Category: Creative non-fiction

A Meeting of the Mind 2

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Sequels Are Always Better Than the Original, Right?

ME: Good morning, Every Part of My Brain. Welcome to this second and highly improbable gathering of the committee. Let’s welcome Dragon to the team. He gnaws on my free time like chicken bones.

DRAGON: Cease! There’s no time for kissing up.

ME: We’re going to skip the icebreakers. We all know each other, as last month’s axe-throwing social made painfully clear.

(cheers erupt as Hype Man roars and grinningly points to a massive scar on his forehead. )

ME: Here are the minutes from the last meeting, which I’ve canonized as “classic literature.”

CRITIC: So it’s achieved the distinguished state of being largely unread?

HYPE MAN: YEAH! Minutes! The sizzle reel!

ME: Right. Brilliant. Perfect start. (clears throat) Time is like a soufflé: delicate, prone to collapse, and –

DRAGON: – guarded by me.

MONKEY BRAIN: I call this meeting to chaos! All in favor?

ME: Hands down. FYI, this meeting was pushed to the 3rd quarter because –

MARKETER: – because I double-booked us with a webinar on “Optimizing Your Creative Brand in Twelve Excruciating but Photogenic Steps.”

DRAGON: (snorts a puff of smoke like an offended kettle) Pathetic.

ME: Next, Old Business.

ARCHIVIST: Every Business eventually turns into Old Business.

DREAMER: New Business is just Old Business we haven’t met yet.

CRITIC: Our Old Business hangs around like a bad smell, because none of you actually take care of anything. Except, you, Me.

(MONKEY BRAIN flings unwrapped Tootsie Rolls at everyone. Snacking ensues.)

ME: (bangs gavel) Yes, very good. Moving on. I’d like to discuss role consolidation. I propose merging Critic, Worrier, and Self-Doubter into one tidy Efficiency Pod.

CRITIC: Absolutely not.

SELF-DOUBTER: I don’t think I’m pod material.

WORRIER: I’m not pod-shaped.

ME: Fine. Separate disasters you shall remain. Please fill out your timecards accordingly.

DRAGON: You people waste time like it’s your job.

ME: Can we please talk about writing?

Archivist: Ah. The novel. How goes it?

CRITIC: Probably like an axe to the skull, right, Hype Man?

HYPE MAN: Uncool, but still, high-five!

ME: It, I am happy to say, goes well.

DREAMER: (rolling in a corkboard) I took the liberty of creating a Vision Board of our progress. Behold: a vaping dolphin, a typewriter made of ice cream, and Keanu Reeves in velvet singing Elizabethan madrigals.

ME: What on earth?

CRITIC: That’s not a vision board. That’s a cry for help.

HYPE MAN: Love it! Everyone should vape out of their blowhole!

MONKEY: BLOWHOLE

WORRIER: Is Keanu singing madrigals, or is it the velvet jacket?

ARCHIVIST: Actually, that’s corduroy, not velvet.

ME: Let’s all stop –

WORRIER: Stop writing?

ME: What? No!

DREAMER: Taking a rest stop on the cosmic highway!

ME: No rest –

CRITIC: No rest?Sounds like your characters need better working conditions.

ARCHIVIST: Please be sure to log all character reassignments.

ME: I’m reverse outlining and rewriting in loops. Plot, character, theme, setting, subplot, then back around again. Everything in some sort of organized heap, then, adjusted until it works.

DREAMER: Have you considered a treasure map subplot? Or a phoenix? Or writing it in second person? Should only tack on what, 1-9 months to the process?

DRAGON: I’ve barely allowed you enough time to inhale, and you want to exhale treasure maps?

ARCHIVIST: I’ll need to research whether phoenixes and treasure maps can coexist in second person.

MARKETER: Forget all that. Pivot to a cookbook. Cookbooks sell.

MONKEY BRAIN: Iguanas!

ME: No treasure maps. No phoenixes. No second person. No cookbooks. No iguanas. No cookbooks for iguanas or (holds up a warning finger to MONKEY BRAIN) cookbooks about how to cook iguanas. I like my story and have committed to it.

DREAMER: Have you considered switching careers and becoming an organ grinder?

ME: Like in a play-the-barrel-organ way or in a Sweeney Todd way?

MONKEY BRAIN: I’m suddenly uncomfortable

CRITIC: You’re all deranged.

ME: Chair agrees.

DREAMER: [leaps to feet dramatically] I propose we devote the next month to exploring the concept of time as a sentient being.

CRITIC: Opposed. Hard no. Like, concrete-after-a-Chicago-winter hard no.

