New grandchild arrived and i'm unable to respond at my usual pace. He's adorable and perfect and bringing so much happiness to his family and new friends. I'll be back here tomorrow to read your pieces. xoxo
Blue sky, blue water, blue mountains, blue shirt and pants even.
I was not blue, that's important, but some other color I don't know the name of yet.
The mountain blue was the blue that really got me.
At first I walked away from it, but kept looking back to see what the blue looked like in that moment.
Miles away, and receding into the sea many, many miles, all the blues becoming more or less blue, and the water, sky and mountains belonging to more or less each other than to a particular blue.
That is to say, what could you quite say about any of it except everything was something blue.
But the mountains' blue was really something. I'd like to send you a picture of their blues.
For god's sake this are blues pushed six thousand feet into blue sky from the bottom of the blue ocean. I look at their blue for a long time trying to think what I can say about them but a day later I'm still in wonder of their overwhelming blue.
I love this, Tod. It reminds me of living in the PNW when everything was gray--the sidewalks, the skies, the mountains in the distance... So lyrical and lovely this morning, Tod. Thanks for starting us off!
Beautiful. I especially like "I was not blue, that's important, but some other color I don't know the name of yet." and the rhythm of repeating the word blue.. just lovely.
And it’s for you my love, for you. Your straight dark hair, your wide blue eyes. Your long lean body, a feathering of soft hairs on your perfectly formed chest. For you. I run my toes up under and along you arch slowly and lightly, barely touching—a coaxing of your skin to pleasure. The touch gentle enough to almost tickle. The almost tickle heightening your senses. I watch your face and your eyes of blue. I love to watch your face. I love everything about you. You are my lover and my love. When I feel you loving me, loving you, my skin becomes pure sensation with total longing for you. You pull me to you. You kiss my lips and run your fingers down my face and neck, down, down to my breasts. You do it ever so softly Then you gently tug my nipples and give them over to your mouth as your hand travels down over my abdomen where your fingers stop to press for a moment before continuing on their journey to the private place of me and you. For you, my love, for you.
Now it’s blue. The love is blue. The blue you give is a gift from you. The sparkle of your blue blue eyes is dimmed. The sparkle that was the delight of me from you. It’s gone. The sparkle is gone. Gone from your eyes, it lives in my soul. My being embodies all that is blue. It had been me and you, just us two. Now it is three, me and you and you and she. She is shit through and through. All she is is brown without a speck of blue.
Your shoulders carry the weight of the brown. Your head bowed, your brow a frown. Your eyes an opaque dull barely blue, barely you. My eyes stream rivers of tears for me and you—our beautiful blue destroyed by an ugly brown. Go to her, let her take you down, down down to the stink of her dungy brown. When you pull yourself through her quicksand lair, I won’t be there. I’m only blue.
The blue is me and the blue is you. Blue is forever. The love of me and the love of you reaches to forever, the forever of blue.
This one surprised me. I thought it was physical death or dying or aging at first. Then the weight of the brown. And I love the line about "her quicksand lair." So well written!
I am a middle child with wheat-yellow hair, born three hundred and ninety-eight miles from the prairie fields of the geographic center of the country. Mid-sized, of average talent, I don't stand out in a crowd. My Nordic heritage from frosty blue ice fields imposes clear guardrails against extremes of emotions, leaving bursts of passion to those from fiery red warmer climes. I am green with envy for their birthright to talk wildly with their hands without rebuke. Silver strands are challenging my pride of my once youthful look. The decades may be dulling my original colorful plume but they continue to polish my heart of gold.
so nicely done. A middle child with wheat-yellow hair, mid-sized, average talent.... nah, i don't think so. I think there's so much underneath that wheat-yellow hair
Your use of the colors to share the emotion is amazing. [And if you're learning how to treasure your next phase, read Arthur C. Brooks's From Strength to Strength.]
Your suggestion of From Strength to Strength initially surprised me. Then I listened to an interview of Arthur C. Brooks by Gretchen Rubin on the release of that book and it was exactly what I needed to hear - thank you! There is so much to learn out there!
Bill Baily is the only bartender I have ever known. I worked with him for several years at the Golden Spur on Glenstone Avenue just off exit 33 going west on Interstate 44 cutting across Kansas.
Was he the original Bill Bailey? Everyone who met him thought so. I don’t even know all the words to that song. Does anyone? Won’t you come home Bill Baily? Won’t you come home? I’m waiting the whole night long. He was that kind of guy.
At closing time, while counting my tips, me sitting on a barstool in my tight silver pants, ruffled shirt, he served me my first grasshopper. Some dollars and a ten dollar bill from the soldier from Fort Leonard Woods who placed it in my palm if I would hold his hand for five minute. I did. But made it clear I would not cross the parking lot to sit with him that night.
It was a grasshopper that Bill served me. I rarely drank, and certainly nothing other than a can of malt liquor sitting in the back seat of a car parked on the gravel at James River; or at the Sunset Drive-in watching a cowboy movie. It was a surprise, like tasting Revelation 13, before swallowing Leviticus 18.
It was chartreuse and he ask if I wanted it mixed with cream or ice cream. I said ice cream. And I was a kid again swinging my feet sitting on a stool at the Woolworth counter downtown drinking my first soda. It was chartreuse. A grasshopper, the color of chartreuse. Did you hear what I said?
