A REVERSE TEN OF SWORDS, THE SUN, AND THE HIEROPHANT

New Tarot card story.

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“Alexa, play some music.” The streaming device on Ella’s desk started playing The Dog Song by Nellie McKay. Ella smiled and patted her little dog, Fletcher on the head. They had just themselves come back from a walk. Fletcher was now flopped half in, half out of his bed and panting. “You need a haircut.” Ella told him. She looked at the calendar tapped to the wall above her desk. Fletcher’s haircut was scheduled for next week. He would have to suffer through with his winter coat for a few more days. Ella sat down at her desk and opened her laptop. She went straight to her online bank account. Ella grinned with joy. The money was still there. It had not been a dream. The surprise inheritance that her grandmother had left her was sitting there in one giant lump sum in Ella’s savings account. It was the largest amount of money that savings account had ever held. It was the largest amount of money Ella had ever had in her possession.

Ella spun in her desk chair, laughing. No more scrimping. No more barely getting by. No more doing without. Ella couldn’t believe her luck. She had a meeting with a financial advisor this very afternoon to discuss investment possibilities and how to make her inheritance stretch even further. Ella knew that on the way to meet the financial advisor that she would stop at that boutique on the corner, the one where she did all of her window shopping and dreaming, except now she would go inside and buy something. Probably that cute embroidered dress she’d been eyeing in the window of late. Ella brought her hands together in prayer, looked up to the heavens and said “Thank you Grandmother Ester, who ever you are.”

Ella had never met her grandmother and she only knew bits of the story of why that was. Grandmother Ester had so strongly disapproved of Ella’s very Jewish father that she had cut her very own daughter completely out of her life. Ella remembered coming across an old black and white photo of a woman with a small girl. It had been tucked inside a shoebox in her mother’s closet. Ella had been in there trying on her mother’s lovely shoes. Stumbling in a pair of ridiculously high heels, she had bumped against some shelves. The box fell down, spilling its contents. “Ella, whatever are you doing in there.” Her mother said as she opened the sliding closet doors. Ella remembered her mother smiling at the site of Ella in those shoes and how that smile faded as she bent down and picked up the photo. Her mother had gazed at the picture with a look of sadness and then she picked up the box, placing the photo inside. “Enough dress-up play for the day. Out!” Ella’s mother had gently shooed her daughter out of the closet and never said a word about that picture. Ella could only guess that it had been a picture of her mother as a child with her own mother.

Ella sighed, thinking about her mom. She’d been gone for nearly seven years now and Ella missed her just as much today as the day her mother died. Ella wondered what her mother would say about Grandmother Ester leaving Ella her entire fortune. It sounded like Ella’s relationship with her mother had been quite different than the one between her mother and grandmother. Ella could not imagine her mother ever being so angry with Ella that she would cut her out of her life completely. Ella and her mom had been a team, often ganging up on Ella’s Dad to get him to take them to the beach or out for ice cream or keep the stray puppy. Dad was a push over. He always gave in to their demands. The three of them had been such a tight little family unit. Ella’s child memories were all filled with love and laughter. Ella looked over at the frame photo of the three of them sitting on her desk. It was just Ella and her dad now. Speaking of which, Ella was going to be late for her morning coffee with dad if she didn’t get a move on.

Ella slipped on her shoes, grabbed her bag and keys. She patted Fletcher on the head and said “Be good and don’t bark at the mailman.” Then she hurried out the door to walk the four blocks to the Mission Shelter. Ella’s dad spent every morning there stirring large pots of oatmeal and handing out bananas to any one who needed a meal. He used to only do it on the weekends, but since Ella’s mom passed and he retired, he spends every morning there. Sometimes he helps cook. Sometimes he hands out food and sometimes he just walks around chatting with people sitting at the tables and picking up dirty dishes. This morning, Ella found him sitting at one of the tables and chatting with some of the regulars that showed up at the Mission every morning. Ella looked at her dad. He looked a little thin, but other than that, he looked happy. She could tell that he truly loved working at the Mission and this warmed her heart.

Ella made her way to the coffee station and poured herself a mug of coffee. Then she made her way through the tables, saying ‘hello’ to some of the familiar faces, pausing here and there to ask about someone’s wellbeing. Her coffee was barely warm by the time she finally made it to where her dad was sitting. Ella’s dad stood up and hugged his daughter tight. “Good morning Sweet-pea! What’s the word mockingbird?” This was how he had greeted Ella every morning of her life. Ella smiled and took her seat. She said hello to Sam, one of the old timers who frequented the Mission and looked at her dad.

“Well…does this mockingbird ever have some news for you today.” Ella said with a grin.

THE TWO OF CUPS, A REVERSE FOUR OF RODS, AND THE QUEEN OF PENTACLES

Today's writing prompt

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Every Wednesday morning I shuffle the deck of Tarot cards. This Wednesday morning is no different. I pull the deck of cards from my desk drawer and start shuffling. The cards are still fairly new, or at least newish. I’ve had them for over a year before I started actually playing around with them. I had a thought once that it would be fun to tell outrageous fortunes to people. That thought didn’t last long. After reading through all of the various cards and descriptions, I decided that I didn’t have enough room inside this brain to remember them all. I would always be relying on the card description pamphlet that is tucked inside the box with the cards. The deck of Tarot cards got tossed into my desk drawer until recently. The cards are stiff as I flip them through their shuffle, not bendy enough for any fancy card shuffle tricks.

I draw the top three cards, placing them down one by one. In the weeks that I have been doing this, the cards have been an eerie reflection of the times. Plague and destruction. I stare at them and I am surprised that I can thoroughly shuffle the deck of cards and still manage to draw three cards that speak a bit of truth. I stare at them and contemplate how I’m going to spin them into a short story of fiction. I am not a believer. I sit on a fence of wanting to believe, but my Vulcan personality keeps me from jumping over that fence. Chris was a believer in the unexplainable, always half jokingly and half not on the hunt for aliens, ghosts, and Bigfoot. His enthusiasm was contagious and he could often get me to briefly hang out on the believer side of that fence. I was always the skeptic. It is one of the things that made us the Two of Cups. We were a mix of art and science, an epitome of our liberal arts education. Every Sherlock needs his Watson, Wallace needs his Gromit, Don Quixoti needs his Sancho Ponza, and Kirk needs his Spock. I may have been the voice of reason in many of Chris’s schemes, but I ended up going along with them any way. Because even the most ridiculous ideas where entertaining. Chris’s death is the reverse Four of Rods. It was not an end to a relationship of trials and disappointment. It was an end to his trials and disappointment.

My name is Cindy and I am the Queen of Pentacles, maybe not highly intelligent, but somewhat intelligent. I consider myself to be ordered and efficient. I like to think I am generous. I once had the Two of Cups, a great love and friendship based on respect. The cards have circled back around and I now find myself with another Two of Cups. This set of cups is different. Now I am the one with the schemes. Michael has become more of the sidekick to my shenanigans. Not necessarily the voice of reason, but definitely the one that goes along with my crazy ideas. He is harder to convince for the go along than I was. Michael is more skeptic, but he eventually comes around. I am currently stuck on the reverse of The Four of Rods, waiting for the end of this particular trial of working from home. That card should just be implied with every reading. There is always a new set of trials and disappointments. Trials end and new ones pop up to take the place of the old.

This set of cards could be fiction. I could write a story of a smart woman and her dog. I could twist them into a tale of young love. I knew a woman who refused to marry her love until he paid off all of his debt. I could flip that story into fiction. Sometimes it is just best to tell the story as you see it and today, I saw more truth than any fiction I could conjure up. I decided to hang out on the believer side of that fence. Briefly. Then again, my Vulcan personality is fully aware that we interpret the cards as we want to see them.

THE DEVIL, THE THREE OF SWORDS AND AN UPSIDE DOWN ACE OF RODS

I have this little project going where I write a short story based on the random Tarot Cards I draw from a shuffled deck. Today's three cards are a doozy and I have no idea what I'm going to make from this mess. There's no happy ending here.

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It was so hot inside the cramped chapel, with barely a breeze floating in through the open windows. The ceiling fans and the personal fans held by every other parishioner only managed to shift the hot air back and forth. Ella could feel the sweat trickling down the back of her church dress. Her hands were sweaty inside her lace gloves. Her spine ached from sitting tall on the hard wooden pew. Every time Ella started to lean back to rest, her grandmother swatted Ella’s thigh with her fan. Ella half listened to the pastor yelling his sermon of fire and brimstone. She was certain that there was a hell and that she was currently in it.

