Do you ever

just feel like you suck?

Helpful Advice

Me: Teacher, one of the students called my narrator(me) spoiled, arrogant, insensitive and whiny.

Pause.

Teacher: You should have slapped her across the face. Then said, And violent.

Still here

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on this blog. I blame this on my instructor asking me to write about my crazy job experience this summer. I’ve been writing that instead of writing this. The good news is I have an amusing currently 70 page story almost ready for submission. The other good news is that I quit that crazy job last week.

I also started a new blog dedicated to my short short fiction at http://32wordstories.wordpress.com.

I’m also working on getting my website up and starting an online publication. Whew. I think it’s nap time…

I love Kim Chee

I have always loved Kim Chee. Spicy, garlic, pungent. My CSA box has been sending me Napa Cabbage. It’s crazy big and not much else to do with it but stir fry as far as I know. I thought about making Kim Chee but have always intimidated. Then I mentioned in my ESl class that I love Kim Chee. The next day, a student brings me some. Today she told me the recipe. It sounded so easy, no measuring of course – but I figured I could handle it. It needs a few days to ferment. I’ll let you know how it goes. So far, it’s a little salty!

I thought I’d add this poem that I wrote. Completely unrelated to my recent culinary adventures…

The Warriors of Spring

Connie always wore
Her swimsuit over panties
White, dotted with tiny flowers
Bulging underneath lycra
And out through leg holes

I never understood why
But never asked
Because asking is telling

I told myself that she already knew
And I liked going to her house
Having her teach me scales on the piano
While her mother made Kim Chee

I was nine when I learned
I can rescue you if you get hurt
In the water
I know how to hold you and swim you to shore
And I can save myself
By letting go

Simply drift and wait

I was out sick the day school tested our survival skills. The following week I floated, deserted, for an hour in a roped off part of the pool. I would have been easily spotted from above, dark hair snaking in warm aqua water while the others jumped and screamed and splashed five feet away.

As I hovered over the deep end
I thought about Connie
Uncomfortable in thick
Cotton soaked underwear
Then I imagined myself
In the middle of the ocean

All alone
Hoping

I swim now, twenty-some years later
With more or less fear
I can’t tell

Being weightless
Reminds me of childhood
I let the blue and white tiled path
Lead me to the other side
Then back again
As though I need to be guided
Still
Chlorinated chest high water

Connie cried
When two boys saw
Her sitting on the toilet
In the church bathroom
One held the other up
To peer over the stall

It doesn’t matter
What could they have seen?
I said

But it didn’t matter
What
I said

If you find yourself stranded at sea with no boat and no life vest, remain calm. Hold your arms out in the shape of a U with your face under water. Lift your head only when you need to breathe.

I wish

I felt like this right now.

Pat on my back

For my paper making class, we had to bring in a short piece of writing that another class will typeset onto our paper. I was kind of indifferent about it. I mean, I wasn’t going to bring in the poem I wrote about becoming a flesh-eating beast.

But in the end, I figured I would bring in a piece of my own writing. It was a silly little 32 word dialog. The class voted on all the submissions. I tied with William Carlos Williams. The class voted again and he won by a single vote.

All I can say is, it’s on Billy. Someday my words will be typeset for realz.

Home work

Can you guess the assignment?

Blood

I used to have a fear of vampires, blood sucking, soulless creatures of the night. I’m not sure when it began but I am sure I was quite young and watched a movie that if I had had more observant parents, they would not have let me see. I had nightmares as a child of vampires chasing me, cornering me in my bedroom and attacking.

It’s been a phobia that I’ve kept to myself most of my life after getting reactions like, do you think vampires are real? And then I saw some. In Boulder, Colorado. They were a pack of about 10 walking towards me. They seemed odd, out of place. They wore dark clothes of leather and ripped blue jeans and they were a range of ages – from 40’s to a young teenager.

I was scared but didn’t want to make it obvious by crossing to the other side of the street. So I continued to face my nightmare. I looked straight ahead as they surrounded and then passed by me. One of them laughed, a full laugh and swung his head back with his mouth open wide. He had fangs.

Later a Goth friend told me that there are people who actually want to be vampires and they get some kind of cosmetic surgery done to have fangs. This would explain why my demons were walking around in broad daylight, a big no-no for real vampires.
What I feared most about vampires was not that they would suck my blood and kill me (unless, of course, they wanted me to join them for eternity), but rather that they could have complete control over their victims. Not once in all those movies did I see anyone resist the seductive and manipulative mind control. The vamps always got people to let them in the house.

As I’ve grown older I fear real death more than that of the living dead. But I think the issues are the same. I don’t know if I will ever be able to accept that life, my life or anyone else’s, is out of our control.

I’ve been writing…

These are 32-word stories inspired by the theme of ‘dreams’. Not everything you read is true.

The subway station is empty. I put two quarters into the machine. A movie ticket pops out for Grease. I laugh and wonder how this will get me to wherever I’m going.

I have to finish the filing before I can leave but when I look at the stack of papers, it hasn’t gotten any smaller. I look at the clock, hours have passed.

I see my friend ahead of me. I call her name. She turns around and starts speaking to me in Japanese. I’m upset because I was the one who studied the language.

It’s me and my iguana, Iggy Guava. We are surrounded by darkness. How can I make you happy? I ask. Banana Squash, he says. I love to eat Banana Squash. I smile.

It’s like rolling down a hill. Floating in the ocean or swinging upside down. Laughing so hard you can’t breathe or turning your head upwards and letting the rain tickle your face.

We are several people standing around a table having a discussion. I can’t speak. The man standing next to me tells me, You can say anything you want. This is your dream.

Wedgehog

A person who greedily eats foods that have one thick end that tapers to a thin edge, namely cheese, pie and sometimes cake.