hush marion

"Marionetta, come on down here now"

As if.  No way.

"Marionetta. come one down here now."

Not without good reason, and this doens't seem like one of them.

"Marionetta.  Come down at once.  There's a man here to see yuh."

A man.  Not likely.  Most men in this town have seen me, and none of them would come calling for me.

5 minutes go by.  There are the cups clinking and the smell of coffee from down the stairs.

"Marion, dear, please."

She's dropped the 'etta' by now, which I think of as my real name.  That bit you cut off at the end of a given name that suits more than the core, that's me.  Too bad she don't know that, but that's my fault, because I don't tell.  It's a problem.

"Girl, come on down.  He's here to see YOU."

Like that a tasty bait, which it is not.  People have been by to see ne before, but I have not come down for them, ever.  Never.  They  were not invited by me to come into my home and so I will not go to them in my own place, ever.

"Marion, it's the preacher."

And so I must go.  You do not resist the preacher.  He has as many rules about behavior in public as I do.  I respect that.

My feet plop on the stairs, flat as a pancake and twice as firm, as walk down steps familiar as old recipes.  The hall smells like breakfast.  I almost can't stand it and want to lick the walls.  The smells are why I stay in my dammed room, or else what made those smells would be the very death of me.  My grandma does not understand, so I stay away.

"Well, thank God you've arrived.  Took you long enough."

Her head is gray.  Wasn't the last time I seen her.  Her feet seem smaller, all shook up in those house shoes.  There's a man in the room too, skinny tie, greased hair, sharp creases to him.  He's prettier than Grandma, and that just shouldn't be.  He smells of lies, I can just tell.  And he AIN'T no preacher.  This tells me how bad it's going to be for me tonight.

"Marionetta, dear, your Mawmaw is worried for you."

As if you'd know, her name is GRANDMA, you idiot.

"She's concerned about your food."

Ought to be.

"She asked me out here to talk with you about what you eat."

Aaand, what's taken you so long?  I heard that phone conversation 2 months ago.  I could be dead by now.

"She and i have talked and it's clear you have a problem."

The fact I can't hardly walk down the stairs clue you in or what?

"In my opinion you need to get treatment for this issue."

  Well, duh. The wallpaper knows that much.

"Do you have anything to say about this?"

"Yes."

"What is it?  What are your questions?"

A beat, and I think.  What are they?  How did it get to this point, when strangers are called in to address my issues with food?

Another beat.

Breath.

"How much will I eat every day?"

"Five hundred caloires, to start."

"I  don't think I can do that."

"And a change to your exercise program."

Oh God, not the exercise.

"Marion, you must do this.  It will save your life.  You can't go on as you are, and you have to konw this in you heart of hearts."

As if I have 2 hearts.

"Marion, the car is waiting outside.  You have been committed by your MawMaw and must be a ward of the state for the next 30 days while you are in a treatment program.  I promise you it will be OK, and that you are in good hands."

Of course I will be.  There is no doubt.  Right.

I shoot at look at Grandma, who is still fixing tea in the kitchen, then shift my shawl higher on my shoulders so the men outside can't see what I got on my chest, and resign myself to another month of people's judgment of who I am.

I ain't saying now if I'm fat or if I'm thin.  That's the pity int this.  Ive been both, and neither one seems to satisfy other people.  EVER.  It sure is a mystery, how we see things in other people we hate about ourselves.  I'll never be normal, mostly because they won't ever think I am.

The door slams on the ambulance.  Grandma stares at the back of the truck.  She's smiling.

Descriptive River

Once again, transcribing from my college honors English notebook, a passage regarding a river.  This was part of a 3-part assignment, which was to take an object and write a paragraph about it from the descriptive, expository, and narrative viewpoints.  This one was, in my opinion, the most successful.

---

Nestled in the lush fold of two meeting mountains is a river.  It is not the sluggish puddling river of the South, nor the crashing roaring river of the Rockies.  It is not even a river, really, it's mostly like a grown-up creek.  It has its roots deep in the high country, where miniscule trickles of pure rainwater dodge pebbles and leaves in their tiny gullies to join and create, eventually, this river.  Its waters are biting cold and sweet to taste, and so clear the rocky bed seems as if viewed through glass.  A watery stillness pervades the river's ravine, and nature seems achingly harmonious as a thrush parts the air with a liquid warble.  Giant trees lean over the tumbling waters, mingling their branches high above in a conversation of green peace and light.  Rays of sunlight find their way through this ancient canopy to dapple the banks and the river.  The earth exudes an old smell, one of many autumns past, of lives created, of visitors come and gone.  The river itself seems timeless.

---

Note: at the time I had no idea what a thrush sounded like.  For all I know, they croak.

Something tells me there was a word count restriction for these assignments, because I could have been a heck of a lot more florid in my prose than this if given half a chance and a few more minutes.  Shoot, there are hardly any big words in there at all!

The unconductor

put a suit on him, and BINGO!

 'He moves in a slow measured stride into the lecture hall, his brown herringbone suit fitting loosely on this stooped body.  His greasy balding head is filled with what he knows is the carefully prepared discourse for the day.  As he approaches the podium, he clears his throat timidly and adjusts the horn-rimmed spectacles crookedly perched on the narrow bridge of his nose.

Having completed his preparatory steps, he opens his mouth and begins to speak.  The voice is brown, not a nice deep coffee brown, but rather a dunnish color, flat and devoid of life.  It spills on and on, oozing stickily into the minds of his listeners.  The voice engulfs and stretches seconds into minutes, and minutes into clouds periods of no-time.  The voice is a tragedy, a sickly imitation of normality, a parody of the profession.  Things like this voice should not be allowed to linger on, no matter how important or vital the subject it is slaughtering.  Broken only by the annoyance of an ill-placed 'uh,' it drones on, placing the more somatonic students in a blissful stupor.  When at long last the awful gray noxious voice halts, the listeners are left with a sense of disbelief, and a knowledge of relief to realize they are 50 minutes closer to the end of the year, the end of the voice, the end of the professor who belongs to it.'

---

What?: A short descriptive writing piece from 5-minute writing in English Honors class many a moon ago.Somewhere around 1982, when I was 20.

Who? This was a real teacher, and I loathed him.

Impression?:  It's fairly terrible, but some bits are good.  And no, I have no idea if 'somatonic' is a word.  If it isn't, it should be.  Also, I changed a couple of things that are really awful in the original.  BECAUSE I CAN!

Thus endeth the lesson.

Pig TV didn't work out

New idea: Baked Bean muffins. (OK, I see it's been done, fine)

Better idea: With bacon. (Dang it - someone's beat me to it again!)

Or better yet: mac-n-cheese muffins (who knew? People make these!) with baked beans and bacon!

A-HA! No hits on THAT combo.

Muffins are way better than Pig TV as a path to world domination. Off to the kitchen we go to turn bright ideas into GOLD.

yeah, you're so totally right about that

as if there's not enough to do in this world, here comes reality TV with another fatuous offering: Pig TV.

Yes, PIG TV. Pigs, on TV. Pigs of all shapes and sizes, colors and hairyness. Dirty, clean, alive and dead, here come the pigs.

Pigs.

On your TV.

Really.