Lucid Waking

Archive for December, 2008

2008 in Review

        Everyone has his or her traditions on New Year’s Eve and I’ve always had mine. But this year Dec. 31 snuck up on me. I didn’t have time to look up this year in review or go over the already numerous sources on what happened in 2008. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”…enough said. If I promised anything special, I’m going to apologize in advance that this isn’t going to be very special. But I think it’s important to reflect just how far Lucid Waking has grown over the past year and since its fruition in 2005.
        I wrote 97 fiction posts this year, pushing myself to a record high of 25 non-recycled posts in July. Last year, I only wrote 94, so despite November, I made progress. The first post I wrote for Lucid Waking was the Music Box. Unfortunately, Shades of Pink has disappeared off the face of the earth, so you can follow this link to see the first post that I ever published on the web. (Eesh!) If you need a refresher on what I write like now, click here. I think I’ve made some progress with my writing. But Lucid Waking will always remain a practice spot.
        I also made some gains with my artwork. The both new galleries are up and running sporting 54 photographs and 49 pieces of art. My deviantArt page was started in June, for prints. Lucid Waking, however, will have more artwork than deviantArt on the basis of keeping this an exclusive spot for my latest artwork.
        In June this year, lucidwaking.com turned 2 years old! With this year’s contribution, I have published 307 fiction posts on lucidwaking.com in that time. The commentary page turned into a general What’s New—not big news, but still a change all the same. The Best of the Blog contest was canceled and gotten rid of, due to no participation. It wasn’t worth it to keep it going, but Author’s Choice is still being updated on a rolling basis.
        In an effort to make the world a little better, I’ve decided to add links to the side bar on ways that you can help out. To Write Love on Her Arms is a site where you can buy some very awesome merchandise and the others you can help out for free. Every so often if I find a site that I like where you can do good in the world, I’ll put it up.
        And I suppose that’s it for the year! Not too shabby. Let’s hope 2009 is just as good, if not better. And again, I hope everyone has a healthy, safe, and productive year!

Place to Love

        “I think…I’m in love,” she tells me one day over coffee. She hadn’t taken a sip of hers all morning, but held the cup between her pale hands like one holds a teddy bear one is afraid to cuddle. I don’t know why she held such an awkward stance as if I, or anyone else, would ridicule her for this statement of fact.
        “So who’s the guy?” I ask, taking yet another sip from my cup.
        She looks up at me, looking even more scared and nervous than she was before. Her face is so pale it is just about blue.
        “It’s…not…a person,” she says breaking eye contact with me and looking into her coffee. “It’s a place.”
        “A place?” I ask. I suppose I sounded too harsh because she doesn’t respond. Although I wanted her to repeat it, part of me wasn’t quite sure I could believe what I thought I just heard. “What sort of a place?”
        “You know the end of the road before the cliff to the ocean? There. If you stop there and look out over the blue…you can smell freedom. The birds, the butterflies, and the sailboats down below so small they look like they’re fit for dolls and so fragile, they could be made out of paper. Wild poppies grow on the side of the road and if the wind is just right you can catch a scent of honeysuckle from the fields on the outcropping miles below you. The field travels down and around on either side of you, but in that spot you could be on top of the world!”
        She put down her coffee cup, a little life in her cheeks. “But I don’t suppose you’d know,” she says softly. She blushes and stays silent, glancing out the large windows to the ocean below the shop.
        “You’re not going to be very happy if you’re in love with a place,” I say.
        “Well it’s better than always being in love with a person who won’t love you back. A place might not love me back, but it can’t love another,” she snaps.
        I put down my mug, angrily. That statement hit too close to home. “You’re not letting yourself leave this place, you’ve got to move on eventually.”
        She shakes her head. “I’ll find someone who will stay here with me.”
        “Do you think you’ll love him as much as you love that place?”
        She looks at me harshly. “It’s a different sort of love.”
        “That didn’t answer my question.”
        She stands up and walks towards the door taking one last long look at me before going out. Honesty, I am good for, and perhaps too much so. I stand up after a moment, pay the bill and then leave. The ocean was always good for a breeze, but I would be happy to move out and move on. Maybe I’d come back home, but I needed to find a home to come back to it. I glanced out over the water. This place was certainly picturesque, but was I in love with it?
        I’d have to move on to find out.