“And the Lord says: Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone and a horrible tempest!” The Preacher cried out and then slammed his open palm onto the pulpit. The congregation responded with amens and praise jesuses. Ella shifted her eyes to the side to take a peak at her grandmother who was now swaying in her seat with her hands held up, eyes gently closed in prayer. Ella took this opportunity to slowly lean her spine onto the back of the pew. She had just barely felt her vertebra touch the wooden back when she felt the sting on her thigh from her grandmother’s fan. Ella sighed, straightened herself back up and wonder how much longer the preacher was going to go on. They’d been sitting in that sweltering chapel for well over an hour now. Ella’s thoughts began to drift to the wicked and how she had yet to see anyone suffer from fire and brimstone. Why just the other day, Billy Thompson had thrown a sizable rock at Ella, just barely missing her head and there he was fidgeting next to his mother, tugging at the tie she’d made him wear for Sunday service. Billy’s sins were nothing compared to the men who had dragged her daddy out of the house two years ago. Daddy still walked with a limp from the beating they’d given him for walking down the wrong sidewalk.

Ella wondered what the Lord’s timeframe was for administering his punishments to the wicked. It seemed to her that he was taking his own sweet time. The more she thought on it, the more agitated her thoughts became. She felt anger rising in her belly at all of the wickedness that she had witnessed just in her short lifetime. Like her momma dying while trying to give birth to Ella’s baby brother because the only doctor available had been the white doctor who refused to come to their side of town. Ella had watched the blood flow from her momma as she held the tiny baby. Ella had named the baby Jordan, but he’d only lived for two days after his birth. Daddy had lost his job at the factory after having to take time off to recover from the beating from those wicked men. Ella’s hair was just now growing back from the time her teacher had taken it upon herself to shave Ella’s head. “There’s no way you can do any proper learning with that nappy head of hair.” the teacher had said. If there had been a lesson to be learned from that, Ella had yet to understand it. Hair or no hair, she had still beat Lily Elliot in the math-a-thon.

Yes, Ella thought, the Lord sure did seem to take a long time to punish the wicked. She paused in her thinking to take a moment to listen to see if the preacher would say something on this matter in particular. He was currently going on and on about turning the other cheek. Ella made a face and thought that she’d been turning the other cheek her whole life and it hadn’t gotten her very far. Ella sighed, bowed her head and closed her eyes. Maybe if she looked like she was praying, her grandmother wouldn't notice if her back rested on the back of the pew. She let her body sway from side to side as if she was deep in prayer and the gently rested her spine on the back of the pew. Smack! Ella snapped to attention and gently rubbed her stinging thigh. There was no fooling her grandmother. Ella shifted in her seat a little and then stopped thinking on the wicked and punishment. Instead she started to dream about her future and how one day she would be a doctor or lawyer. Maybe she’d be both! Delivering babies and justice! Like a superhero! Ella pictured herself wearing a smart business suit with a swaddled baby in one arm and raising a book of the law with her other hand, beams of light radiating behind her.

Ella smiled at the very idea of it as she sat sweating in that chapel while the preacher railed on.

QUEEN OF RODS, KNIGHT OF RODS, AND KNIGHT OF SWORDS

A story

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This story is going to be told right to left instead of left to right because that is how this story came to me.

This is the story of Paul. Paul has lived whole life in a bubble of sorts. Born into wealth, Paul had never before had to work or wonder where money came from. Money was just there. Paul wanted a new shirt, Mummy just handed over her credit card. Paul decided he needed a brand new car, Daddy just wrote a check. Paul never questioned it and it didn’t even dawn on him to question it. Paul was the only child of two wealthy people who had also come from wealth. Daddy spent his days on the golf course. Those days were interrupted every third Thursday of every third month for a meeting with the board of directors who managed Daddy’s money. In these meetings, Daddy always nodded his head as if understanding what was being said and then ended the meeting with “That sounds just fine, boys. Keep doing what you’re doing.” Then he’d head out to the golf club. Mummy spent her days caring for her skin and looking for new wrinkles. Twice a year, she vacationed at a very exclusive spa in Fiji. She came home with tight skin and plump lips and a weird new juice diet that she would devote herself to until the next vacation. Paul lived a life of luxury without even knowing he was living a life of luxury. He just assumed his friends and truth be told, everyone else in the world lived a similar life of luxury.

Paul was clueless.

Then came the day that tragedy struck. Daddy suffered a massive coronary on the back nine of his exclusive golf course, killing him instantly. Of course this was devastating for Paul and Mummy, the worst part turned out to be that Daddy had not made any legal arrangements for his demise. Not only was there no will, but the board of directors in charge of the money had mis-handled that money. There was embezzlement and fraud and massive debt. Mummy and Paul were left destitute. Paul stood in the center of the massive entry way to their massive mansion and dumbly watched as movers carted off priceless works of art and antiques while Mummy stared in her mirror, crying and swallowing pills. Paul found her the next morning crumpled over her dressing table, her lifeless eyes still gazing at the mirror. Paul was not only destitute, but now he was an orphan. He buried Mummy next to Daddy on a rainy Wednesday. There was no one in attendance other than himself and Rosa, their cook.

Rosa had been the cook since before Paul was born. She had been the one he’d run to whenever he had a skinned knee or a splinter or hurt feelings and Rosa always greeted Paul with a warm hug and some sort of treat. Rosa treated Paul like her very own son. She scolded him when he needed scolding, made sure he did his homework and ate his vegetables. She nursed him when he was sick and handed out hugs with abandoned. Paul assumed that everyone had a Mummy who handed out credit cards, but paid little attention and a Rosa who handed out affection and always wanted to know how their day was going, who generally cared about the math test or the cricket match. Rosa patted Paul’s arm as they huddled together under the umbrella. She knew the her Paul was not prepared for the life ahead. He had never had to earn anything for himself, had never had do anything for himself. They watched as the cemetery workers began to fill in the grave. Rosa turned to Paul and said “You will come home with me. It will not be easy. You will have to share a room with my sister’s boy and you will have to get a job and earn your own money. But I will help you and teach you. You have a good heart Mister Paul. It will be a good foundation for your new life.”

Paul considered Rosa’s words and having no other thoughts of his own, agreed to live with Rosa and share a room with her sister’s boy.

UPSIDE DOWN THREE OF RODS, KNIGHT OF CUPS AND AN UPSIDE DOWN FOUR OF SWORDS

Today's source of fiction

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The man carefully drew back the curtain and peered out through the dirty window. He tilted his head to look up the street and then turned to look down the street. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary other than the random car parked at odd angles in streets and yards. In fact, the street was relatively quit, particularly compared to the last few weeks. No one was running down the street screaming or on fire. That was a plus. He did not see groups of young men walking around with guns and knives and axes. The man didn’t even see a stray dog. From his window view, it appeared that the chaos and riots of the last few weeks had ended. He turned to the woman who was sitting on the floor in the middle of their living room, twisting the antenna for an old transistor radio around and fiddling with the dial.

“I’m getting nothing but static.” She said as she tossed the radio aside in disgust. The woman reached for the remote and turned on the TV. Test patters flickered on the screen as she flipped through all of the channels. “At least we still have electricity.” She turned the TV off and tossed the remote onto the coffee table. The man looked out the window again and then said “I think we should go out, go to the grocery store or just drive around the town and see if we can find someone who knows what’s going on.” The woman shook her head. “This is the first morning you’ve looked out there and it has been quit. The day hasn’t even really started. We don’t know what is going on out there. I’m staying put.”

The man walked away from the window and crouched on the floor in front of the woman. “Maybe nows the best time to go. All the crazies are sleeping off their rampages. We can’t stay here forever. Eventually we are going to have to go out and get food. We should take advantage of this moment of quit.” The woman sighed. The man did have a point. They were not set up to stay here indefinitely, but at the same time she wasn’t so sure they should rush out at the first sign of stillness. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. We should give it another day at least.” The man dug in his heels. He was going crazy with not knowing and being cooped up inside this house. “No. We should go. Now.” The woman, against her better judgment, nodded her head and said “Fine. Let’s go.”

They put on sturdy shoes, grabbed a couple of backpacks and some water. “Do you think we should make some sandwiches incase we get stranded?” the woman asked. “Nah, just throw in a couple of those granola bars. We’ll be back soon enough.” the man replied as he headed to the garage door in search of some sort of weapon. They were not gun people, so they’d have to make do with whatever they had on hand. He found his old baseball bat in a corner, covered with dust and cobwebs and grabbed it up. He took a few practice swings before placing it in the car. The woman stepped into the garage holding the backpacks and a couple of their largest kitchen knives. The man nodded his head in approval of her choice of weapons. She pointed to his golf bag. “What about a couple of those golf clubs? I bet those could do some damage.” The man balked. “Not my clubs! Those were expensive.” The woman leaned up from putting things into the car, placing her hands on her hips, she said “Really?!? When’s the last time you golfed? You’re going to have discernible taste for a weapon now? We gotta use what we have.” The man made a face and then pulled out two of his clubs. He was sure to grab his least favorite ones. He loaded them into the car and then pressed the button to raise the garage door. The woman started the car and slowly backed it out of the garage. Then the man closed the garage door. He motioned the woman to move over so he could drive. The woman rolled her eyes and then climbed over into the passenger seat.

