Sometimes she was a princess, and her kingdom was threatened by an evil witch. Sometimes she was a marine biologist in a submarine, searching for the Colossal Squid. Sometimes she was herself, standing naked in front of her classroom.

You might ask, how does a little girl know about such things²? Hazel was a reader. She borrowed two books from her school library every evening and brought then back, almost always fully read, the next morning. She borrowed books about fairy tales, and marine biology. She borrowed books on space flight, fishing, and going to college. However not once did she bring home a book about marriage³.

You see, she dreamt of getting married every night. As approached waking every morning, herself, in the dream, would be in a white gown, or a beach dress, or a party dress. She would be in a church, a beach, or a registrar’s office. She would be standing next to a man who she had just looked in the eye, though she could never describe him upon waking, and she would be happy. Totally, effusively, blindly happy. And then the dream would end. You see, she was terrified of marriage. In her waking moments, it sent shivers down her spine. These night stories of hers were always imaginative and wonderful, but they ended the same way. They ended in marriage.

¹ save this for later in the text? : and they always ended with the same event. In each and every dream, she got married.
² need to list more than just two highly adult things to make the reader properly wonder
³ did they not exist? or: and whenever she came across the topic in a story she was reading, she put the book down and didn’t finish. These were the only books she didn’t real all the way through.

I miss that feeling of comfort when you’re doing something you know your good at, when it’s just hard enough to keep you improving but even that struggle comes easy enough. If the weather fills you with energy and you’ve had a good sleep, it can be hard not to shout, ‘Look ma! No hands!’ You’re proud of yourself. You can feel yourself growing.

This year I was Richard Dunn. I would sit down at the table, ready for a day’s work, and then the anxiety would creep up the muscles from my tailbone to the back of my head. Everything matters too much. There was too much at stake. I would jump up and find something else to do just for the hope of calming down enough to work again later. I would get distracted and space would bend around several hours of my day and I didn’t know where they went. I would get up to open the windows, check on Bogie who had been too quiet for too long, get a snack, check my email. Occasionally, I would find the ‘zone’, at 5pm, when George came down for a snack, to tell me he would be in a meeting all evening, and to glom a little. If he wasn’t particularly disruptive, I could still get an hour or two’s work in, then it was time to feed the dog and make dinner. I should’ve begun laughing at myself whenever I tried to work after Dan got home or on the weekends.

I wanted to move the lounge furniture into the garden. Set up a tall, spacious desk, a chaise lounge, a coffee table, and an arm chair off to one side. They could build one of those massive Victorian conservatories up and around me, one with a large copper weather vane and a curved cut glass roof. I could be out in the rain without getting wet. I could let the soothing drum of rain play through the back of my mind. I could do cartwheels in the grass to level off the nervous energy and bring the blood rushing back to my fingertips.

Why do inspiration and opportunity meet at 2am? I’m tired! Very tired. There are too many things on my mind, I’d need shorthand and Flash-like speed to get it all out before I have to crawl back into bed next to the incorrigable representation of my otherwise unfathomable happiness breathing evenly even while I’m letting in a breeze under the covers. Something inevitably gets lost in the inadequacy.

I hypothesize that it’s been too long since I’ve written anything. This summer, I will be financially productive, get psychologically and physically rejuvenated, learn more Italian, and write in this blog. See you soon, Nameless Void.

Love, Jesse

I usually giggle a little to myself when I think of it (the giggle goes away when I read it), because an infamous professor of mine got the most sour look on her face over my use of “whilst” instead of “while”. Though she knew I was Anglicising my writing, she thought it sounded strange. This was probably influence by the fact that she couldn’t pronounce it to save her life.

I’m quite sure the single word is the only reason this poem wasn’t accepting into the college’s journal, which she ran. Every time the poem came up in conversation, she looked offended!

“I’m just saying, back during The Invasion, we had to work hard for our food!  These kids don’t know what it was like.  They’re spoilt!”  He didn’t even look up from the newspaper.

“All the same, there are only two head cheese dishes this year because I just can’t get the kids to eat it.  I don’t want leftovers.”  Mummy had her hands on her hips, just like when she was being stern with me.  Grandfather only harrumphed, sending a spray of spittle onto the paper.

I wrinkled my nose and turned away.  Most things about Grandfather grossed me out: his broken nose, his awkwardly hanging jaw, and the way he walked with his arms held up slightly and feet shuffling.  He would just call them “battle scars”, but I thought it was disgusting.  I cried when Mummy put me in his lap, when I was a baby.

Mummy went back into the kitchen, and I continued to play with my Christmas gift.  Da’ cheered at the tv, on which a football game was playing.  The sound of guitar chords came quietly from my brother’s room.  I smiled.  This was a nicer sort of noise, when no one was talking.

