writing

A Fierce Habit

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I’ve taken my typewriter to the hospital with me for kidney infections. I have taken it on camping trips, and the sand has gotten in the keys. It is just like the most fierce habit you can imagine. It is there, and it stares at you like a conscience.

Erma Bombeck

And I take my computer but unlike a typewriter, it needs a power source.  So, not camping.  But then I haven’t been camping.  I haven’t been anywhere the computer can’t go.  In fact,  I have a computer dedicated solely to travel.  If if gets lost, stolen, or damaged, it.’s no big deal.  It’s old and it’s cantankerous but this is, as Bombeck says, a fierce habit. You do what you have to do.

I write daily.  Sometimes several times daily. 

On the rare days when I must miss my 7 am writing group, I am at loose ends and discombobulated.  I am not myself and there’s nothing for it, but to write.

I am not writing important treatises or compelling prose.  No heart rending poetry.  I am just babbling in my own little way.  Bombeck turned her unique writing into a multimillion dollar enterprise.  

I have no illusions.  I am no Erma Bombeck, but she is my heroine and I use the feminine because she started her career when women were housewives.. She wrote about her little Dayton Ohio life and family and made a career of it0.  I can, at the very least, make a habit of it.  And I have.

I average 800 word a day.  Stephen King does 2000.  I am no Stephen King.  Plus I have a full time job that is not writing.

It is the most fierce habit.  I am in a really bad place when I can’t or don’t write.

I write essays, I write slice-of-life, anecdotes, snippets of short stories, character descriptions, rants, prayers.  Promises.

I write a little bit of everything and while I am not successful, I am happy.

I will continue to carry my travel computer around.

Brian

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Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Donna unplugged the modem, counted to 60 AGAIN, plugged it back in and watched the light.  Blue, blue, red, blue.

“Damn it.”  She looked at the clock.  17 minutes.  They had 17 minutes to get her internet up and running.  She’d called the company three times already.  It was out statewide.  She was just a cog in the wheel. 

She opened the laptop’s camera and checked her makeup again.  The lighting in the family room was not optimal, but that’s where the laptop lived and besides the background was more interesting than any other spot in her house.

There had been a hundred messages back and forth.  Five phone calls.  Now they had graduated to Zoom.  Brian wanted to meet in person, but Donna was cautious.  Overly so her friends said.  She had no reason to think he was anything other than what he said, but she’d heard too many horror stories to relax.  But oh did he feel perfect. 

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Isobel

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Isobel scrubbed out what was left of her third cigarette of the morning and drained the dregs of her second mug of coffee.  Black of course.  No sugar.  Of course.

She’d been chain-smoking Marlboros and shotgunning coffee since she joined the Academy at 14.  It was the only way to keep her profile long and lean.

Sacramento portrait photographer Mayumi Acosta aims to share the many facets of the women she photographs. https://lnkd.in/gsamcc7r

Isobel was famous for the lines she could make of her body.  She preferred modern dance in nothing but a leotard the exact shade of her skin, but when you are called to dance, you go where your talent takes you. 

And so she was the prima for the New York Ballet – a position envied by many.

Today they had her costumed in swirls and twirls of scarlet silk and chiffon. Madame signaled that it was time to begin.  She walked in her toe shoes, that distinctive walk that only ballet dancers with years of experience can duplicate, to the center of the backdrop.  Simple black. The scarlet of her costume, the pale peach of her skin, with her dark hair — oh the photos would be extraordinary if the photographer had even a drop of skill.  En pointe, she lengthened her neck, pulled her arms into position, and rotated.  She heard the photographer gasp before she heard the camera shutter start its incessant chatter.  She always strained for that sound. When her audience gasped, she knew her body was telling her true.  She had arranged the lines perfectly. The veins and arteries of her neck reaching upward as did her arms and fingers – balanced perfectly on her toes and the wooden blocks inside her shoes.

Would Claude be in the audience tonight?  She wondered as she pirouetted and her skirts billowed to the background rhythm of the shutter clicking.  Claude was pursuing her with diligence and finesse. She had learned he was a podiatrist early on.  She was dubious that she could allow herself to be at ease with him.  Surely, such a doctor would want beautiful feet.

What most didn’t know was that professional ballerinas had the world’s most god-awful feet.  Isobel was vain.  She did not see her ugly feet as the vehicle for her talent.  She saw them as grotesque appendages never to be exposed to a curious world.  She never wore sandals and only went to the beach with water shoes. She could not fathom exposing her naked feet to a connoisseur. 

Claude’s interest was likely to be rebuffed.  Again.

Be Careful

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“Be careful what you wish for, Missy.”  I can hear my mother’s words reverberate in my head.  Be careful what you wish for, be careful what you wish, be careful.  Be careful.  I was raised to be fearful.  Somehow, the times, the burgeoning women’s movement, the rise of feminism, the advent of women as something other than playthings for men, allowed me to transcend my upbringing.

I stood there in front of the travel agency door looking at the poster.  Travel!  It said.  And oh I wanted to go in and book a trip- to somewhere, anywhere I haven’t been before.  To escape nostalgia.  I wanted new and unfamiliar.

But in times of decision, I heard my mother’s voice.  Over and over.  Boys don’t like girls who…your future husband will want…, when you are grown and married…, when. . . It was like I never had a chance.  And then I was forty with a husband and I didn’t give a fuck what he wanted.  That was my sign to get out.  I wished for a life other than what I had, and my mother’s voice came back to me, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Photo by Keszthelyi Timi on Unsplash

I have been sincere with my wishes.  They represent my core values.  I didn’t need to be careful; they were front and center and required no deliberation.

I left my marriage.  Not gleefully I recognized the tragedy and the failure it represented, but as the bible said, be ye not unequally yoked.  We were unequal in every way.  It was a disaster.

And here I was possessed of half of my retirement account and newly paid-off credit cards.  I went in.  A bell tinkled with the movement of the door.  The woman at the front desk seemed surprised and I said as much. 

She said, “We don’t get much foot traffic.”

I said, “I need a trip to somewhere I’ve never been.  A place most people don’t go.  A place where I can lose myself in the novelty of moving through unfamiliar streets.” 

She snapped her fingers and said, “I have just the place for you.  And we have a promotion going on.  It’s quite the deal.  Free airfare if you book The Budapest Hotel.”

I paused for a second and said, “I’ll take it.  Do I need a visa?  Travel papers other than a passport?” I didn’t even know what country Budapest was in.  I knew nothing.  It was perfect.

“Yes, but it’s pro forma. We can take care of it here.  Just fill out some online forms and voila!”

An hour later I had everything I needed to leave for Hungary the following Tuesday.

I didn’t second guess myself, oddly enough.  I strode into my boss’s office and told him I needed five weeks off beginning Tuesday and he said no.  So I said, “I quit.”  And he said, “Now woah, wait a minute…” but he wouldn’t relent and neither would I.

I was sitting on the plane, in first class no less due to an upgrade for the number of weeks I had reserved a room at The Budapest Hotel.  It took nearly all my retirement account to reserve the suite.  But I didn’t care.  Maybe I’d care in 20 years, but not now.

The flight attendant brought me a glass of crisply cold champagne, a finger bowl, and a warm towel.  The juxtaposition of the temperatures and the textures was sublime.  I handed her the used towel and she took the bowl.  I was left with nothing but the bubbly and my thoughts and I penned this. 

I think this trip will be transformative.  I’m going to keep this journal and document my deepest feelings.  The ones I’ve always shied away from because of Mother’s voice in my head.