They fastened their seatbelts and the man backed the car down the driveway. He turned the car west and they headed towards the mega-shopping center near the center of town. The woman stared out the window, gripping the handle of one of the knives she’d brought along. Her whole body was tense and her eyes darted around the landscape searching for any signs of movement or danger. The man carefully maneuvered the car down the street, occasionally driving up on the sidewalk in order to get around a randomly abandoned vehicle. The neighborhood was a wreck. Cars and trash littered the streets and yards. They passed a number of burned out homes, smoke still billowing up from remains. There were houses with broken windows and a few burned out cars. The woman looked for people, but saw no one. On one lawn, she saw a shoe, lonely and just laying there, and she worried about what had happened to the owner of that shoe. They continued to make their way out of the neighborhood.

“See. I told you. Everything’s going to be fine. No one is out. Everything’s calmed down. We’re going to get to the grocery store and find everything in order and probably full of happy people who have no idea about the chaos that’s been going on in our neighborhood.” the man said with confidence. The woman just looked at the man. Then she replied “Sure, we’ll run into Bob and Sue and tell them about what’s been happening in our neighborhood for the last three? no , four weeks and they’ll be all ‘Oh my God! We’ve heard about none of this! Everything has been kittens and rainbows for us.” The man scoffed at the woman’s sarcasm and just said “Just wait. You’ll see. Everything is going to be just fine.” Except that the closer they got to the mega-shopping center the worst the destruction became. They finally pulled into the giant parking lot of the shopping center only to see a well looted area. Broken windows and smoke rose up to greet them. The woman looked at the man and said “Now what?”

The man put the car in park and stared at the grocery store in the center of the shopping complex. He looked for signs of life, signs of danger. “We should go in and try to scavenge some food.” The woman shook her head and replied “No way. We are not going in there. We don’t know who or what is hiding out in that place. All of those isles and shelves, we’ll be like mice in a maze. I’m not going in there.” The woman crossed her arms and turned her head to look out the window, away from the man. “Come on. We’ve made it this far. What could go wrong? We’ve got weapons. We’ll be fine. I’m going. Are you just going to let me go in there by myself? You know I’ll only come back with cans fo chili. If you don’t go with me, you won’t have any of that healthy food stuff you like to eat. It will all be Cheetos and chili.” The woman snorted a laugh and said “Right, like they still have fresh vegetables and tofu.” The man opened his car door and replied “Oh, I’m sure they still have tofu. No one’s going to loot that crap.” The woman rolled her eyes. She was beginning to feel eye strain from all of the eye rolling she’d done in recent days, but she opened her car door and tentatively stepped out.

They both slammed their car doors at the same time and then ducked and looked around to see if anyone was coming towards them or poking their heads up at the sound. It seemed clear. The woman moved her body while wielding the knife, making a few practice jabs. “Okay. If we’re going to do this, let’s go and get it over with.” Then the man with his baseball bat and the woman with her kitchen knife made their way to the grocery store with no knowing of what they may find or what might greet them.

THE ACE OF SWORDS, THE KING OF CUPS AND THE NINE OF CUPS

Today's writing prompt

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The day was already setting up to be a right boiler as Vivian swept the hair away from her already damp forehead. It was still early morning but it was already steamy. Vivian moved as quickly as she could down St. Ann’s, dodging the usual garbage and muck that ended up on the sidewalks in New Orleans. Vivian played a game with herself that she called “Homeless or Hipster”. Either one could be the lump passed out on the sidewalk or being shooed out of a business doorway. Vivian loved this city, had even stuck it out during Hurricane Katrina, but she was growing tired of the drunken tourists that plagued the city. Ironic since it was taking advantage of those very same tourists that provided her with a little bit of extra income. Vivian shook her head at herself. She was not taking advantage of them. She told them the truth and the possibilities that may present themselves. It was fortune telling. Vivian, herself, would never throw her money away on such knowledge passed on based on intuition and hunches. A drawing of cards.

Vivian hitched her bag up onto her shoulder as she crossed over into Jackson Square. She could see that her usual spot was empty. Vivian hated it when she had to get into a turf war with some upstart fortune teller. The new ones were the worst, wearing turbans and scarves and arranging crystals around their crystal balls. Amateurs. Vivian fished a key out of her pocket and unlocked the padlock on the chain that secured her table and chairs to the decorative garden gate. Of course, storing things in the gardens of Jackson Square was illegal, but Vivian was neat and camouflaged her things in with the lush greenery that one would have to look really hard to find it. Plus, she had been doing this for years because this is where her mother had stored their things and her mother’s mother. The women in Vivian’s family had been reading the cards for as long as this city was alive. Vivian was not sure if it had been a family intention to become a household of fortune tellers, but here she was, generations later setting up the same table her mother had set up every morning, often with Vivian’s help.

Vivian pulled the table cloth from her bag and spread it over the table. She checked her bag for the tenth time that morning that she had her change bag with her and placed her thermos of coffee on the table. After pouring herself a cup of strong chicory coffee, she pulled her deck of cards from her bag and started to aimlessly shuffle them while she surveyed her surroundings. Charlie, the security guard was shaking his head at some turban, silk robe wearing figure. She must be new and didn’t have a permit. Charlie was chasing her off. Vivian made a note to bring Charlie a good treat for lunch. She looked across the square to see Madame Corinne struggling to set up her table. Madame Corinne was old. No one knew how old the woman was or really anything about her, but she’d been setting up her table across the square from Vivian’s family table well before Vivian’s mother had been born. All kinds of rumors circled around about Madame Corinne. She was a voodoo queen and had sold her soul to the Devil. None of it was true. Madame Corinne was just an old woman who had spent her life telling stories to strangers. Madame Corinne wasn’t even her real name. It was Ruth Fromm.

Vivian grabbed her bag because you never left your bag unattended and ran across the square to help Madame Corinne. Vivian yelled out “Wait, Mrs. Corinne. Let me help you!” and then she took the cumbersome table from the Madame. “Oh Vivie, I don’t know what I’d do if you decided to stop coming to the square so early in the mornings. My grandchildren keep telling me I’m too old to do this and I need to just stop. But they won’t even sit still, let alone pay me, to tell my stories. What I am supposed to do all day? Knit booties?” Madame Corinne laughed which turned into a cough which was normal. The woman smoked like a chimney. She really was a specimen of wonder. Vivian finished setting up the table and chairs. Then she got Madam Corinne settled. “I’ll check on you around lunch time and get your order for the deli.” Vivian said as she patted the old woman’s shoulder. “You take such good care of me. Your mama raised you well. She’d be so proud. Have you read your cards this morning, dear?” This was something Vivian’s mother had started. Every morning she read the cards for herself. She said it prepared her for reading the cards to strangers. Vivian had continued to do this even after mother had passed. “Not yet, Madame Corinne. I’ll do it as soon as I get back to my spot.” With that Vivian made her way back to her own table.

Again, she shuffled the cards. This time she drew three cards and laid them out on the table before her. They were the same three cards she’d drawn for herself yesterday and the day before. She made a face and mumbled “opposites” under her breath. Two of her cards were their reverse meaning. Reverse meanings tended to lean to the negative. She looked at these cards and saw weakness, shallow and selfish behavior. The last card, The Nine of Cups, is the one that threw her. The Nine of Cups represents achievement, completion and self satisfaction. It was a card of well being. Her pick of cards was easy to interpret. So easy that even that turbaned newbie Charlie had shooed away could have given an accurate reading. Vivian needed to stand up for herself. She needed to be strong. She peeked down into her bag and saw the urn that she carried with her every day. Her mother’s ashes. Vivian’s mother had left specific instructions for her ashes and Vivian was still carrying them around with her because she just couldn’t seem to let them go. It was a bit selfish of her, but Vivian wasn’t completely convinced that finishing the task of scattering her mother’s ashes would lead her to sense of well being.

Vivian noticed a few early morning tourists making their way into the square. She placed the cards back into the deck and started shuffling.

THE HIEROPHANT, THE QUEEN OF SWORDS AND THE FOOL

Three cards

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Okay, these three people walk into a bar. The Hierophant immediately asks the bartender how he’s doing. The Queen of Swords tosses a bag of coin onto the bar and tells the bartender she’s paying for herself and these other two. The Fool grins and says “In that case, I’ll have two!” The bartender serves the beer or wine or whisky, take your pick, and the three proceed to sit at the bar and drink their drinks. As they sip their drinks The Hierophant starts talking about spirituality. He starts going on and on about good will to others and how people should behave. The Queen of Swords listens to his drivel with suspicion. You see, she doesn’t trust his words because they’ve been traveling together for some time and she’s seen him in action.

The Queen of Swords remembered a specific moment in their travels when they passed a prisoner who was suspended in a cage hanging from a sturdy tree branch. The poor, almost skeletal figure barely registered the three’s presence as they approached. When they were near enough, The Fool rapped on the metal cage with the stick he was always carting around with him and said “You sir! Why are you in this cage?” The prisoner lifted his head, his dirty scraggly hair hanging in his face, and said “I stole a loaf of bread.” The Queen of Swords shifted on the saddle of her horse and said “This seems a rather extreme punishment for steeling a simple loaf of bread. How long have you been up there?” The prisoner coughed a raspy cough and shook his head. “I forget. Days, weeks, months. Too long to count.” The Hierophant wrinkled his nose in disgust at the prisoner. “He’s a thief! Why are we waisting our time here. Let’s move on.” he said impatiently. The Queen of Swords scowled at The Hierophant and then removed her water flask from her side bag. She then removed the bread from that same bag and tore a very generous piece from it. She lifted the water and the bread to the prisoner. “Sir, please drink some water from my flask and eat this bread. The Fool and I will figure a way to get you down and free of that cage.” The Hierophant just shook his head. Then he dismounted from his horse and found a soft patch of grass to lie on for a little nap while The Queen of Swords and The Fool worked to free the prisoner.

Now, weeks later and with that moment clear in her memory, The Queen of Swords looked The Hierophant squarely in the eye and said “You sir, are the reverse of a hierophant and I think maybe this is where we should part ways.” She finished her drink in one slightly un-lady like gulp, and stood to leave. The Queen of Swords paused and turned towards The Fool. She was still undecided about that one. He made the silliest, most unthoughtful choices, like the time he lost all of his money in that rigged cup game, but he did make her laugh. The Fool was also a very good listener and paid attention to the things she said. He had helped her free that prisoner without any second thought. Maybe she’d keep him around for a little bit longer. The Queen of Swords tapped The Fool on the shoulder and said “Finish up your drinks and let’s get going. There’s more to see before the sun sets.” The Fool drank up and waved a thank you to the bartender. He slapped the Hierophant on the shoulder and said “sorry dude.”

Then The Queen of Swords and The Fool headed out to see what they could see.

WRITE WRITING WRITTEN WROTE

Seedy

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A couple of weeks back, after I did an illegal U-turn to take a picture of someone’s thirtieth birthday balloons, I had an uncontrollable urge to write about it. I had already written my Thankful Friday entry and so I just set the thought aside for another time. Except words and phrases started piling up in my brain. I started to get twitchy and thought about writing some things down on napkins. We were at the Cabbage’s soccer game, no where near my computer. I finally had to just write it all out in the Notes app on my phone until I could get to my computer. Some of you might be thinking “isn’t that what the Notes app is for?” Sure…on your phone, if that is how you wish to use it. I use that app for lists, not for typing out whole paragraphs with my thumbs.

Desperate times. Desperate measures.

The urge to write those words was intense. It was something I hadn’t felt in some time. For a while now, keeping this blog going has been work. I’ve written and deleted content because it bores me or sounds like whining or doesn’t really tell a story. There are many days where I think that maybe I just won’t post anything this week, but that thought turns into ‘well, if I don’t post anything this week, will I want to post anything next week?’ Before I know it I will have completely dropped the habit of writing anything. I have no delusions of blogger fame. I never look at the analytics section for this blog to see how many people have read what entry. This place will always be a space for me to vomit out the words and phrases that clog up my brain. Sometimes it looks and smells like rainbow cotton-candy vomit and sometimes it looks and smells like my dog’s vomit. Michael and I are doing intermittent fasting right now. I’m using vomit for my analogy to take my mind off of food.

Also, I’m feeling slightly loopy.

I’ve been in a writing slump for a bit, but things have shifted and now I find myself wanting to be here to spill my guts. I also find myself wanting to write things not for here. On one of my Saturday morning Fortune Cookie times, I realized that what I have managed to do is to almost fill up a journal with beginnings of stories. The last one I did I ended up thinking about for the rest of the day. It seemed like something I could really flesh out and turn into something; maybe not something great, but something entertainingly good. I also keep trying to figure out how to tell my story. I’ve started so many different versions and approaches and all of them end up going no where. Yet another approach to my story has started to form in my head and I think it’s a good one. At least this approach is something I want to give some time to and see where it leads.

There is always some sort of ebb and flow to all of my creative endeavors. It seems that my flow and creative desires spring out of the dirt with the tulips. I need sunshine, warmth and the right amount of water. I’m like a seed. Wait. I’m like multiple seeds. I’m like a whole freakin’ garden. Right now, I’m sprouting seeds for a Spring harvest of words.

SHOCK THERAPY

With tiny pies as witnesses, I ran out space in the middle of a sentence.

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I was rerouting a plug to a new power strip. For some reason I can’t remember now, I had to remove the plug from the power strip and reset it in another position. My fingers slipped down to the metal prongs of the plug as I pulled it loose and then I felt my fingers tingle and painful zap at the back of my neck that just happened to be touching the metal table I had crawled under to do all of this rerouting. I immediately let go of every thing as I screamed more in fright than in pain. Though hours later I could still feel a slight metallic warmth on the back of my neck and my fingers had a mildly buzzy feel to them.

I can’t remember the last time I accidentally (or on purpose) electrocuted myself. In grad school, I was alone in the lab one day. My research centered around scanning bacteria with different excitation wavelengths and collecting all the emission wavelengths for each of the excitation wavelengths. The idea was that each bacterial species had it’s own auto-fluorescent map, like E.coli’s auto-fluorescent map was unique and different from Salmonella. My research advisor had built this monster of a spectrophotometer for us to take our measurements on and something was always going wrong with it. This particular day, I turned the system on but nothing happened. I started checking all of the cords and plugs. When I got to the power cord for the laser line, the cord fell off from the metal attachment into my hand. I was holding a live wire. I guess I was grounded well enough because I did not get a shock. I stood there for what felt like minutes staring at the sparking electric current coming off the end of the wire and then I shoved it back as hard as I could into the metal attachment. There was a loud ‘POP!’ but then everything worked fine and I went ahead and collected my data.

I never told a soul about that cord. Not even my research advisor, who turned out to be a bit difficult and the only one on my thesis committee to not read my thesis. Later, he would be impossible to track down to discuss revisions. Then he’d tell me that it was the worst thing he’d ever read. I paid for another semester of graduate school to take ‘thesis hours’ so I could re-write my thesis and submit it for graduation. I did a complete re-write of my thesis and sent it to him. Months went by and I never heard back from him. Finally, Chris camped outside of the man’s office for three hours with my thesis and the sign-off papers. When my research advisor was confronted with Chris standing in front of his door, he just took out a pen and signed the papers. To this day, I have no idea if he ever read my thesis. My research advisor dropped dead of a heart attack maybe three years later. By this time, I was in Margaret’s lab and I had gained back some of the confidence my research advisor had stripped from me. When I was approached by his current graduate student to read over a paper that included some of my work to be submitted for publishing, I had no qualms in telling the truth. The paper had been written in the wrong style for journal publication and I told the graduate student that if he wanted it to be publish, he would have to re-write it. The graduate student did not quit disagree with me, but he said that this was how our research advisor had written it and that he wanted to honor his memory by keeping it the way it was.

That paper was never published.

Actually, none of the research that I did in graduate school was ever published. The whole experience ruined me for scientific writing. Margaret would come to me and ask me to write up some methods for whatever current paper she was writing up and I would stare at a blank word document for half the day before typing out three sentences and handing them over to Margaret. She’d send them back and I’d write three more. She’d keep sending things back until I’d completed a full paragraph of methods. I’m sure she must have felt like she was pulling teeth from me.

This is the worst thing I’ve ever read.

Those words have never left me. When ever I have to type up methods or help write an abstract for a paper, those are the words that come to me first before I can write anything down. Some times they would even pop up before I could write anything here. Those words became lead weights on the ends of my fingers and let me believe that I could not write. Not science, not fiction, not anything. Turayis asked me if I was planning on participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I hadn’t really thought about it until she asked and I’m still not sure I have the energy for it. I’m thinking about it. I might write something that is not the best thing you’ve ever read, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing you’ve ever read. It takes time to stop believing in things that just are not true.

Sometimes it just takes some mild electrocution.

DNA

Science

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There are somewhere around thirty seven trillion cells that make up the human body. Of this trillion of cells there are about 200 different types of cells ranging from 10 -100um (micrometers). Each cell contains a nucleus full of DNA. If you take this DNA and stretch it out, it is about two meters long. That’s about six and half feet. I am five feet, seven inches tall. I am a little bit shorter than a length of DNA. That’s to help you put all of it into perspective. All of that DNA is twisted and tied up with various proteins in order to fit inside the nucleus of a cell and yet still be assessable for genes to be read for coding by messenger RNA to make more proteins for cell function. The whole process is very complicated. That’s just normal cell function. I haven’t mentioned what has to happen during cell division.

And I find the whole process extremely fascinating.

I think what is so fascinating is this organization is an intrinsic process. This is not a learned behavior. There is no molecular sized Marie Kondo teaching each cell how to fold and compact its DNA. Cells just do it and have been for a really really super long time. Sure, there are the occasional mistakes. There are contingency plans in place for many mistakes and sometimes those mistakes are missed. Those missed mistakes can have some pretty catastrophic results, but there’s no such thing as actual perfection. I mean, there is no such thing as perfection in anything. But for the most part, cells just keep their shit organized. Considering the size and scope and importance of that, it’s pretty amazing.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. I have started and deleted so many posts this week. I felt the need to write something, anything, but I also felt the need to edit myself (for various reasons). Sitting down and stringing words together to tell a story should be a daily practice. It should be part of my daily routine. Cindy’s daily routine: shower, dress, make breakfast, feed the dog, zip to work, wipe down every microscope with an ethanol wipe (people are gross), walk four thousand steps to get a cup a coffee, work some more, thirty minutes of cardio, one hour of yoga, more work, zip home, feed the dog, feed the humans, watch some TV, wash face and teeth, go to bed, repeat it all again the next day. Somewhere in there I should be wedging in ‘write five hundred words’. Instead I’ve managed to put a square of time to window shopping at Anthropologie or reading shoe reviews (my toes go numb in my running shoes when I’m on the elliptical and I don’t think that’s normal).

Last Saturday morning was the first Saturday morning in ages where I was up early to get some errands accomplished before everyone in the house woke up. That means sitting down with the Fortune Cookie journal while eating a biscuit sandwich. The prompt was something about life is funny, don’t forget to laugh. I proceeded to write a descriptive scene about a group of friends huddled together as they watched the casket of their dear friend slowly lower into the ground. The whole time I was writing it, I thought “hold on…wait for it…this is going somewhere funny.” Except it never did. I ran out of room before I even came close to writing something funny. I swear I had a plan, a plan that had something to do with a case of prosecco and a limo. That could be funny right? Actually, I find a scene of a woman trying to write something funny, but writes about a funeral instead, to be pretty funny. My head may not be in the right space for writing right now.

If I could organize my thoughts as well as my cells organize it’s DNA, I’d stand a better chance at wedging in that writing time.

WHO'S A BIG GIRL? THAT'S RIGHT. YOU'RE A BIG GIRL

Cindy Maddera on Instagram: "Colony"

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It was a fuzzy dream. They aways are. I just know that Chris was there and we were supposed to be going to some festival parade thing, but I found myself in the upstairs bathroom of my childhood home surrounded by all the clutter of mom’s makeup collections. I had tried to tie-dye circles onto my romper but it didn’t turn out as I had hoped. I looked at Chris who had some expression on his face that I could only interpret as a look of disappointment. That’s normal. Chris is usually none too pleased with me in any of my dreams. I recognize that this is a manifestation of my own poor self esteem and that Chris was/is not actually disappointed in me. I looked at him this time and shook my head and said “I know. I’m sorry.”

Always apologizing.

The next morning, I found an email from Bluehost reminding me that hosting for my domain was set to renew in October. I still pay for hosting for Elephantsoap.com even though everything from the old space has been migrated over to Squarespace for years now. At first, I held onto that name because I thought that my blog would somehow blow up and turn to dust if I dumped it. I thought that search engines would be disrupted or that no one would know how to find me. I may have successfully migrated all of my old blog over to the new one, built the design of this current blog, yet I still feel like I have no idea what I am doing. It’s all a house of cards and it’s going to come crashing down any minute. I don’t know how this internet/webby thingy works. So I pay my hundred and something a year to Bluehost for peace of mind.

Michael has no idea I’ve been doing this. It is not on our budget spreadsheet and I charge it to one of my credit cards. I know…it’s kind of terrible. No…I feel really bad about it. When the email came up this time around, I asked the guys I work with for some advice. I brought up all of the above mentioned fears and they all told me that I do not need to hang onto that domain unless I just like the name and don’t want any one else to buy up elephantsoap.com. I thought about this and then I opened my mouth and started saying “I do have some emotional attachment…” Then my voice cracked with emotion and I had to walk away. I was completely caught off guard by the wave of tears that hit me. I hid in my favorite bathroom stall while I was taken over by wracking sobs, but I pulled myself together. Then I came back to my desk and cancelled the annual renewal for hosting on Elephantsoap.com. It doesn’t exist any more. I still own the domain name, but because of third party hosting mumbo jumbo this blog will no longer link to Elephantsoap.com. This only effects the links already posted on Facebook. Those links are now all broken.

And yeah, there’s a part of me that is really fucking sad about this.

Elephantsoap is Chris. His idea. His vision for me. It was more than him just handing me a blank empty sketch pad and saying “here ya go.” He built a space of code that translated into colorful borders and banners and said “write here.” It’s like he saw something in me that I still struggle to see in myself. I scoffed at it in the beginning. “What even is a blog? Why do I need one? I’m not a writer. I am not interesting.” But I started putting words in that space and pictures. Yeah, it was crap and drivel and navel gazing, but it was my crap. My drivel. My navel gazing. I’ve grown up though. The writing has changed; hopefully it’s better. The pictures I post have changed; hopefully they’re better. All of that started happening on the new space I made for myself. This, cindymaddera.squarespace.com, this is MY space. This is my vision. It’s where I don’t struggle to see the things that Chris saw in me all those years ago when he built Elephantsoap.

So, I’m going to take a moment to honor the gifts that Elephantsoap gave me and then I’m going to let it go.

YAYA MAGIC PANTS

Light catchers

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We gathered at the Yokalanda Lodge and Camp for Youth. The camp is nestled in the Yokalanda Woods. Established in 1957 by Earl and Rosie Feldstein, the camp has been a summer haven to underprivileged youth from all over the country. There are twenty cabins scattered through the hills and at the center of it all is the main lodge. The lodge is the beating heart of that camp. The main open room of the lodge is where all the campers gathered for meals and inside crafts. Depending on the weather, s’mores and stories were shared around the large fireplace that sat it one end of large room. In 1965, Earl died suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart attack. Finding herself unable to manage the camp, Rosie sold the camp and property to Billy and Ayleen Hershel.

Billy and Ayleen had originally planned to turn the camp into a commune. They had invited fifteen of their closest friends to join them in communal living, raising goats and growing their own vegetables. Ten of those friends agreed. That first year started off with the worst winter the area had ever seen with record snow fall and below freezing temperatures. The goats that didn’t freeze, were taken by wild animals. The hilly landscape proved to be too rocky for planting. The ten people who had agreed to join Billy and Ayleen all agreed now that communal living was not for them. Billy and Ayleen were forced to sell out to Carry and Diane McNabb. Carry and Diane turned the camp back into a summer camp for youth. After all this time, the two women still ran the camp, though in recent times and with less funding, the camp has seen better days. To make ends meet, Carry and Diane have opened up the Yokalanda Lodge in the off seasons to various retreats. Just last month an up and coming tech company rented the retreat for a managers training session. The Pakempsey Shakespearean Company rented out the camp for a whole month while they rehearsed their summer traveling program of King Lear. This weekend the Yokalanda Lodge was hosting a small group of artists for a weekend of workshops built around unlocking creativity.

The weekend consisted of various workshops of various themes such as How to Monetize Your Art, Authenticity and Integrity in Creativity , Conquering Your Fear of Success and Telling Your Story. There were trust falls and roll playing and vision board building. But the real breakthroughs happened outside of those workshops. In the evenings, after their communal vegan dinner, the artists would break off into smaller groups gathering around campfires and on cabin porches. There was always wine and the occasional passing of joint and they told each other their deep fears and they opened their souls to each other. It was in these moments that true cathartic release occurred. Tears flowed. Realizations were made. Plans were formed. Pacts were made. Bonds were formed. By the end of the weekend, as cars were being loaded up and cabins were being swept clean, the artists of that weekend retreat found themselves each quietly trying to process their experience from the past two days. Words were barely spoken until all were loaded up and ready to head out on their separate ways. They gathered to say their goodbyes. This was the moment that proved to be the most difficult of moments. They found themselves unprepared to say their farewells. They held each other tight as tears streamed down their faces. Then they got in their cars and headed out on their separate ways, fortified with their experience of this retreat and knowing that they would always have each others love and support.

That’s probably the best way to put into words what this weekend was like for me. I spent it at the Yokalanda Lodge. I have the bug bites to prove it.

CREATIVE FARTS

Ice ice, baby

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I wrote a tiny story about a woman in a yoga class. It is a fictional story, one I wrote in the Fortune Cookie journal. The prompt had something to do with silliness and I was genuinely stuck for a good five minutes before I started writing about a woman who cracks herself up when she accidentally releases a colossal fart while in yoga class. It may or may not be based on actual events. It sounds juvenile and it is, but I couldn’t really think of anything as silly as a fart. God, I remember when Quinn was really little. We were playing in his room when he farted. I said nothing because we were at that stage of trying to teach him that passing gas was nothing. He gave me that squinty side-eye thing that he does and said “I farted.” in a tone that implied he’d done something sneaky or funny. He really just wanted a reaction. I played cool and said “yup.” and then went about my business of putting Legos together. I had to leave the room a few minutes later because I could not hold my laughter in another second. I know we’re not supposed to teach them that farts are funny, but sometimes…farts are funny.

I was a little surprised that I could write so much on this topic. The story, not the fart, wrapped around the page and my handwriting is so horrid because I kept trying to write my letters smaller and smaller in order to fit more on the page. This happens every time I start writing something in the Fortune Cookie journal. I’ve talked about that here before and so you’d think I would be used to this happening every time I open a page to a new fortune prompt. I am not. I am not ever prepared to have so much to say or make up about a fortune cookie fortune. I am not ever prepared for the story that falls out onto the paper. Nothing I write is really any good. Sometimes they sound like the kind of fairytale you makeup while trying to put a kid to bed because you couldn’t find an age appropriate book to read them for bedtime. Sometimes they have a dark and sad tone. Apparently, sometimes they’re about farting in yoga class. I just keep thinking that the actual story is not as important as the practice of writing it.

Michael mentioned recently that he thought I should write a book of fiction first before I write something of non fiction. Michael thinks I should do a lot of things. He’s got lots of opinions, most of which I just nod my head in agreement and then say in a noncommittal way that I agree. I am not ambitious or driven enough to write a book in any form right now. Honestly, I don’t think I have it in me to write more than a thousand words on one topic. I have a google drive full of starters.

Elizabeth boldly stepped into what appeared to be a living room, though it was cluttered with the most random bits of things. A gramophone sat in one corner with some sort of skirt stretched over the cone. Even more piles of books and papers. Jars of odds and ends scattered all over. Elizabeth couldn’t quite make out their contents, but one of them appeared to contain eyeballs. She stopped looking and thinking too much about it. She really needed this job. Then she saw a man sitting near the fireplace, his head tilted back and resting on the backrest, elbows resting on the armrests. His eyes were closed, so he still didn’t realize Elizabeth was in the room. She cleared her throat. His eyes snapped open and sharply focused on her. “You’re not Maggie.” He said in a very matter of fact way. Elizabeth replied “no Sir.”

I started that one the summer of 2012. I wrote 3007 words before I just stopped writing. I wrote over 6,000 words for a story that was based on a dream I’d had where I was a magician’s assistant. Every night he turned me into a tree with golden leaves that would dissolve into golden butterflies and then fly out into the audience. It was a great trick. There was an idea for a children’s book about an egg with four yolks, but the story grew to a length that was not kid appropriate. Too long for a 5 year old, too simple for a 10 year old. I didn’t know my audience. I don’t know my audience. All of the stories have one thing in common and that’s how they sit there, incomplete, waiting for more words. The ideas come to me and then flutter away like butterflies. Or attack like seasonal allergies. It’s all about whether or not you think in half full or half empty terms. At least with the Fortune Cookie journal I know there’s not going to be an ending to a story only because I don’t end up leaving any room to write one.

My creative writing is more like creative farting on a page.

WRITE TO WRITE

Portrait (salute)

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Cindy paused in her reading of an article in the New York Times entitled The Right Way to Follow Your Passion and opened the door to the wood stove supplying heat to the small cabin she was currently inhabiting. The coals were gray and when Cindy blew on them smoke and ash blew up into the stove. A few of the coals burned bright red as she blew, but most them just barely smoldered. She knew she needed to add more logs to the stove, but dreaded the trek out to the wood shed to collect the wood. Instead, she wrapped the wool blanket a little tighter around her body and snuggled down into the couch. She’d get that wood right after she finished reading about the difference between obsessive passion and harmonious passion. The differences seemed pretty clear as far as Cindy could tell. Obsessive passion leads you to do things for the accolades like more money, more trophies, more followers, more likes, just….more. Harmonious passion leads you to do things for the shear desire of doing them despite whether or not it makes you famous or rich or popular.

Cindy didn’t quite believe she did things out of obsessive passion. She generally liked taking pictures. So what if she checked all of the social media platforms constantly to see her notifications on recently ‘liked’ images. She wrote consistently on her blog because writing was therapy, though it didn’t exactly feel so therapeutic lately. Cindy felt that she didn’t have anything profound to say that didn’t seem like she was staring at her own belly button, picking out lint. Stale. That’s the word she would use to describe her writing of late. Bland and stale. She was all but writing about what she had for lunch that day and no one cares what she had for lunch. Cindy shivered despite the blanket wrapped around her body. She really should do something about getting the fire going in the wood stove. It would be dark in a few hours and the temperatures would continue to drop. Cindy knew she needed to collect enough fire wood so that she could stay comfortable through the night and not have to go back out later. She grumbled as she tossed the blanket aside and got up from the couch.

Cindy walked over to the door and put on her winter coat. She leaned back against the wall as she tugged her boots on one at a time. The problem, thought Cindy, was not her motivation for the things that she did. The problem was that she lacked passion. Her passion was like the mostly dead fire in the wood stove. It had been raging, with flames flickering hotly at some point in her life. As a teenager, she pushed programs for saving the environment and promoting safe sex with a loud voice. She made t-shirts and posters. She raised her fist in the air! Those were things that Cindy believed in sure, but she also had a fiery passionate belief that she could make the world a better place. In college, that passion shifted to keeping up with her classes and student government, but she really was more of a tag-along with the student government stuff. Cindy just wanted to be around those people and most of those people would end up being life long friends. Some of those people would influence later passions, even encourage them, but Cindy did question if she really had ever even had passions of her own or was once again tagging along on the passions of others.

Cindy stomped through the snow out to the wood shed, dragging the wood bucket behind her. The wind blew the hood of her coat back and her ears froze immediately. Her teeth chattered and she shook her head at her impulsive getaway. Cindy hated the cold and the snow, yet she’d booked herself into a remote cabin in the woods during winter. She should have booked herself into a remote yurt on a beach in Costa Rica. Next time she’d ignore price tags and splurge on the yurt and the beach. Cindy reached the wood shed and yanked the door open. Then she started to load up the wood carrier with logs. She knew not to over fill the bucket so that she could not drag it back to the cabin, but she also wanted to be sure to collect enough logs so that she would not have to stomp her way back out here again. Cindy tossed in three more logs and then tugged on the bucket. It slid towards her and she moved her mouth to the side in contemplation. “Two more logs.” She said out loud to the trees and whatever woodland creature was out in this horrid weather and tossed in two more logs. The bucket was too heavy, but Cindy put all of her weight into it and, struggling, pulled the bucket back across the yard to the cabin.

Cindy opened the cabin door and then grunted as she dragged the bucket up over the lip of the door frame and inside. She stomped the snow from her boots, but left her coat on as she started to put some logs into the wood stove. Passions waned, Cindy thought as she layered the logs in square pattern with what remained of the hot coals in the center of the logs. Passions waned and changed with age and that’s just what happened to her. Granted, Cindy had a strong feeling that most of that passion had faded out after certain life events that she was tired of dwelling on. She used the metal poker to shove the logs together to enclose the hot coals and then started to crumple up newspaper to cram into the spaces between the logs. It didn’t take long for Cindy’s fire to roar back to life. Satisfied, she stood and removed her coat. She picked up the paper and read “find your passion”. Easier said than done. Then Cindy read “Your passion should not come from the outside. It should come from within.” Now, if Cindy could only find that inner passion, she’d be all set.

Cindy settled herself back into her space on the couch. She set the New York Times aside in favor of the book she had brought along with her. The room was starting to warm up from the fire that was now crackling away in the wood stove. If anything, Cindy did know how to build a good fire.

CULTIVATION

We will have temperatures above freezing today.

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Years ago I wrote up a life list and one of the things on that list was to grow a vegetable garden. The first year I did this, I grew Christmas beans, tomatoes, spinach, basil, squash and cantaloupe. The spinach failed in the hot Oklahoma sun. The squash succumbed to squash beetles. We harvested enough Christmas beans for us to each have half a cup of cooked beans. Basil did well. Tomatoes did okay. The cantaloupe seeds that we planted came from the inside of a store bought cantaloupe Chris’s mom was eating. She spit out a seed and said “Can we plant these?” I shrugged and replied “I don’t see why not.” Those seeds produced two softball sized cantaloupe that were the sweetest cantaloupes I have ever tasted. It was like they were made of straight up sugar. That summer we cultivated more than a vegetable garden. We grew joy and surprises and sweetness. We grew wonder and amazement. Every thing that sprouted from the dirt was met with astonishment. “Oh my God! Look what we have grown!?!?!” We couldn’t believe it. We could not believe what we had done.

I gave up on the vegetable garden last year. Michael pulled up all of the boxes and a friend from work took them. He set them up in his backyard for his little girls to plant seeds in and I could not be more pleased with this. Our gardening days had run it’s course and no longer cultivated the wonderment and joy as it had in previous years. It is not actually environmentally friendly to grow a garden if you are not all that good at growing things. The money you spend on a not so fruitful vegetable garden in your backyard could be better spent supporting local farmers and so we turned our focus to other projects, other adventures. Occasionally I think about scattering lettuce and kale seeds all around the outside of the house so I don’t have to use the weed eater, but I am considering creating a couple of small potted gardens and building an outdoor space to gather with friends. I once read some great advice for creating an outdoor space on a budget. The designer said to just put down an outside area rug and arrange outdoor furniture on it. That’s simple enough.

Those are ideas for another time, when the weather is a bit more cooperative.

Right now, I am thinking of cultivating a new garden. This garden will not grow kale or squash or beans. Neither will it be an ornamental garden filled with hydrangeas and peonies. This new garden will not be delegated to six boxes out in the backyard either. It will be bigger than that. I want to cultivate a space that grows creativity and peace and contentment. I want to cultivate the joy, surprises and sweetness that first garden brought us but I want to do it without actually planting a seed into dirt. I think this is possible. I believe it is possible to recapture all of those things above but in a different way. There will be a section for photography, a section for words. There will be a corner devoted to my yoga practice and a corner within a corner devoted to meditation. I think I will add in a cooking section and a spot for just laying still with a puppy on my lap.

Wait. I think already have this garden. It just needs some weeding and a little bit of care.

SCSC, PART 2

Twin Rocks

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Ida’s best friend, Myrtle, lived in the local nursing home. Myrtle’s son, Howard, had moved his mother into the Hanalei Assisted Living Center a year ago after Myrtle had accidentally set her kitchen on fire. It was a simple mistake, one all of us have made. Myrtle had forgotten to turn off the burner after boiling water in her tea kettle. She had never had a ‘senior moment’ before and Howard latched onto this one with might. Myrtle knew that her son wanted her out of her bungalow so he could sell it to developers. Her house on the beach had become hot property. Myrtle was contacted almost weekly by some developer or another offering her an outrageous sum of money for her tiny little house. Howard had not thought twice before dropping his mother off at Hanalei Assisted Living and was probably living it up in Oahu with the fortune he’d acquired from selling Myrtle’s house.

Myrtle didn’t really mind too much. As a mother, she wanted her son to have everything he dreamed of having. If that meant putting her into assisted living and selling her house, then so be it. What she did mind was the center’s strict rules and prison style schedules. The director of the center refused to let patients go any where near the beach, let alone try to stand on a surfboard. They were relegated to exercising on a treadmill in the gym or walking the gardens attached to the backside of the center. The gardens backed up to a wildlife refuge, so the bird watching was good, but bird watching and surfing where incomparable. Myrtle longed for the ocean, her board and escape. Ida visited every day and the two of them would sit in the rockers on the large verandah that surrounded the main building, plotting Myrtle’s escape.

One day, Ida was explaining how she’d heard that you could mix a few drops of Visine into someone’s coffee and it would give that person explosive diarrhea. “We could put some in the security guard’s coffee and the orderly’s soda drink.” “That doesn’t really work.” Ida and Myrtle looked up as a tall older gentleman with stooped shoulders dragged a rocker over and settled himself in it. “Bernard Muller. I don’t mean to listen in but I want the same thing you two seem to want. Freedom and surf.” After Bernard, came Lelani Kahale who wasn’t so much interested in surfing as she was just being able to get in the ocean with her snorkel, mask and spear for fishing. Lelani brought Alexi Sokolov into the group. She’d been eating her meals with this man since she moved into the center and he told her fantastical stories of being a Russian spy. She thought his skills might come in handy.

So now, they were a group of five, not counting Ida’s new apprentice, Floyd who didn’t realize yet that he was also a part of this group and would in fact play a pivotal role in their escape plan.

ROUTINES

C is for cookie, coffee and Cindy.

6 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "C is for cookie, coffee and Cindy."

I didn't write in my Fortune Cookie journal all summer except maybe once. With Michael home and he and the Cabbage doing daily chores, I didn't have a reason to get up early on Saturdays. They got the grocery shopping done on Fridays. If I got up early on Saturday mornings it was to go to a yoga class. Which, I am not going to lie, was real nice. I'd get up early enough to shove a breakfast bar in my gut and then scooter out to one of my favorite studios. Sometimes I'd have coffee or juice with a yoga friend after class. Sometimes Michael would meet me for brunch someplace and then we'd spend the rest of the day scooting around town. Now that Michael is back in school, we are back to our normal routine where I get up early Saturday morning and do the grocery shopping while everyone still sleeps. 

Trust me when I say that I do not mind spending my Saturday mornings this way. I prefer to do the grocery shopping early and alone. No crowds and I spend less money because I only buy what's on the list. I go to Heirloom and order a breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee. Then I sit at the counter and take my time sipping coffee and writing in my journal while nibbling on my sandwich. I do a bit of people watching. I do a bit of watching some of the employees roll out dough or measure sugar. I dance a little in my seat to whatever music happens to be playing. Mostly, I write. This is good because I need to be writing somewhere since I don't feel like writing here too much lately. The thing about the Fortune Cookie diary is that it's fiction and a story that I don't have to finish. Even if it turns out to be a total shit story, it is still serving a purpose. The Fortune Cookie diary forces me to use my imagination. It exercises my brain. Photography forces me to see things differently while writing forces me to think things differently. 

I worried when I sat down to write in the journal after spending the summer away that I would struggle. I thought I would just stare blankly at the page and listen the gears in my head clink and screech while trying to turn on rusty pinions. I felt for sure that this was an exercise I would not easily be able to pick back up. So I was surprised to fill up that page and wrap the text around the edges. I was surprised at how easily the story came to me and how I wrote so quickly at times that the words are illegible. It felt good. It felt right. And I know I'm not writing anything spectacular or profound. I am just writing a scene, a moment and I'm trying to really put an effort in describing that scene. Those gears start moving and I almost believe that I truly am a creative kind of person. I think for a moment that I could be an artist.

I think to myself that you can take the girl out of the liberal arts college but you can't take the liberal arts out of the girl. 

MRS GERTRUDE REGRETS

Tall

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It is with deep regret that I must inform you of the passing of the very dear Colonel Martin Vanhousen. You may remember that I mentioned him a few months past, about how he lived in a third floor office building among his collection of artifacts from his explorations around the world. You might also recall that I mentioned he had a string of widows who visited him frequently. It was one such widow, Mrs. Gertrude Delany who discovered the Colonel's body. It was her usual night to stop by with dinner and that evening she had prepared a new chicken casserole recipe that she was eager to get feed back on. Mrs. Gertrude knocked several times on the door, but after a few minutes of waiting, she flipped the edge of the doormat over and retrieved the spare key that the Colonel kept 'hidden' there (in case of accidental lock outs). Then Mrs. Gertrude let herself into the Colonel's home. 

