This morning the girls left their bedroom lights on – the overhead and the bright bright standing light – and their television set, volume UP. I woke up at 7:30am, and rolled out of bed, worried if they had gotten themselves awake and out the door to the bus. I had visions of shaking them all out of bed (because, truthfully, if the oldest boy doesn’t wake, the others won’t wake either, and he’s been dying to be slacking farther, turning 18 and all) and then cruising across town in my PJs to drop them off tardy for their first hour classes (which is never a problem when I do it – the only problem is that, for the one in Middle School, I have to go in and sign something, and then I always want to spend money on breakfast at a drive-thru or on a box of Good’s Donuts. “While I’m out . . .” AND this morning, it’s cold.). They did wake and catch the bus. They’re getting older. Taking things on and doing fine. They even left me a full pot of hot coffee.

And it might even seem that they left frost on the ground. It was everywhere – glowing blue in the last of the moonlight on the other side of my back sliding-screen door. I think it’s the first frost of the season. I might’ve patted myself on the back because, this year, I remembered to bring in the spider plant. BUT I swear to you that I poured myself a cup of coffee and went to sort through the sock basket for something to cover my chilly feet, and by the time I got back, I looked out the back door, and the frost was gone [no, it did not take me that long to find socks]. There was just a wet shimmering on the rocks that circle the back deck. Just wet grass. No whitish blue. The sky was lighter. The fluff of the first frost was melted.

I swear to this as well: I hit my snooze button four times this morning, and when the alarm went off for the final time time and I kicked it off yet again, a voice rang out in my head – deep and close – like it came from the throat of THOR and he was in the room. I sat straight up in bed (this is TRUE, as corny as it sounds). It said: WRITE. This word resounded in my head as clearly as country music did yesterday morning. (THIS was what got me up to start worrying about the kids). (Now - the country music - THERE is a dream that I should probably write down . . . A pyramid at an outdoor party – just for people to sit on – symbolism? – and Matt’s hanging out with the aquatic man from HellBoy. I hear him tell Aquatic Man, “No, THIS is what it was . . .” My sister is watching their manly conversations intently, excitedly [Ping-pong!]. I think her face is all red like it gets – then she bursts out on occasion and practically shouts: “See! I told you!” And where’s me in this dream? This is further truth [to the best of my knowledge]: I watch them for a minute from the ground. I look up at them sitting on the pyramid and wonder why they are bothering with impressing each other in conversation when there is a party going on. I am on the ground, and it is crowded, and there is music, and I am dancing. Country music is playing loud and clear in my head [damn, what was that song??]. Am I line dancing? It’s likely that I look up at that pyramid longingly, wishing they would come down and dance with me, especially that turquoisey aquatic man. He’s so intelligent. And sensitive. I love the way his eyes blink up from the bottom, and I bet he can dance. When Matt finally woke me up out of the dream, the country music travelled over from the dream world and it was still in the room with me when I sat up in bed. Clearly. I could’ve sung along with it. And it was there until I shook myself out of it and realized I had to pee.).

TODAY is my teaching demonstration. There was a guy named Elbow . . . and he went missing from my Power Point.

Today, you have known surreal.

And it is literally gray, no sunrise and water dripping in pace through the back window of your Windstar and onto the interior carpet,

wrapped up in a long polyester jacket, half-dreaming of your original plan (walk to the ceramics studio, form coil pots, dip vases into glazes).

It is finding yourself immobile or simply unmoving, cold, having puked up all the coffee.

It is pulling apart a dark, over-cream-cheesed bagel, undertoasted, sipping on a bland cappuccino, squinting to read Thomas's Safe Keeping

when your eyes keep wandering over to the lover girls stroking each other's calves on a coffee shop's couch

(and they speak in segments; only the redhead wearing the derby hat is a romantic),

when your mouth keeps watering because your nauseous not hungry,

when the wobbling table makes you want to stand up and throw it, finally.

It is when every light - even the smallest - flash and stab like longswords, when the dribbling rain sounds like an ear-logged chainsaw,

when, wherever you are, you must instinctively curl up and close eyes, mid-conversation even -

the front seat of a cold, dead vehicle under a blanket of wet orange leaves

or on a greasy couch in a AAA-approved fix-it shop on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It is so much of that tow-truck man who loved REO Speedwagon.

You and those crusty battery cables killed the alternator - Did the mechanic use the word "green"? You know you heard the word "diodes" thrice.

Your windshield wipers, your headlights and brakelights, your door locks, your radio went all moody. Good thing it was raining. You could never have driven home using hand-signals.

Someone said: It's not the battery, it's your BRAIN; You'll need a whole new BRAIN. And you said, Exactly. Quote me a price.

It is floating on a concrete floor, by the fender fins of a waxy black 57 Chevy Bel Air in the shop for show, staring up at a million amoebic water-stains on the ceiling, just wanting someone, anyone to fix things quickly,

dreaming of yourself writing a $300 check in the rain (and the water hits paper and waves it).

You hear someone say, "My brother's wife has cysts on her brain, and when they flare . . . she can't even get out of the house." And you know they're not really talking about the guy's step-sister. Your lover mentioned either "migraine" or "epilepsy."

Your lover wakes you and drives you home and lets you sleep. He picks up the baby. And the baby cries, worried, when she sees your head under a blanket. Surreal is that you have to smile for her. Here's reassurance to her that you're alive.

Home to nap. Take Excedrin. Wish hard for something stronger. Nap for hours.

Self-repair is slow.

Wake up at 6PM. Have pizza delivered.