Rio Samba, Split Yolks, etc.

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Info on prints –> click here

Preparations and Changes

        Ashes fell from her hand as she shook it violently in pain, the dead match flying across the room in her anguish. I watched in silence as she walked over to the match and threw it in the wastepaper basket in between the couches. It was a violent shade of orange and filled with cigarettes. I stared at it, even after the match had disappeared among the debris.
        “Well?” she said, her hands on her hips, drawing out the vowel with an artistic slide. “Aren’t you going to help? Why don’t you go see if the cookies are done?”
        I stood up and walked down the hall to the kitchen. It was warm and smelled rosy, the smells of Christmas dinner mingling with slapped together lunch leftovers. I reached for the oven mitts she had thrown next to the sink and pulled out the cookies from the oven. She had come into the kitchen by the time I found a place to put down the hot sheet. She bustled around neatly, cleaning off the stove and tasting a few sauces still bubbling. I started back towards the living room while she shouted chores I could be doing at my back.
        “And for heaven’s sake!” she yelled once I gotten down the hall, “Be cheerful, it is Christmas!”
        I reached for the ancient paper basket to take it outside and empty it into the garbage. Then decided against it and retraced my steps to the bathroom. Armed with the toilet brush, I dove in, drowning out her cheerful singing with the sound of running water. I could still smell the sugar cookies through the odor of bleach. She stopped singing to get the telephone. I left the bathroom and put away the cleaning supplies but before I had reached the safety of the couch, she called out to me, her hand over the bottom speaker of the receiver:
        “Charlie, go help your father shovel the walk.”
        He isn’t my father—I wanted to say. I went back into the closet to retrieve my coat and walked down the four flights of stairs to the street. There wasn’t any road for all the cars lining either side of it, but the sidewalk was glistening from the lights hanging from the Victorian eaves in the apartment buildings. He was busy with the main sidewalk, tipping his hat to any couples walking past him and wishing them a merry Christmas. He smiled at me when I came out and then went back to work. I detested the scraping of metal shovel on pavement, but there wasn’t much sidewalk in front of our building that he hadn’t already cleared. When we were finished he patted me on the head and then took my shovel back inside with him not waiting for me to follow.
        If I had stayed out much longer, some relative of mine would have asked me what I was doing out there and whether I was going to come in for dinner, so I followed him in. He walked up the four flights of stairs to our door, inserted his key in the lock, and then walked into the apartment. Heat from the kitchen billowed out the door. He yelled hello; She yelled hello. She ran to greet him and give him a kiss. I slipped into the hall and then into the living room.
        The candle she was trying to light was still cold on the mantelpiece, the book of matches lying next to it. I picked one up and lit it, touching it gently to the wick of the candle and then blowing it out. I quickly glanced over my shoulder—she hadn’t caught me doing that—and then flicked the match into the garbage can before slipping off my boots and putting them in the spot she hates: behind the couch. But I stopped before I could walk away and took my boots to the closet with my coat.
        I wasn’t giving in to her demands; I was respecting them. It was little, but it made all the difference in the world.

Newsflash: Where in the World Is…

…Santa Claus? I know many of you out there are skeptics of Santa Claus and might have a different point of view on NORAD’s tradition than I do. But really, there is something sort of cute about the whole thing and well, if we have a "holiday spirit" of Christmas, this does sort of fit the bill.
        But slow down…what is NORAD’s tradition? The whole thing started in 1955 when a hopeful child called the number listed on a Sears, Roebuck, and Co. advertisement as being the direct telephone number to Santa. Unfortunately, the little boy reached the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)–an organization that monitors air and space around the U.S. and Canada. Not wanting to let the little boy’s spirits down, Col. Harry W. Shoup who had picked up the phone pretended to be Santa Claus. Little did he know a myriad of calls would follow, the officers in charge of taking the calls would get carried away, and 53 years later its a tradition to "follow Santa’s flight" throughout the world for boys and girls curious when they will get their presents.
        Is it aiding in the commercialism of Santa? I’ll leave that up to you to answer. I think it’s cute. These people are giving children something besides physical presents to be happy about. And if you don’t believe me, you can read the article. No, it’s not penguins being knighted, but it isn’t about the world destroying itself, either. And really, a 53 year old tradition stemming from someone not wanting to disappoint an unknown boy…
        It’s a good thing that NORAD doesn’t have any threats to look out for in the air on Christmas.