The Color of Clover
If I had gotten up on the other side of the bed I would have written about clover. But I didn’t, so here is that story too. ( I'm breaking the rules again at 500 words, but don't count the titles).
She worshipped the green color of all clover leaves and the blossoms of white Dutch clover, the purple of the giant Red clover and purple for the common ground clover. Sometimes I think of the honey bees and the bumble bees who love clover too.
But, instead I think of a friend named Annie who loved four-leaf clovers. She was not a superstitious type; she just preferred the green colors of the clover.
Last week I discovered her clover patch where she raised four-leaf clover by watering it in the dry days, covering it over with mulch in the winter. She chopped out the three-leaf clover to stunt their propagation.
We, a friend and I, had been searching all summer. Annie took many solitary walks carrying a small tool box doing all types of small repairs for local elders. We were never sure when she substituted her rake and trawl for a hammer and glue.
Annie would harvest the clover one leaf at a time, press it, and glue it in your birthday card –– wishing you joy for the coming year.
It was the green she said, the green of determination, that enchanted her each spring.
It was a surprise, like tasting Revelation 13, before swallowing Leviticus 18. Wow. Wish I'd thought of that line, although the concept can apply to SO MANY situations. Love it.
what time's the next ferry to Nantucket? I want to see this place and maybe even meet the man, although he seems like he might not be the meeting sort.
Thanks for the comment, Kevin… The man in Nantucket is a pretty alright kinda guy. Just make sure you wear something yellow when you visit him, otherwise he can get a little testy… Ha!
This black is the black of the shade on the bedside lamp you owned when we first met. We would snuggle together like twins in the womb, warm and happy. While you slept, I looked at that lampshade. The black was perfect, freeing my brain from the distraction of visual input. I was complete in the physical world of our nestled bodies.
Yellow
This yellow is the yellow of the yolks. The year we kept chickens. You would go out in the morning and collect eggs for our breakfast. I would break them into the white mixing bowl and the yellow, so deep and vibrant that it was nearly orange, so much richer than the yellow of the grocery store eggs, would fill us with joy and energy. That yellow joy and energy ran through our days.
Red
This red is the red of the cliff we sat under in Southern Utah. We started walking at sunrise when the desert was so cold. Our breath made icy clouds with every exhalation. Remember, we didn’t talk much that day. It was just past noon when we reached the cliff. The cliff with the petroglyphs. We sat beneath the two enormous people striding across the land on the brick red background. We ate our apples and pistachios imagining the lives that had passed this way before us feeling connected to them all.
Mint Green
This mint green is the mint green of the hospital room. I never liked mint green but there it was. The color I would look at for 30 days over the course of the next six months while chemo dripped into a port in my chest. Every morning of those 30 days, you sat in the chair by my bed sharing the good coffee and rolls you’d brought from home. We’d carry on as if we were having a regular lazy Sunday morning. And each evening you’d be back to join my hospital dinner. In the end, I came to cherish mint green as the color of love and healing.
I sometimes can remember photos of events that happened when I when I was much younger, but not the events themselves. The photos aren't fading in my memory the same way the events have. I used to think that was a problem, but now I think it's a great bookmark that can take me back at least a little.
Phyllis decided to add a streak of color to her short, blonde hair.
What color?
Her friend the hairdresser trotted out tubes and samples and color charts. Phyllis rejected all the pinks, purples, magentas…too predictable.
“Green.”
“Green green?” her friend asked.
“Well not shamrock green. Maybe…” and she seized a bright tube of color. “This.”
“Peacock green,” the stylist read. “Hmmm. This might be fun!”
When it had processed, the hair stylist blew out her hair and turned her to the mirror.
“Yes!” They agreed.
Next day after classes, Phyllis made her way across campus.
In the shadow of a building an elderly woman and man sat on folding chairs handing out tiny, green copies of the New Testament.
“Ah!” She thought. “The Gideons. That explains all the little books left behind in the classroom.” Phyllis smiled at the duo. “Good morning!”
The man stepped forward, one of the little testaments in his outstretched hand,
“Good–” and then he stopped, stepped back, withdrew his hand, and looked at the ground. His companion had stood, but sank back into her chair, focused on the ground as well.
Phyllis kept walking, asking herself, “Is there something in my teeth? Did a bird fly over and poop on my head?”
Nope. None of that in the bathroom mirror. So–
She googled.
“What does green hair mean?”
First hit on Google Search: “Is brightly dyed hair a sign of mental illness?” The simple answer is, ‘yes’.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, duh. I teach at a university.”
Made another search: “Gideon and green.”
Discovered that the covers of the Testaments they hand out are color coded according to where they are given out. Orange for street distribution, green for university campuses, and so on…
Green. The smell of newly mown grass or mold on that thing at the back of the refrigerator.
Green. The mix of yellow for energy and blue for the sky. Also a failed ketchup promotion by Heinz.
Green. Tastes like lime encrusted salt on the rim of your margarita glass–tingly, tangy, inviting your tongue to lick the rim inelegantly or like arugula–spicy and peppery.
Green. Sounds like a gentle rain, or waves on the beach. Also sounds like cicadas, crickets, and that frog under the bush beneath my bedroom window.
Green. Feels slippery like after it rains on tree bark, or spongy, like moss.