I was making quiet screaming noises whilst herding plastic Ancestors into plastic pens, when Mummy came out of the kitchen with a deck of cards.  “Come on, darling.  Come play a game of Go Hunt with Kim and I.”

I gave her a fussy look and said, “Oh, Mummy, that game is so boring!  I’m way too old for it, now!”

Kim laughed, “Oh, but I always forget how to play.  Will you show me?”

“Oh, all right.  But I can’t help you if you don’t show me your cards.”  That wasn’t entirely true, but knowing what was in her hand made it easier for me to win the game.

As we started, Grandfather talked about the news, “They’re saying global warming is not improving, even though the Ancestors are extinct.  Beverly, are you using that vinegar cleaner I showed you how to make?”

“Yes, Grandfather. Kim, do you have any Irishmen?  They’re the ones with the curly hair and freckles.”

“No, ‘Go hunt’.”

Grandfather sniffed the air, making a bubbly whistling noise.  “Why do I smell that lemon cleaner, then?”

“I don’t know, Grandfather.”

Grandfather sighed, and shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Auntie Kim look to me and asked, “Which ones should I go for?”

“You need Hispanics and Canadians.” I didn’t have any of either.

“Bev, do you have any Hispanics?” Kim asked.

“I had Hispanic food, once; tasted like chocolate and chili pepper. Those Ancestors ate strange things. And if I were them, I’d be downright angry we were doing such a crap job keeping their planet together.”  Grandfather already was “downright angry” or that’s how it seemed.

Mummy would say that’s because he’s first generation.  She said the Change made all of the old ones angry, and we were lucky not to have to go through that at all. Mummy and Da’ were first gen, too, but it happened when they were little, and they hadn’t been noticeably disfigured.  We weren’t so set in our ways, Mummy said.  But as nice as Da’ was to me, Grandfather always made him grumpy. “Grandfather, more CO₂ enters the atmosphere every year from volcanoes than us.”

Whatever that meant, it made Grandfather angrier. He threw the newspaper down, and slammed the arm of the recliner with his fist. “That’s just the neo-liberal attitude that gives my daughter cancer, and sends her to an early grave!  What sort of husband are you?”

“One that doesn’t get carried away with fear-driven gossip spoken by idiots who don’t realise the planet was always dying.  Planets do that.  You’re worse than the Ancestors with your controlling!”

Mummy slammed down her cards, and nearly shouted, “That’s enough, you two. Grandfather, you’ll not criticise my husband on the way he treats me. Da’, such hatefulness is unattractive at best.”

Mummy hadn’t, but they both looked away from her as if she’d stared them down. “Kim and I are going to bring the food out. Da’, why don’t you help your daughter set the table?”

“Fantastic idea, Mother.”

Da’ went to get the nice forks and knives from the cupboard, and Mummy and Auntie Kim went in the kitchen.  Whilst I was picking up the cards, with their cartoon pictures of Ancestors on them, Arthur came out from his room. He whispered to me, “Da’ said you should go help Mother and Kim in the kitchen.”

“He did no such thing.  He probably told you to do that, didn’t he?” I stuck my tongue out at him. It served him right for trying. He sighed, and dragged his feet as he went.

The silence was stiff whilst Da’ and I set the table. When the last fork went on the last neatly folded napkin, they brought the food out.  I licked my lips as Da’ sliced my favourite: lime-soaked chicken. The outside of it was white from the citrus marinade, but I knew the inside was still pink and drippy.

Auntie Kim helped Grandfather to the table, then sat next to him and across from me.  Arthur sat next to me and immediately began kicking my feet under the table.

“Stop it, Arthur!”

“No, you stop it.”

“No, you stop it!”

Mummy cleared her throat and stared at us.  We both stopped it.

Grandfather made another one of his grumbling noises. “Would you look at the size of that chicken?  I can’t believe they’re still putting hormones in, after what happened.”

Da’s shoulders got stiff, and his voice had a wobble in it when he spoke, “I guess they figure we’re already the way we are.  What worse could happen?”

“That’s just the sort of attitude that caused the Invasion! When will people learn?  Does everyone have to lose their wife to conflict, the way I did?”

Mummy made a choking noise and Da’ opened his mouth to argue, but Auntie Kim spoke first. “I think that’s enough, George. Let’s just enjoy Christmas dinner, okay?”

Grandfather dove for the head cheese and ham dish that Mummy said Grandmother used to make. Mummy took it when he was finished, put a big spoonful on her plate, then handed the plate to me.  I grimaced and stuck out my bottom lip at her, but took it when she gestured at me again with the plate.

“Sorry Bev, no luck this year.  Still doesn’t taste as good as your mother’s head cheese.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing, and the only sound was Grandfather’s sloppy chewing. I risked a glance at Mummy whose face had turned white. I wished I could hide under the table. Even Arthur had stopped his obnoxious bouncing in the chair next to me.

She whispered hoarsely, “Mother’s head cheese, or Mother’s head cheese, Dad?”

Please feel free to watch as I give my web-self a makeover!

• The WALD (or website)
• LinkedIn
• Elance

What do you think of my web presence as it is today?  Would you change anything?

Instead, when he realised there was nothing he could do, that he couldn’t get past the thing, that he should listen to his screaming school teacher and stay put, that there was no way out, he found a stone cold clarity.  He felt no emotion at all.

Ms Holly’s screams became muted, and the sound of the water lapping at the plank wall died away.  He no longer felt the wall, or even knew how he clung to it; he just watched, as the shark swam in it’s planning circles around him.

It slithered through the water, making sharp turns at the wall, bending in half.  It twisted and turned around him, sometimes almost too far to see through the muddy water, sometimes so close he though it would go for him then.  It reminded him of the eels grandpa had fished from the river.  Just like the eels, he was amazed they had backbones like his.  He remembered trying to bend the same way, only to fall down and bruise his knee.

(Roger remembers shark television shows)

(The shark goes for him, but gets stuck between the boy and the wall.  Roger puts a thumb in it’s eye and it goes away)

(Ms Holly finally reaches the boy and pulls him out of the water.)

(The boy goes on about how he scared a shark away.)

White is the reflection of the entire spectrum of colours, it is everything. It is tainted by every colour.  White is pretty well used, as far as I’m concerned.

So, then, why isn’t black the colour of innocence and purity?  Is it because it’s frightening and foreboding?  People are afraid of blackness because it is unknown.  So, if black is a lack of influence, and innocence is a lack of influence, and black is feared, why isn’t innocence feared too?  It is equally unknown.  It is equally unpredictable.

Innocence and purity are supposed to be good things, but how can anything truly be good unless it is tested and proven so?  An innocent person is simply one that has not been faced with any number of  choices like: do I kill or do I die, do I walk away from that person in need, and do I let this person hurt me, or do I hurt him back.

We don’t know what an innocent person is capable of.  She could be a murderer held back only by her innocence.

Should we really revere innocence?

What’s a girl to do when she wakes up wanting to stab things?

Die flat pillow. Die crunchy eggs.  Die cold toast.  Die bitter tea.
Die thin pyjamas.  Die oily hair.  Die smelly mouth.  Die blind eyes.

She goes for a run, and plays very loud music.

“Jesseeeeeee!”

Noise.  Was that–? Oh, someone was talking, no, yelling, through the door of my bedroom.

“Where are the dogs’ trial leashes? I can’t find them!”

I blinked.

“Jesse.  What did you do with them?”

My brain finally kicked in and I remembered when I last saw them. “They’re on the coat hooks!”  Good, my voice worked.

“The coat hooks?  But, I didn’t see them there before.”  Her voice dwindled as she headed upstairs.

I remembered them, clear as day, hanging from the second hook from the left, last Sunday.  They had left them there when returning to last weekend’s trial.

My eyes had never opened during this.  I rolled over and drifted off again.

Then I heard feet coming down the stairs again.  “Jesse, they aren’t there.  What did you do with them?”

“I didn’t do anything with them.  That’s the last place I saw them.”

“I can’t hear you!”

I rolled back toward the door, and shouted, “That’s the last place I saw them! I don’t know what you did with them between now and then!”

She was already back on her way upstairs before I got to the last sentence. “. . . you didn’t need them anyway . . . should’ve left them in the car . . .”

Excuse me for thinking the leashes needed to be in the same place the dogs were.  How often did I bring them home from trials alone?  Once.  Last weekend.

Determined not to be blamed, and hopeful I would make her look bad, I threw on the nearest pair of pants and stomped upstairs, mumbling loudly about how I didn’t appreciate being woken up at 7:30 in the morning for something I hadn’t anything to do with.  I was certain they were still on the hook, so I would reveal them to her chagrin.

By the time I got to the coat rack, she was already getting into the running car in the driveway.  I pulled a jacket and sweatshirt from the hook I had seen them on, and found nothing.  I swivelled around and opened the garage door, but no longer had anything to say, nor saw any glimpse of the missing leashes.  They were already gone, anyway, and it isn’t my job to keep an eye on their leashes, right?  I went back downstairs and flopped back into bed.

I had just begun to drift off, when I thought I saw a flash of green out of the corner of my eye, and heard a giggle.

“Hoo-hoo!  That’ll do!  You’re fun, big one.”

Suddenly there was a face directly in front of mine.  It was wrinkled and pock-marked, and ginger haired.  I looked down and saw three trial leashes in the creature’s hands.

“Top o’ th’ mornin’ to ye!”  It tipped it’s hat at me, and grinned.

“Oh, hell, no.”