HYPE MAN: Also a no, but great idea! Imagine the tagline: What if time was alive? Boom! Bestseller! High five!

ARCHIVIST: Seconded, pending a trademark search for “sentient time.”

DRAGON: [snarls] Time is indeed sentient, and it hates you.

WORRIER: Motion for catastrophic preparedness: deadlines missed, mockery, general and specific humiliations. And typos.

HYPE MAN: Opposed! Fear is the mind-killer, baby!

MARKETER: I propose we conduct a comprehensive market analysis before finishing the draft. Demographics, comps, audience studies.

ME: Opposed!

CRITIC: Motion to stop overthinking.

WORRIER: Counter-motion to overthink harder.

HYPE MAN: Counter-counter-motion to stop thinking entirely.

ME: All right, team. The plan is simple: cooperation. If we can work together, we will finish this thing, and maybe even start other things. Right now we’re like a rickety cart pulled by twelve horses in different rodeos.

SELF-DOUBTER: This is delusional.

HYPE MAN: Delusional? This is destiny! Cooperation! Teamwork! No rickety carts!

DRAGON: I know I’m new here, but this sounds like a waste of time. Considering…(gestures at the group, chews a charcoal briquette, then belches).

ME: We’ll continue to work calmly, one voice at a time.

MONKEY BRAIN: (waves squished Tootsie Roll) Guess what this looks like! Guess! Wrong answer, it’s poo!

ME: Why do I bother?

CRITIC: That’s the real question, isn’t it?

HYPE MAN: Because you love it! Because this draft is fire! Because we’re unstoppable!

SELF-DOUBTER: Or because she doesn’t know how to quit.

ME: One of you has got to be right. All right, meeting adjourned. Spirit Halloween wants this space.

You Must Be Fun at Parties

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Notes from the Coat Closet

“You must be fun at parties” is usually shorthand for “you seem like someone who would scold a balloon, and I don’t enjoy you.” For me, it’s an oddly specific field note.

It’s been seven hours and fifteen decades since I last socialized with any regularity.

I once was, if not the life of the party, the CPR dummy of it: dragged out, asked if I’m okay, inflated briefly, then shoved back in a suitcase until needed again.

Socializing is a muscle, and mine is atrophied because I’ve been on the couch since 2010. Still, I now RSVP to invites aspirationally. I picture Q-and-As sparkling, snacks excellent, and my hair behaving.

In reality, I’m the guest eating chips and dip in a coat closet.

Walk through an event with me. Or near me. Or, better yet, around me:

I prep, of course.

Step one: test-drive some jokes. I am a dancing bear. Dancing bears must dance.

Step two: polish up an elevator pitch about my latest project, which could be the Not-Great American Novel, a nervous breakdown, or cupcakes.

Step three: get dressed (multiple times). Telling me the dress code is casual isn’t helping. Neither is tacking on a word to it. Business casual? You might as well say formal casual, tractor casual, or funeral casual. I choose an outfit fit for the launch of a 1974 space capsule.

My husband is thoroughly briefed: if my grin goes stiff or I start scanning for trap doors, swoop in. When we arrive at the event, he beelines toward a group earnestly debating the finer points of mulch. I, on the other hand, walk into a coat rack while I scan for friendly faces.

There are fifteen people gathered in polite clusters. Ten hold drinks. Four are deep in conversation. One considers the cheese platter.

Conversation zigzags like it has somewhere to be and no idea how to get there. Everyone is nodding, so I nod too. I can’t be the only weirdo not co-signing. Yes, the municipal composting program is complicated. Yes, Pilates is the only thing keeping Marcy sane. Yes, there’s an alarming shortage of teaspoons. I may have agreed to join a militia. I’m uncertain because I am now also considering the cheese platter, mesmerized by a sexy Kaukauna.

It is during these fun, funny, and utterly disjointed conversations the true language of the night is spoken: couples’ signals. A raised eyebrow means rescue me. A discreet wrist tap is don’t tell that story. A quick mime of wiping teeth translates to spinach. A pointed look says oh no, Backsplash Guy is here. It’s a whole conversation under the conversation. I love it.

Then it happens. No one talks for seven full seconds.

BEHOLD! I am the Once and Future Resuscitation Jackie! I’VE GOT THIS!

I mine for stories, giggle at punchlines, toss out “interesting, tell me more” like so many Mardi Gras beads. Folks oblige and share things about how they feel about their HOA (a cabal!), Trader Joe’s (went for the Steamed Pork & Ginger Soup Dumplings, almost got killed in the parking lot!), and one neighbor who lost a finger to a salad spinner (Legend!). It’s great.