Eulogy for Rebecca Gray

        Modesty was personified by Rebecca Gray. Sure, everyone knew her; sure everyone loved her; sure, everyone thought she was pretty and smart, talented, and kind. Sure everyone wanted her close to them in some way or another. Most just settled for her smile in a magazine and moved on to our more attainable mundane lives. But Modesty personified Rebecca Gray because no matter how many movies, magazines, CD covers, TV shows, or book dust jackets sported her name and face, she was still just plain old Rebecca Gray. She never gave to charities because she wanted the attention, she did it because it felt like the right thing to do; it made her happy to see others happy. She didn’t condone drug abuse and stealing and teen pregnancies because she wanted to be the ultimate role model, she disapproved of them on principle. She didn’t adopt children from orphanages to be a good example, she adopted because she couldn’t have any children of her own and she wanted a little girl. She didn’t get married to make a statement; she got married because she really did love the guy. She didn’t keep her maiden name because she wanted to be an independent feminist or because her name sounded starlet-like enough, she kept it because she wanted to keep the names on her previous legal papers and to keep her mother’s memory alive.
        I knew Rebecca Gray, but I’m not everyone. I was her maid-of-honor at her wedding, her roommate in and after college, at every birthday party she had since she was six, her best friend. I knew her boyfriend, fiancé, husband and went through every up and down of her singing and acting career. I watched her become a brunette Marilyn Monroe and helped her up when she started to fall.
        But there are some things that you can’t control. Drunk driving during a blizzard as one of them. They could have kept her alive, but I didn’t think that was appropriate, and neither did her husband. She wouldn’t have been Rebecca Gray, she would have been a construct and at least this way she can still stand against something she hated so much.
        I don’t know if any of the choices we made were right, but that’s the way they are. I didn’t want to martyrize her, though judging by the crowd tonight I think that’s what I did. But none of you people really knew her, and that’s what makes me sad. Just remember that Becky was one of the greatest people I’ve met and as a great person she can be turned into more than human. I don’t think that’s what anyone deserves—to lose their humanity over greatness. Either way, thank you for coming tonight, despite the rain. Your respects have meant a lot to the Gray and Peters family and we wish you well.

Stardust by Dave Brubeck Quartet

        Everyone would say the Cambrino Lounge was the hottest nightclub in Chicago. Openly notorious for its high quality alcohol in the 1920’s, the lounge prided itself on its jazz, booze, and decorum. Its walls had seen some of the greatest musicians, actors, singers, and gangsters the town could offer. If anyone wanted to visit Chicago, the Cambrino Lounge was the place to go.
        “So why are you selling it?” Samantha asked brushing her hand across the marble tabletops of the bar.
        Her grandfather smiled. “I’m too old to keep this establishment and neither of my sons wanted to keep it up.”
        “I’m willing to keep it going,” she said.
        “No, I think it’s time to move on.”
        “But this place has so many stories, I’d hate to see it as a Panera or another beauty shop. It loses its romance and intrigue.”
        Her grandfather smiled. “You’re soul wants to be a writer. Don’t stick it in a business where it can’t speak.”
        She sighed. “Can’t you at least make it into a museum?”
        “No,” he said. “The lounge would lose something else if it was a museum. All the stories would be lost anyway after a while. Why keep the shop open if no one knows anything about it? Museums are just another business and I think its time this building is moved into the 21st century.”
        Samantha looked at the ceiling darkened from cigarette smoke and then at the peeling wallpaper on the walls. Pictures of artists, political activists, and just ordinary patrons kept the wallpaper up. Newspaper clippings from almost every aspect of history hung beside pictures. She smiled at the headlines: Capone Convicted of dodging taxes; may get 17 years, 100,000 Hail Hitler; U.S. Athletes Avoid Nazi Salute to Him, Amelia Earhart flies Atlantic, First Woman To Do It; Tells Her Own Story of Perilous 21-Hour Trip to Wales; Radio Quit and They Flew Blind Over Invisible Ocean. She hated to let it go.
        Her grandfather called her over from the door where he was already standing dressed for winter with the key in the door. She reluctantly walked past him and out onto the street, waiting for the lonely click of the lock before helping him to his car parked farther down the street.

(Listen to it)