Angela, love the section at the end where you take green through all the senses, particularly the taste one! In the eighties I used to have a peacock blue lock of hair that curled over my forehead. You could buy mascara-like colors to do it :)
She didn’t know what gave her the idea that she had been cursed. The events of her life over this last stretch hadn’t been eventful in the sense of anything concrete that she could report. There was nothing like “We’ve broken up” or “I fell off a tram”. Yet the feeling came to her as vividly as she had always imagined that intuition should come. She was pouring herself a cup of coffee when she was overtaken by a new plane of feeling.
If you were to try to explain how you could both be looking at whatever you were looking at, and simultaneously could be lost in colorless thought, that would be the gist of it. The way neither field had to dim one iota to make space for the other. And the message came - but was it a message, in words? It was more of a shiver or a flavor. No, it wasn’t like any of the things she had experienced before, but it was perfectly clear: A curse had befallen her. If she did not remove everything green from her home, she would never be happy again.
She took the task as seriously as one would attend to a burn victim. For hours, there came no weighing of her present actions against the rest of what she had come to know about the world. The sun was getting low and she was dragging the last aching garbage bag outdoors, when she felt it begin to split. Green things had poked out, scraping the ground, and all at once the bag was hemorrhaging onto the driveway. A wire hanger was the main culprit. Along with it came a paperback she didn’t recognize, and then others, too many books, all in smashed-together shapes. A small head of iceberg rolled against her foot. Snarls of clothing, flabbing out onto the ground, birthed the jaunty end of a minty green metal stapler that had belonged to her grandfather.
It was dark, though. She couldn’t actually see the green of the stapler, she only remembered it. And then she remembered that word she always loved most, and she wondered for a moment if she could evade the curse by living only by dim light for the rest of her days. Or, she wondered, could she manage to haul this one very busted bag just as far as the curb.
I was a little lost in the beginning, and then I recognized that's where the character was too, until the message about green arrived. Nice drawing the reader into her head from the outset!
What's happened to this woman? Scary. And scary that she remembers the green of the stapler. Will even thinking about green be an offense? Even if living in the dim? Fascinating story.
Thanks so much, Kevin! And it's so interesting to see that a main impression is 'scary' - didn't see that coming at all, as the thing was taking its shape - maybe the spooky season is having its way!
The coyote, who came to be known to residents of Conlin as 'Rainbow', knocked over the scaffold platform where they were keeping the paint for the diversity mural. The foundation of the mural was rooted in punishment rather than celebration. Some local kids had set up an online community where they had been caught using what my son describes as “gamer words”. Judge Charmaine Packwood, also known as 'the gun poacher', and by other less flattering monikers, waded out of her jurisdiction, given that no arrests were made, and decreed the mural an appropriate penalty. The parents went along with it, hoping to dispel the attention of a reporter from one of the national television networks, who had read out their addresses on air. Ever since, they'd been dealing with a ton of hate mail; scores of strangers from all over the country and beyond, hoping they would die in a house fire or a vehicle pile-up. Really nasty stuff.
The huddle of paint tins had been left with the lids cracked open, like a colony of Kitchin clams with their shells ajar, feeding on an inbound tide. I guess the coyote thought there was something good up there. Maybe one of the kids had left some food out. It knocked the platform over, then fled the scene covered in paint.
Afterwards, Judge Packwoods' unifying spirit of diversity, that she had hoped would remain plastered to the wall of Rose Shingler Middle School as an example to others, assumed the chaotic form of a vengeful totem, roaming the streets of Conlin, seeding chaos, leaving a trail of rainbow paw prints in its wake.
Some abstract, multi-coloured fur prints, impressed on patio decking, documented its triumphant struggle over one of the local cats. It was kind of funny, though I wouldn't be laughing if it had been Mr French Face – that's the name of our cat. It's what happens when your husband lets the kids, who can't conceive of a future beyond their next birthday, make decisions with long-term consequences.
Somebody claimed to have seen the coyote biting car tires which sealed its fate. Deputy Raymond Acton broke out the rifle with the fractured optics from the armoury. Looking down the scope, he saw the dog with its head bowed, oblivious or unconcerned by his presence, bathed in a prism of street light.
He’d never run a red light before, but there was no time even to think. He gripped tight the steering wheel and grimaced as he swerved between a delivery truck and a car. Framed in the windscreen of the car, a frizzy-haired woman with large thick-rimmed glasses gaped at him as he flew through the vanishing gap. His tyres screeched as he lurched right then hard left, bumped up the kerb with two wheels then crashed back down onto the road. Before he had chance to take a breath his foot jammed back down and he flew away, realigning the rear of his car so he tracked the centre of the avenue, under the gently dropping autumn leaves, before, halfway down, his brake lights brightened and he slung the car round to the right and off. He’d forgotten to use his indicator.
The street seemed suddenly silent and dreamy after the car had disappeared around the corner and the only sound was the roiling of a bin lid as it slowly settled. A basketball bounced across the street and came to rest against a postbox.
A guilty crimson spread from one end of my horizon to the other. The morning light was the color worn by an embarrassed child. What a coincidence, or, was I was looking for something external to mimic the impossible feelings of my interior?
Rough feelings.
These were the emotions one hid under the living room sofa, or kicked to the curb when it was raining, so that the water would carry them into the sewer.
It really did happen though, just as I remember it.
Stealing wasn't enough, I had lied as well, and deftly. It was , after all, what I did best, and therefore I felt the deepest and most abiding shame. So deep was it that it registered as grief, and that crimson was forever struck from the palette of my identity.
Joni Mitchell sings to Blue, and Miles was kinda blue. Roy and Linda both pined for a blue bayou, and Elvis Costello was almost blue. There are blue moons, blue suede shoes, and Muddy Waters’ Blues. The Who lamented the sadness behind blue eyes. Dylan got all tangled up in blue and Stills carried a torch for Judy Blue Eyes.
But the coyote didn’t care about blue. Gnashing teeth and ripping bloody gashes in their prey, coyotes don't dwell in nostalgia or swoon or sing along. This coyote lived in the here and now, it got into the bone and the skin and the eyes . . . those blue eyes that hid sins and violence and retribution. The coyote didn’t care about those sins. It just lived here, then there, then on to the next yard. It found its next quarry.
When I told you to get off youtube and go for a walk I didn’t expect you to go. I just wanted you to live in the present, like I do, not in a miasma of yesterdays, a time before you had your own regrets, before life took unexpected turns and you took irrevocable actions. So I was happy when you got out of the house and down the block and back. I didn’t spy on you, really; from my station in the dormer window I watch everything that goes on in the block. But then you disappeared up the drive and into the yard, where I couldn’t see you anymore. And the windows were closed and I had my headphones on and I couldn’t hear you screaming — I assume you screamed — or just yelling, or even moaning.
The mortician said it was impossible to know where the beast attacked you first. We hoped, together, it was your throat (maybe you didn’t scream, then), because that would have been quicker. If the gnashes on your legs and arms came first the end would have been more horrific.
So now I look at your youtube history and think maybe you had it right. Our different circumstances didn’t show me how right you were for you, if not for me. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I regret my hectoring. And now my Christmas will be blue, without you.
You'd think having the coyote at the top would clue you in to the ending (like the gun on the wall in a movie scene), but it did not! I was as startled by the word "screaming" as I should have been. Well done.
Oh my god! And the part about the blue eyes and what was hidden in them! Well done. Joni Mitchell also had a coyote, but they came from different worlds…
New grandchild arrived and i'm unable to respond at my usual pace. He's adorable and perfect and bringing so much happiness to his family and new friends. I'll be back here tomorrow to read your pieces. xoxo
Oh, best wishes to you all!
Congratulations!!!!!
Congrats! Enjoy that little guy! Soak it all up, Mary.
Funny you should mention blue.
Yesterday was a long day all blue.
Blue sky, blue water, blue mountains, blue shirt and pants even.
I was not blue, that's important, but some other color I don't know the name of yet.
The mountain blue was the blue that really got me.
At first I walked away from it, but kept looking back to see what the blue looked like in that moment.
Miles away, and receding into the sea many, many miles, all the blues becoming more or less blue, and the water, sky and mountains belonging to more or less each other than to a particular blue.
That is to say, what could you quite say about any of it except everything was something blue.
But the mountains' blue was really something. I'd like to send you a picture of their blues.
For god's sake this are blues pushed six thousand feet into blue sky from the bottom of the blue ocean. I look at their blue for a long time trying to think what I can say about them but a day later I'm still in wonder of their overwhelming blue.
I love this, Tod. It reminds me of living in the PNW when everything was gray--the sidewalks, the skies, the mountains in the distance... So lyrical and lovely this morning, Tod. Thanks for starting us off!
Ok, but everything here is blue, actually, Mary.
yes, well i see that now. But back then....nothing but gray.
got it.
Tod says "I was not blue, that's important, but some other color I don't know the name of yet."
When you figure out the "other color " please let us know!
You'll have to be patient.
Beautiful. I especially like "I was not blue, that's important, but some other color I don't know the name of yet." and the rhythm of repeating the word blue.. just lovely.
Love this Tod. I'm more orange, today, myself.
Blue Love by Jane deMilo
And it’s for you my love, for you. Your straight dark hair, your wide blue eyes. Your long lean body, a feathering of soft hairs on your perfectly formed chest. For you. I run my toes up under and along you arch slowly and lightly, barely touching—a coaxing of your skin to pleasure. The touch gentle enough to almost tickle. The almost tickle heightening your senses. I watch your face and your eyes of blue. I love to watch your face. I love everything about you. You are my lover and my love. When I feel you loving me, loving you, my skin becomes pure sensation with total longing for you. You pull me to you. You kiss my lips and run your fingers down my face and neck, down, down to my breasts. You do it ever so softly Then you gently tug my nipples and give them over to your mouth as your hand travels down over my abdomen where your fingers stop to press for a moment before continuing on their journey to the private place of me and you. For you, my love, for you.
Now it’s blue. The love is blue. The blue you give is a gift from you. The sparkle of your blue blue eyes is dimmed. The sparkle that was the delight of me from you. It’s gone. The sparkle is gone. Gone from your eyes, it lives in my soul. My being embodies all that is blue. It had been me and you, just us two. Now it is three, me and you and you and she. She is shit through and through. All she is is brown without a speck of blue.
Your shoulders carry the weight of the brown. Your head bowed, your brow a frown. Your eyes an opaque dull barely blue, barely you. My eyes stream rivers of tears for me and you—our beautiful blue destroyed by an ugly brown. Go to her, let her take you down, down down to the stink of her dungy brown. When you pull yourself through her quicksand lair, I won’t be there. I’m only blue.
The blue is me and the blue is you. Blue is forever. The love of me and the love of you reaches to forever, the forever of blue.
This one surprised me. I thought it was physical death or dying or aging at first. Then the weight of the brown. And I love the line about "her quicksand lair." So well written!
Oh J, there are so many brown people. I wish you hadn't encountered one.
Larch trees are coniferous.
Perched high in the alps they shed their needles to preserve energy to survive.
They turn yellow and orange and green, like speckles in a Monet painting.
They blanket the flanks of the high mountains in a cheerful multi-colored quilt.
It makes me feel a cold to think about coniferous trees naked of their needles.
It makes me colder still to see the glaciers plunge down the mountain.
The gashes of the glacier crevasses are violent and ugly, intolerant of life.
The higher you get in the mountains, the sparser the larch trees and the brighter their colors.
As if by glowing brightly in the last remnants of autumn sun they can hold on to life through the dark nights of cold.
love that last line
Yes! They are like Monet speckles . . . I love them.
I love the way you used the colors to make me feel the chill.
Larch was my favorite tree in Maine.
I am a middle child with wheat-yellow hair, born three hundred and ninety-eight miles from the prairie fields of the geographic center of the country. Mid-sized, of average talent, I don't stand out in a crowd. My Nordic heritage from frosty blue ice fields imposes clear guardrails against extremes of emotions, leaving bursts of passion to those from fiery red warmer climes. I am green with envy for their birthright to talk wildly with their hands without rebuke. Silver strands are challenging my pride of my once youthful look. The decades may be dulling my original colorful plume but they continue to polish my heart of gold.
so nicely done. A middle child with wheat-yellow hair, mid-sized, average talent.... nah, i don't think so. I think there's so much underneath that wheat-yellow hair
Yeah, I'm ferreting that out with more detail in a current essay. Easier to be invisible, lost in the middle while I figure it all out!
Your use of the colors to share the emotion is amazing. [And if you're learning how to treasure your next phase, read Arthur C. Brooks's From Strength to Strength.]
Your suggestion of From Strength to Strength initially surprised me. Then I listened to an interview of Arthur C. Brooks by Gretchen Rubin on the release of that book and it was exactly what I needed to hear - thank you! There is so much to learn out there!
Thanks, Janet!
LWK, I love those guard rails that save you from extreme emotions
I’m a fan of those guard rails too!
My First Grasshopper
Bill Baily is the only bartender I have ever known. I worked with him for several years at the Golden Spur on Glenstone Avenue just off exit 33 going west on Interstate 44 cutting across Kansas.
Was he the original Bill Bailey? Everyone who met him thought so. I don’t even know all the words to that song. Does anyone? Won’t you come home Bill Baily? Won’t you come home? I’m waiting the whole night long. He was that kind of guy.
At closing time, while counting my tips, me sitting on a barstool in my tight silver pants, ruffled shirt, he served me my first grasshopper. Some dollars and a ten dollar bill from the soldier from Fort Leonard Woods who placed it in my palm if I would hold his hand for five minute. I did. But made it clear I would not cross the parking lot to sit with him that night.
It was a grasshopper that Bill served me. I rarely drank, and certainly nothing other than a can of malt liquor sitting in the back seat of a car parked on the gravel at James River; or at the Sunset Drive-in watching a cowboy movie. It was a surprise, like tasting Revelation 13, before swallowing Leviticus 18.
It was chartreuse and he ask if I wanted it mixed with cream or ice cream. I said ice cream. And I was a kid again swinging my feet sitting on a stool at the Woolworth counter downtown drinking my first soda. It was chartreuse. A grasshopper, the color of chartreuse. Did you hear what I said?
The Color of Clover
If I had gotten up on the other side of the bed I would have written about clover. But I didn’t, so here is that story too. ( I'm breaking the rules again at 500 words, but don't count the titles).
She worshipped the green color of all clover leaves and the blossoms of white Dutch clover, the purple of the giant Red clover and purple for the common ground clover. Sometimes I think of the honey bees and the bumble bees who love clover too.
But, instead I think of a friend named Annie who loved four-leaf clovers. She was not a superstitious type; she just preferred the green colors of the clover.
Last week I discovered her clover patch where she raised four-leaf clover by watering it in the dry days, covering it over with mulch in the winter. She chopped out the three-leaf clover to stunt their propagation.
We, a friend and I, had been searching all summer. Annie took many solitary walks carrying a small tool box doing all types of small repairs for local elders. We were never sure when she substituted her rake and trawl for a hammer and glue.
Annie would harvest the clover one leaf at a time, press it, and glue it in your birthday card –– wishing you joy for the coming year.
It was the green she said, the green of determination, that enchanted her each spring.
So lovely, both of these
Two great short fictions! And I am all about green today as well.
It was a surprise, like tasting Revelation 13, before swallowing Leviticus 18. Wow. Wish I'd thought of that line, although the concept can apply to SO MANY situations. Love it.
Yes...so many situations....and please use that line any time you see fit!
I loved that line!
Whoa. That Pink piece is terrifying! Also, I love Maggie Nelson's Bluets. I'd love to work with that format someday.
Here's mine for today:
I Remember Red
I remember wearing a red hat on the lane home
from school so the hunters wouldn’t shoot me--
hunters with their bows and arrows, stalking
poor defenseless fawns.
I remember red popsicles, their icy crunch against my teeth,
leaving blood-red lips and sticks stained on the ends.