If I ask too many questions, I’ll be less talk show and more Law and Order: Social Victims Unit. No one wants to feel like they’re about to be cuffed and read their rights in front of the canapés. So, I watch for any quick eyerolls that say, Help, I’m trapped with this sentient game of 20 Questions wearing a zip-front A-line number.

Meanwhile, my thrives-at-parties husband floats by like a genial sea creature to refresh his drink. I blink in Morse code that I’m running out of questions about bird bath maintenance. I think he’s going to tap in! He does not.

So I persist, though out of steam.

Midway through a discussion about vacation rentals, my strapless bra, believing it was meant for greater things, heads south with dreams of becoming a belt. I do what anyone would do: try to harness it by squeezing my arms to my side, smile like nothing’s wrong, finish my drink, and plot my escape.

Bra somewhere around my thighs, I waddle into the coat closet for an adjustment and some crackers and dip I’ve strategically placed in my pockets for just such an emergency.

Socializing remains an extreme sport for which I am wildly unfit. Will I do it again? Absolutely. Bring on the Kaukauna.

Strange Geese, Space Force’s Lost and Found, and Good ol’ Whatshisname

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…Or I Could’ve Just Taken the Week Off

A few weeks ago, I picked up my daughter from sports practice at a neighboring town’s park, which is very much like our town’s park, except with different geese. This is a public park, which means the public is allowed in. That is the problem with public parks.

I had to intervene when a pack tween twerps cheered on as one kid had another kid in a headlock. The second boy’s face was red, his eyes were streaming, and he was silent, which, if you know children, is a sure sign that something isn’t fun. Oh, hello, Trouble. There you are.

It was an easy read.

My “Hey!” stopped almost all of them.

One prepubescent Cobra Kai decided to test his standing with the gods and said to me, “Bro, this is none of your business.”

“Bro” is apparently a word that activates me like some sort of verbose sleeper agent. You can imagine how things went for all of them after that.

It was over quickly, but the kid in the headlock had enough time to walk away, which was really the main thing here.

No tween twerps were harmed in this interaction.

Joke’s on me, though (when isn’t it?) because little did I know that August was warming up in the corner, waiting to see if it could take my household two falls out of three.

All of that was once a Facebook post I left up for an hour before deleting, presumably to protect national security or because I pressed the wrong button. I tried to find it later (deleted posts, archived posts, etc.) but couldn’t. Alas, it’s gone, filed somewhere in the Cloud, or the shelf in Space Force’s Lost and Found where they store embarrassing mom anecdotes. I recreated it here, with slightly more effort than the 0.2 seconds I give most Facebook posts.

I had planned a proper post this week as I’ve been trying to post weekly, but then everyone in the house got sick. Like really sick, where after a few days you think you’re okay-ish then you lie down and wake up 5 hours later feeling groggy and not much better, if not a little worse.

Then I got sick. Which was technically covered under “everyone,” but I tend to assume “everyone” means “everyone else.” I usually avoid household contagion, possibly because I move through life in the equivalent of John Travolta’s bubble in that film. Except my bubble is made of grumpiness.

Here’s how I’m doing: for 5 minutes just now, I was trying to remember that actor’s name. Couldn’t retrieve “John Travolta” but pulled up “Vinnie Babarino” like a coin from behind your ear. I had to Google “Who played Vinnie Barbarino?” to complete a joke that, in retrospect, did not warrant the effort.

Everything’s fine.

Now we’re digging out, staggering toward the end of summer with what feels like 100% potential energy, in the physics sense, like we’re all little balls in a slingshot (Google Search: “What is that v-shaped thing made with sticks you pull back and shoot a ball out of?”)

Big Moves are on my to-do list, meaning working on building community and also giving myself ample space and big chunks of time to work on my novel.

I am mildly loath to get back to it all — the hustle and/or the bustle — because “big chunks of time to work on my writing” is an idea the universe finds particularly hilarious.

Also, can one be mildly loath? MAYBE. You know who could probably pull off being “mildly loath?” John Travolta, but only in his role in Pulp Fiction (Google Search: “What was that movie where the dude who played Vinnie Barbarino played a gangster” — which, incidentally, first pulled up Gotti, and that dude was not mildly anything.)

*EXTREME CARRIE BRADSHAW VOICEOVER* And just like that, this August was much like that tween headlock situation: too hot, too loud, the geese are unfamiliar, somebody’s turning red, and the only thing you can do is yell ‘Hey!’ and hope everyone walks away in one piece with a modicum of dignity.

Bro.

Hopefully, a new piece next week.

Anyway, please accept this in lieu of structural integrity this week: