her woolen shawl more closely around her shoulders. Breathing out, she saw her breath hang in the air as particles of ice. She knew, logically, that it was not likely to grow warmer. Out here, on the open prairie, hope came with admonition – it served no purpose. Hope for a thaw was simply a whistle in the dark. Blizzard force winds battered the little shanty and Adele, the most green of homesteaders, wondered if she would make it through the black night turned unholy white with swirling snow.

 Dinner was long since past. Adele stepped through the cold kitchen area and lifted her cold enamel dishpan. It was partially full of water made from melted snow. She had postponed emptying it. “For what?” she wondered. This blizzard had raged all day. She had no reason to believe it would die down before she gave up and crawled underneath the pile of quilts she had ferried from the east. Shrugging off the thought of relief, Adele dragged the shanty door across the plank floor and flung the water as far away from the porch as possible. She saw this morning’s water across the yard, scattered in unformed icicles just outside of the arc of light emanating from the door.

 Closing the door against the wind, she wondered how long it would be before Ben made it back to the shanty. He had set out for the land office three days ago, assuring her that he would return within the week. Even though the week was not yet expired, Adele’s imagination had conjured, on numerous occasions, sprawled with unseeing eyes on snow that had been dyed crimson with his blood. She had no idea why he was there or what had caused his death – her imagination had balked at going into more explicit detail.

 Rather, her mind drifted back to her debutante ball, so many years ago, when she had been an east-coaster and a sought-after catch. She and a dozen others eaten asparagus dipped in delicious garlic butter sauce and danced until dawn. The music of the waltzes drifted through her mind until she pulled her shawl over her head and bit down hard on its edge.

(c) 8 September 2012 @ 18:27

Delayed Farewell

A spindly woman with salt-and-pepper gray hair pounded out “The Old Rugged Cross” on a lone piano as a trickle of people filed into the church. The church was in the center of what had once been a good neighborhood but now red signs prohibiting “cruising” announced to the world that the neighborhood was unsafe by night – rampant with gangs, drugs, and prostitutes. The church stood, still proud – on the outside. Inside, however, any casual observer could see that what passed for stained glass on the outside was really just panes of glass painted with some sort of glass paint and others covered with carefully cut contact paper to create a charade that was overlooked by all.

Only half of the church was available for the funeral attendees, as if opening the three aisles of heavy pews would have been too much. Attendees piled into the pews on the far left of the church, seated sparsely in the rows to make the crowd at least appear larger. Each attendee’s dress announced his or her attitude toward funerals. Some wore denim jeans and work shirts, as if they could only spare a small amount of time from the job. Some wore traditional funeral black. Some wore the best clothes they had, whether they were deemed “funeral-appropriate” or not. Five people occupied a pew made to accommodate ten, row upon row upon row.

Few people really knew the deceased, apart from his immediate family. He was an old man, nearing 90, who had been stricken with Alzheimer’s disease ten years before this day. Many of his neighbors and friends had long since preceded him on this final journey. The congregation was made up primarily of obligation – some had known the son; some were members of the church; some were simply those who attended funerals to pass the time.

The pastor of the church did not really know what to say. Funerals, sometimes, were anticlimactic. There had been so much suffering beforehand that the funeral was merely the final piece in the puzzle of the life. Many times, the pastor referred to “celebrations” and “walking with God”, but it seemed as if he did not really know what to say that would be meaningful to the present company. He gabbled off dates of birth and death and listed the survivors – one son, some grandchildren and great grandchildren, a few distant nieces and nephews but few who were close. As he rambled and fumbled for words to say, those who had appointments within the next hour got a bit restless. Some even sent furtive text messages postponing meetings. Then, the final opportunity came for people to share stories of the deceased.

The painful elderly made their way to the microphone, not really knowing what to say, but knowing that something was expected. They spoke of times long past, when the dearly departed and his long-dead wife hosted children in their home or the things he could fix. He was a good neighbor, friend, and man. And yet, they struggled to retrieve the memory from the dim recesses of time. They knew they had to say something – but what to say about a man so long out of the midst of daily life? Their struggles were as sad as the pastor’s fumbling. No one wanted to be the first to speak and no one wanted to be the last to speak, so, as time went on, the remembrances became more feeble and platitudinous. As the piteous effort to recall a life long since forgotten trailed off, the congregation filed away, past an open casket of a man they either never knew or no longer knew, shook hands with his son, who they may have known or may not have, and thankfully left the battered façade of pseudo-stained glass and red warning signs, and headed back toward their busy lives.

A man had died. But when?

(c) 21 August 2012 @15:11