Upon entering the apartment, Mrs. Gertrude walked straight back to the kitchenette to set her hot casserole dish down, all the while chatting to the Colonel about everything from the weather and why it was he was still lazing about in his house coat with the all of the curtains shut tight. She then went to one of those windows, drew the curtains back to let the sunlight in and turned to see the Colonel wearing his slippers and his red velvet house coat, sitting in his favorite leather wing-backed chair with a glass of scotch in his hand. She noticed that his skin seemed paler than usual and his face slack as if he were sleeping. She tip-toed closer and said "Marty?" When he did not reply or even twitch, Mrs. Gertrude poked the Colonel in the cheek which was quite cold. Mrs Gertrude shrieked and then dug her phone out of her purse to call 911. 

After further investigation, it was determined that the Colonel died peacefully in his chair. Though if a thorough autopsy had been performed, the coroner would have discovered a poison found only on the tips of the blow darts used by an obscure tribe of indians dwelling in the Amazon rainforest. You see, the Colonel had woken up on the morning of his death feeling tired. Not physically tired per se. He found that his tiredness was more mentally related. The Colonel got up out of his bed, sliding his feet into his slippers and shrugging his house coat on over his satin pajamas. He then shuffled to his kitchenette and set the kettle of water on his hotplate to boil for his usual morning cup of tea. Once his tea was made, he took his mug into his office where he sat at his large mahogany desk looking at the clutter around him. The Colonel unlocked the middle drawer of his desk and removed the letters and locket from his one true love, Elsbeth, and proceeded to re-read the letters he had read so many times before. Then he opened the locket to gaze at Elsbeth's lovely face. He then closed the locket, stood up and walked to the bookcase. The Colonel ran his hands along the rows of stacked field notes, pulling one notebook at random and flipping through it. 

The Colonel had lead a very exciting and long life. He had seen many amazing things, traveled the whole world, and fought in a number of skirmishes. His life, with the exception of his beloved Elsbeth, had been a full life. It was all recorded in those stacks and stacks of field notes. Every skirmish and near death experience. Every unbelievable find. Every adventure. It was all recorded there for any one to pick through. The Colonel then poured himself a glass of his favorite scotch. He rummaged through his drawer of arrow heads until his fingers found what he was looking for in the very back of the drawer, a vial containing the poison darts he had stolen from a tribesman while on expedition in the Amazon. The Colonel knew that the poison would not work instantly, but it would work quickly. He had enough time to prick his finger with one dart, place it back in the vial and then return the vial to his desk drawer before taking his scotch to retire to his favorite chair. He was able to take two more sips of his scotch before the poison stopped his heart. The Colonel Martin Vanhousen left this earth, as he had lived: on his own terms.

His apartment/office has been completely cleaned out with many of his things being sent to auction to cover his debts. His field notes were all donated to a local historic society. All of them with the exception of one notebook. His most recent field notebook now resides with the Mrs. Gertrude Delany. While waiting on the authorities to arrive, Mrs. Gertrude discovered that the Colonel had been writing down his latest 'adventures'. This included very detailed reports of the encounters he had with the various widows who visited him during the week. Very. Detailed. Notes. Mrs. Gertrude nearly fainted as she read his description of how his removal of her girdle for the first time was like 'peeling a banana'. Scandalized, Mrs. Gertrude tucked the notebook into her purse. It is now locked in the bottom drawer of her cedar jewelry case. Mrs. Gertrude has yet to decide whether to burn the notebook or use it against the other widows.

Of course, despite the scandalous notebook, the Colonel Martin Vanhousen will be greatly missed. 

*This story comes to you after noticing that the building that inspired the original tale has been gutted. It is under renovation and has a 'for sale' sign out front.

WRITING A MILLION WORDS

Laundry day

7 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Laundry day"

The other day, I started a word document on my computer for the sole intention of writing a specific story. All of my other bits of started stories are on the drive which means I have access to them whenever I am not near my personal computer. I kind of thought if I put it in a word document on my computer that I would specifically dedicate a certain amount of time every day to sit and write. That happened four days ago. I added two sentences to the two pages I'd copied and pasted over from a drive document. You know what I did Sunday after finishing laundry, making ghee, washing dishes (we use a lot of dishes on Sundays) and cleaning the bathroom? It sure wasn't writing. I organized my sock and underwear drawer. It's really nice. I should have taken a picture of it to show you. 

I also read. I've been reading Loving Day by Mat Johnson and I'm pretty much in love with this guy's writing style. There have been many times I've had to stop and read some things out loud because of how the words were strung together. I need to stop doing this because it's slowing me down. I pre-ordered Circe by Madeline Miller and it arrived days ago. I'm really excited about this book, but I've always been the kind of reader who finishes a book before starting another. Even though my fingers twitched to open up to the first page, I set it down and walked away. The idea of hearing Circe's side of the story, even if it's made up, is oh so appealing to me. I didn't really care for the Odyssey when I read it as a kid. Actually, all of those old Greek stories have been on my least favorite list mostly because women are either no where in the story, a beautiful damsel in distress or a witch. 

My insecurities were developed hundreds of thousands of years ago, just like all women. It has been passed down from ancient ancestors through art and storytelling. From the earliest literature, women have been depicted as meek and mild or hateful and villainous or a combination of all of those things. We are rarely depicted as warriors and depicted lovingly only when our bellies are are round with child, most specifically a boy child. We are never smart or if found to be cleaver we must be doing the Devil's work. Women are deceitful. I can't even bare to pick up classic literature anymore without cringing. It reminds me how long and slow our struggle for this current level of equality has been. It's been over three hundred years since the last witch trial. It's been about a hundred years since a woman was arrested for protesting for her right to a vote. It's been fifty five years since Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, though we still see discrepancies in equal pay.

All of this has nothing to do with my inability to discipline myself into writing every day. It does have everything to do with how I want to twine words together. I once heard someone say that to be a better writer, you should read from different writers. So that's what I'm doing. I'm reading so that I can eventually write a million words. 

TROUT

Lunch

4 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Lunch"

The other night, I had a dream that I was fishing. Every time I cast my line, I would immediately feel a tug on the end of the line and I would reel in a beautiful rainbow trout. Over and over. I would cast my line and see the attached fly rest on the water a second before a trout would take a bite. I would pull the fish in, remove it from the hook and cast my line again. It didn't take long for me to have a bucket full of rainbow trout. I then had to clean my bucket of fish and this is where things started to go bad. I didn't have a clue as to how to clean trout. I knew that I had to remove internal organs but every time I cut into one, I just made a mess of everything. By the time I made it through my bucket, my trout were barely fit for cooking and if they were cooked, they would be served with a beware of bones kind of warning. 

My first thought, when I woke up the next morning, was of Dad. I thought of the hours we would spend at the banks of a pond or river, casting out our lines and how we would spend our evenings at the camper making up fly lines for the next day. We had good fishing days, though never as good as my dream. We also had bad fishing days. One year we didn't catch hardly anything and left Colorado feeling like we'd just wasted money on a fishing license. That was the worst fishing trip I can remember and Chris's first trout fishing trip with my family. He finally managed to catch a fish at the end of our trip but it was in a catch and release only area. Mostly though, the fishing was good. 

At the end of our day, we'd take our catch back to the campsite and Dad would clean the fish. I watched Dad do this one time. The last time we went on our fishing trip, Dad talked me through cleaning a trout. He wielded the knife as he explained the process of gutting and gently scraping the scales off the sides, but he never actually let me clean one of the fish. I have never held a fish down and cut it open and pulled out it's guts. That walk through lesson was so many years ago that I'm not sure I would even know where to start. Which explains the part of the dream where I butchered all of the fish. Some how though, I don't think that dream was all about Dad and the regrets of not ever learning how to clean trout. 

The other day Michael stepped out of the shower and said "hey! I think I could turn your blog into a book. If you'd let me." I prickled immediately at his suggestion. It is just that I have become very possessive of this blog. It is mine, wholly and truly. There are no other administrators listed in my settings other than me. When something breaks here, I have to fix it. I add the pictures and the words and I am the editor, even if at times I do a crap job of editing. I see nothing selfish about claiming it as my own and his idea of taking it upon himself to turn it into a book sounded more like him taking some claim to my blog. I tried to be polite when I said "no thank you" because I know he means well. I know he just wants me to publish something. I know he believes that I could publish something. But the blog is not a book. The book will come from something outside of this space. 

In this case, the words are the trout. Catching them is the easy part. The part after I've caught them is where I make a mess of things. The cleaning part. I'm going to start wielding a knife and by the time I'm done, the words will no longer be recognizable or convey meaning. It will no longer be the story it started out to be.

Except, some times, maybe I need to make a mess of things.