Lipsticked with tiny tubes of Avon samples, Cherries in the Snow,
or Rose Geranium, treasures of a hoped-up fantasy.
I remember my red satin party dress,
red wool suit,
red striped pajamas,
made by my mother to brighten up my teenage years.to
Red—droplets in the toilet bowl—red, dread, confusion,
a swirl of shame.
Red -- me on stage with my silver flute and red suit, cheeks
aflame fire-engine red.
I remember the shoes I bought with babysitting money,
red Pappagallo flats with a cut-out and a tiny bow.
I remember the cool girls who had days-of-the-week Pappagallo flats
in rainbow colors – green ones, pink on pink, yellow with navy piping.
I remember Dorothy’s shoes with sequins, vestige of a dead witch.
Red magic shoes. I remember wanting magic.
so much fodder in this one! And oh yes, those first red droplets in the toilet bowl.
Such a full story and portrait flows so naturally out of the series of red images! Beautifully done!
Love all the details in this—great descriptions and how you lead us right to those ruby slippers!
There once was a man
Who lived in Nantucket
He wasn't too happy
With life
Oh well, fuck it!
…He thought to himself
* * *
If I don't like life
Its color, its hue
Its taste or its texture
Be it red, or else, blue
Let's scrap the whole thing
And paint it anew
* * *
There once was a man
Who lived in Nantucket
...Who thought to himself
* * *
He thought quite a lot
Up there in Nantucket
Then he got him some paint
In a big yellow bucket
* * *
It started out mellow
One stroke at a time
He sprayed and he brushed
He splurged and he splushed
The color all over
Until, just in time
* * *
The diligent fellow
Had painted all things
In a very bright yellow
* * *
Now this is more like it
Thought the man from Nantucket
After which he put down
His brush, empty bucket
* * *
I once didn't like
What I saw in this life
But now all is yellow
Well worth all the strife
...Thought the man from Nantucket
* * *
The hardship
The toil
The work
Thought the fellow
He wouldn't have liked it
If it wasn't in yellow
* * *
There once was a man
Who lived in Nantucket
Who owned but a brush
And one empty bucket
* * *
Yet happy he was
The bright little fellow
Living his life in Nantucket
In yellow
* * *
With a brush and one bucket
All by himself
Up there in Nantucket
Super fun to read this one!
Super fun to write this one. Sometimes the words just come. This was one of those occasions… Thanks for taking the time to read, Mary.
honestly, it was my pleasure
How fun!
Glad you got a chuckle out of it, Janet… If anything, the world needs more chuckling (and more yellow)!
what time's the next ferry to Nantucket? I want to see this place and maybe even meet the man, although he seems like he might not be the meeting sort.
Thanks for the comment, Kevin… The man in Nantucket is a pretty alright kinda guy. Just make sure you wear something yellow when you visit him, otherwise he can get a little testy… Ha!
Samples From My Museum of Color
Black
This black is the black of the shade on the bedside lamp you owned when we first met. We would snuggle together like twins in the womb, warm and happy. While you slept, I looked at that lampshade. The black was perfect, freeing my brain from the distraction of visual input. I was complete in the physical world of our nestled bodies.
Yellow
This yellow is the yellow of the yolks. The year we kept chickens. You would go out in the morning and collect eggs for our breakfast. I would break them into the white mixing bowl and the yellow, so deep and vibrant that it was nearly orange, so much richer than the yellow of the grocery store eggs, would fill us with joy and energy. That yellow joy and energy ran through our days.
Red
This red is the red of the cliff we sat under in Southern Utah. We started walking at sunrise when the desert was so cold. Our breath made icy clouds with every exhalation. Remember, we didn’t talk much that day. It was just past noon when we reached the cliff. The cliff with the petroglyphs. We sat beneath the two enormous people striding across the land on the brick red background. We ate our apples and pistachios imagining the lives that had passed this way before us feeling connected to them all.
Mint Green
This mint green is the mint green of the hospital room. I never liked mint green but there it was. The color I would look at for 30 days over the course of the next six months while chemo dripped into a port in my chest. Every morning of those 30 days, you sat in the chair by my bed sharing the good coffee and rolls you’d brought from home. We’d carry on as if we were having a regular lazy Sunday morning. And each evening you’d be back to join my hospital dinner. In the end, I came to cherish mint green as the color of love and healing.
Beautiful
So lovely.
Gorgeous response to the prompt. Each section is beautifully rendered.
black, yellow, red, mint green . . .
what a story, I feel like I have taken an emotional journey with you
thank you for this story of beautiful colors
A life in four colors! Vivid details and so heartbreaking!
removed
oh i'm writing a piece right now that includes mention of colors fading in this way.
I'd love to read that, if you are so inclined.
It's going to take me a long while to finish this particular piece (it's an essay).
I sometimes can remember photos of events that happened when I when I was much younger, but not the events themselves. The photos aren't fading in my memory the same way the events have. I used to think that was a problem, but now I think it's a great bookmark that can take me back at least a little.
Yes, I have had that discussion about fading memories with several others.
Phyllis decided to add a streak of color to her short, blonde hair.
What color?
Her friend the hairdresser trotted out tubes and samples and color charts. Phyllis rejected all the pinks, purples, magentas…too predictable.
“Green.”
“Green green?” her friend asked.
“Well not shamrock green. Maybe…” and she seized a bright tube of color. “This.”
“Peacock green,” the stylist read. “Hmmm. This might be fun!”
When it had processed, the hair stylist blew out her hair and turned her to the mirror.
“Yes!” They agreed.
Next day after classes, Phyllis made her way across campus.
In the shadow of a building an elderly woman and man sat on folding chairs handing out tiny, green copies of the New Testament.
“Ah!” She thought. “The Gideons. That explains all the little books left behind in the classroom.” Phyllis smiled at the duo. “Good morning!”
The man stepped forward, one of the little testaments in his outstretched hand,
“Good–” and then he stopped, stepped back, withdrew his hand, and looked at the ground. His companion had stood, but sank back into her chair, focused on the ground as well.
Phyllis kept walking, asking herself, “Is there something in my teeth? Did a bird fly over and poop on my head?”
Nope. None of that in the bathroom mirror. So–
She googled.
“What does green hair mean?”
First hit on Google Search: “Is brightly dyed hair a sign of mental illness?” The simple answer is, ‘yes’.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, duh. I teach at a university.”
Made another search: “Gideon and green.”
Discovered that the covers of the Testaments they hand out are color coded according to where they are given out. Orange for street distribution, green for university campuses, and so on…
Green. The smell of newly mown grass or mold on that thing at the back of the refrigerator.
Green. The mix of yellow for energy and blue for the sky. Also a failed ketchup promotion by Heinz.
Green. Tastes like lime encrusted salt on the rim of your margarita glass–tingly, tangy, inviting your tongue to lick the rim inelegantly or like arugula–spicy and peppery.
Green. Sounds like a gentle rain, or waves on the beach. Also sounds like cicadas, crickets, and that frog under the bush beneath my bedroom window.
Green. Feels slippery like after it rains on tree bark, or spongy, like moss.
It’s not that easy being green.
newly mown grass--forever the most wonderful green scent!
Oh wow! I just read this after I posted my story . Hilarious we had the same ending.
ha!
but I'm sure you are good a being Green . . . oops! I mean Phyllis
a kaleidoscope of being Green
Angela, love the section at the end where you take green through all the senses, particularly the taste one! In the eighties I used to have a peacock blue lock of hair that curled over my forehead. You could buy mascara-like colors to do it :)
Thank you!
Crepuscular
She didn’t know what gave her the idea that she had been cursed. The events of her life over this last stretch hadn’t been eventful in the sense of anything concrete that she could report. There was nothing like “We’ve broken up” or “I fell off a tram”. Yet the feeling came to her as vividly as she had always imagined that intuition should come. She was pouring herself a cup of coffee when she was overtaken by a new plane of feeling.
If you were to try to explain how you could both be looking at whatever you were looking at, and simultaneously could be lost in colorless thought, that would be the gist of it. The way neither field had to dim one iota to make space for the other. And the message came - but was it a message, in words? It was more of a shiver or a flavor. No, it wasn’t like any of the things she had experienced before, but it was perfectly clear: A curse had befallen her. If she did not remove everything green from her home, she would never be happy again.
She took the task as seriously as one would attend to a burn victim. For hours, there came no weighing of her present actions against the rest of what she had come to know about the world. The sun was getting low and she was dragging the last aching garbage bag outdoors, when she felt it begin to split. Green things had poked out, scraping the ground, and all at once the bag was hemorrhaging onto the driveway. A wire hanger was the main culprit. Along with it came a paperback she didn’t recognize, and then others, too many books, all in smashed-together shapes. A small head of iceberg rolled against her foot. Snarls of clothing, flabbing out onto the ground, birthed the jaunty end of a minty green metal stapler that had belonged to her grandfather.
It was dark, though. She couldn’t actually see the green of the stapler, she only remembered it. And then she remembered that word she always loved most, and she wondered for a moment if she could evade the curse by living only by dim light for the rest of her days. Or, she wondered, could she manage to haul this one very busted bag just as far as the curb.
Wow. This is a scary one, though told in a simple, straightforward manner.
Thanks for reading, even amid your busy week! And congratulations!!
Thanks, Danielle!
"I fell off a tram."
This brought me joy
I was a little lost in the beginning, and then I recognized that's where the character was too, until the message about green arrived. Nice drawing the reader into her head from the outset!
Ah, such helpful feedback. Thanks, Janet!
I love the details in this.
Thanks! (:
What's happened to this woman? Scary. And scary that she remembers the green of the stapler. Will even thinking about green be an offense? Even if living in the dim? Fascinating story.
Thanks so much, Kevin! And it's so interesting to see that a main impression is 'scary' - didn't see that coming at all, as the thing was taking its shape - maybe the spooky season is having its way!
The coyote, who came to be known to residents of Conlin as 'Rainbow', knocked over the scaffold platform where they were keeping the paint for the diversity mural. The foundation of the mural was rooted in punishment rather than celebration. Some local kids had set up an online community where they had been caught using what my son describes as “gamer words”. Judge Charmaine Packwood, also known as 'the gun poacher', and by other less flattering monikers, waded out of her jurisdiction, given that no arrests were made, and decreed the mural an appropriate penalty. The parents went along with it, hoping to dispel the attention of a reporter from one of the national television networks, who had read out their addresses on air. Ever since, they'd been dealing with a ton of hate mail; scores of strangers from all over the country and beyond, hoping they would die in a house fire or a vehicle pile-up. Really nasty stuff.
The huddle of paint tins had been left with the lids cracked open, like a colony of Kitchin clams with their shells ajar, feeding on an inbound tide. I guess the coyote thought there was something good up there. Maybe one of the kids had left some food out. It knocked the platform over, then fled the scene covered in paint.
Afterwards, Judge Packwoods' unifying spirit of diversity, that she had hoped would remain plastered to the wall of Rose Shingler Middle School as an example to others, assumed the chaotic form of a vengeful totem, roaming the streets of Conlin, seeding chaos, leaving a trail of rainbow paw prints in its wake.
Some abstract, multi-coloured fur prints, impressed on patio decking, documented its triumphant struggle over one of the local cats. It was kind of funny, though I wouldn't be laughing if it had been Mr French Face – that's the name of our cat. It's what happens when your husband lets the kids, who can't conceive of a future beyond their next birthday, make decisions with long-term consequences.
Somebody claimed to have seen the coyote biting car tires which sealed its fate. Deputy Raymond Acton broke out the rifle with the fractured optics from the armoury. Looking down the scope, he saw the dog with its head bowed, oblivious or unconcerned by his presence, bathed in a prism of street light.
That ending makes me think of To Kill a Mockingbird when Atticus shoots the rabid dog
I thought about this one for awhile. Coyotes as trickster characters. The vengeful totem.
The coyote is definitely my favorite character here. I'd like to think of her as spreading the rainbow message and then being punished for it...
Well this one is a doozy! Such imagination, humor and flair. I love all the characters, including the poor paint-speckled coyote.
He’d never run a red light before, but there was no time even to think. He gripped tight the steering wheel and grimaced as he swerved between a delivery truck and a car. Framed in the windscreen of the car, a frizzy-haired woman with large thick-rimmed glasses gaped at him as he flew through the vanishing gap. His tyres screeched as he lurched right then hard left, bumped up the kerb with two wheels then crashed back down onto the road. Before he had chance to take a breath his foot jammed back down and he flew away, realigning the rear of his car so he tracked the centre of the avenue, under the gently dropping autumn leaves, before, halfway down, his brake lights brightened and he slung the car round to the right and off. He’d forgotten to use his indicator.
The street seemed suddenly silent and dreamy after the car had disappeared around the corner and the only sound was the roiling of a bin lid as it slowly settled. A basketball bounced across the street and came to rest against a postbox.
No time for more this week.
Congrats, Mary, on your growing family.
Thank you, Niall! It's overwhelming and wonderful.
Great description of a super scary moment!
A guilty crimson spread from one end of my horizon to the other. The morning light was the color worn by an embarrassed child. What a coincidence, or, was I was looking for something external to mimic the impossible feelings of my interior?
Rough feelings.
These were the emotions one hid under the living room sofa, or kicked to the curb when it was raining, so that the water would carry them into the sewer.
It really did happen though, just as I remember it.
Stealing wasn't enough, I had lied as well, and deftly. It was , after all, what I did best, and therefore I felt the deepest and most abiding shame. So deep was it that it registered as grief, and that crimson was forever struck from the palette of my identity.
Yes, alas, I had been caught.
Really nicely done.
Thank you, Mary! Tomorrow, I'm posting the 1600-word version, of which this is the first 2 paragraphs. See you back here, too. :)
fantastic!
Joni Mitchell sings to Blue, and Miles was kinda blue. Roy and Linda both pined for a blue bayou, and Elvis Costello was almost blue. There are blue moons, blue suede shoes, and Muddy Waters’ Blues. The Who lamented the sadness behind blue eyes. Dylan got all tangled up in blue and Stills carried a torch for Judy Blue Eyes.
But the coyote didn’t care about blue. Gnashing teeth and ripping bloody gashes in their prey, coyotes don't dwell in nostalgia or swoon or sing along. This coyote lived in the here and now, it got into the bone and the skin and the eyes . . . those blue eyes that hid sins and violence and retribution. The coyote didn’t care about those sins. It just lived here, then there, then on to the next yard. It found its next quarry.
When I told you to get off youtube and go for a walk I didn’t expect you to go. I just wanted you to live in the present, like I do, not in a miasma of yesterdays, a time before you had your own regrets, before life took unexpected turns and you took irrevocable actions. So I was happy when you got out of the house and down the block and back. I didn’t spy on you, really; from my station in the dormer window I watch everything that goes on in the block. But then you disappeared up the drive and into the yard, where I couldn’t see you anymore. And the windows were closed and I had my headphones on and I couldn’t hear you screaming — I assume you screamed — or just yelling, or even moaning.
The mortician said it was impossible to know where the beast attacked you first. We hoped, together, it was your throat (maybe you didn’t scream, then), because that would have been quicker. If the gnashes on your legs and arms came first the end would have been more horrific.
So now I look at your youtube history and think maybe you had it right. Our different circumstances didn’t show me how right you were for you, if not for me. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I regret my hectoring. And now my Christmas will be blue, without you.
Way to mash the prompts together!
You'd think having the coyote at the top would clue you in to the ending (like the gun on the wall in a movie scene), but it did not! I was as startled by the word "screaming" as I should have been. Well done.
Thanks!
Oh my god! And the part about the blue eyes and what was hidden in them! Well done. Joni Mitchell also had a coyote, but they came from different worlds…
i was intending the coyote to be Joni's coyote, but it had other plans. Thanks for reading!
well, a prisoner of the white lines on the freeway, ya’ know.