Geez. Something is wrong with me. My writing vein busted. After this weekend, all I could do was sit on hands and shut mouth. Come to think of it, that's all I did for the weekend - well, until I had enough of that Bailey's Irish Creme and started bitching and slapping gnats. I need to do more bitching and gnat-slapping. I do believe I've been avoiding it - AND this is exactly what I mean. Since the whole idea of writing a monsterly non-fiction piece has come into my head, I've been avoiding lots of things in the physical sense and floating around in dark memories in search of words but not finding them and constantly trying to talk myself out of the whole thing. The last couple of weeks have been anxiety-ridden. I've tried to write something more creative of the weekend and it only left me feeling like I'd molested someone (strange, I know. I should probably explain it better, but I won't). Maybe I should find an additional pill.

The family reunion on Saturday was only bad because I didn't know or talk to anybody. The chili was decent. The park was lovely. My father didn't even show himself. My sister called in search of him and his wife told her that he wouldn't be stopping by; she explained it as: "something came up." I thought that only happened in the movies - stiffed in such a way. Of course, in the movies, you'd never be stiffed in such a way by your own fucking father. So, in turn, I stiffed my mother (see, do? learned behavior? genetic impulses?). I didn't even stop by to see her - Her house gives me the heeby-jeebies - and now she has all of those cats (cats!). I invited her to my sister's on Friday, but she had a church Fish-Fry to bake pies for.

The whole trip left me feeling annoyed, tired, pissed, longing, lonely, stupid, brilliant, ugly, lovely, frustrated, guilty, dirty, snobbish . . . I would say, "Let's go for a ride down roller coaster road, check out the colorful Fall trees, walk into the woods and find that old cemetery where they always said a witch was buried!" and they would look at me and say (insert southern hoosier twang) "Why you wanna' do that for?" I would say "Let's go eat somewhere! Let's find an old pizza parlor with antique Coca-Cola signs hanging on the walls and shove quarters in the jukebox! We'll string cheese from our teeth and play old sit-down double-player video games like Frogger!" and they would say, "Why you wanna' spend money on that shit?"

So we sat. And sat. I felt my ass growing and springing roots (and it scared me). We attempted to have conversations about things like man's place within nature and his level of arrogance (i.e., religion), Sims games and second-hand computer hard drives and how to mount them, the rebellious nature of teenagers and what exactly they are capable of when given a Camero or a Monte Carlo and a set of a back roads, and we talked about sex. We always talk about sex. It spawns nasty visions. When it comes to my sex life and my sister, my motto is: None of your business, my dear motherly figure. My sister's is the opposite; she has been keeping informed of her sex life in detail since she was fourteen. She referred to her hubby as her "ninja." Ick.

That's all I have this morning. But I'm sure that I can capture more eventually. I've written a little - it's just in need of massive reshaping. Already, having the words on the screen has made me realize a few things. Things are worse than they appear. There is no icing. No happy ending.

A picture of my sister's back yard.

In honor of the upcoming holiday (and to lighten up my dreary blog) . . . No, I don't have permission to copy and post BUT I cited my work (hyperlinks are good for MLA, right?). ;)


Embarrassing Costumes My Dad Wore on Trick-or-Treat Night.
BY NATHAN THORNTON

- - - -

1979: Guy in Jethro Tull T-shirt with a six-pack of Miller High Life in a paper bag.

1981: Guy in Steelers jersey with a bottle of Absolut vodka in a paper bag.

1982: Guy in Aerosmith T-shirt with a bottle of Popov vodka (no paper bag).

1983: Guy in vomit-stained Jethro Tull T-shirt.

1984: Lunch-shift manager at Outback Steakhouse, even though he got fired from Outback in June.

1986: Guy going door to door trying to borrow money from all our neighbors, getting into an argument with Mr. Fisher, then falling asleep in our driveway.

1987: Guy who's only in town for one night and wearing a fake mustache because if Mom sees him she'll call the cops.

1988: Guy in strict defiance of his restraining order.

1989: Guy asking, "Aren't you a little old to be trick-or-treating?" Aren't you a little old to be calling our house and hanging up, Dad?




source: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/31NathanThornton.html. Accessed on this day at 1:08AM (while still twitching from the presidential debate and seeking reprieve - oddly enough, THIS made me feel better).

I pulled myself out of some dream around 8AM and thought I'd write a little about earlier years - more memoir . . . I woke up thinking about old militant rules and insistent alarm clocks, thinking about other mornings living poor in trailers in the middle of nowhere and then living in a beautiful brick ranch mansion on a curve by a park. I stared up at the cool spin of my ceiling fan and thought of how much I liked it and how glad I was to have it. I laid in bed, my comforter up to my chin, and examined the white ceiling for cracks or wet spots (my ceilings have often had cracks or wet spots). There were none. I told myself I should get up, pour myself some fresh coffee (given my son had already made some), and just write - just start writing and fill up a page or two - do that old free technique "write without looking." I got up, made it downstairs, then coughed and coughed - the menthol cigarettes are causing this god damn cold to linger long (I keep kicking myself - stupid habit). I wrote about a page (single spaced) about how I got into my first marriage, then I started squirming and backspacing. I highlighted entire paragraphs of worthless crap and wanted to tap the delete button. Maybe certain men need never be brought up again. Let's delete entire years. I wrote "I don't know why in the hell I'm writing about this shit" and then I closed Word. I left it. I did save it. It's there in a folder. And I can still smell it.

He’s been sleeping in the tiniest bedroom in the house since he finally came here to stay in the middle of his sophomore year. He refuses to move, tells me repeatedly that he loves it. The room is under the stairwell. No bigger than a jail cell. He calls it his “bat cave” or his “coffin hole” or his “tomb room”, which all go along well with his attempt to be dark and pseudo-occult – a survival technique for high school. I know the technique works to keep others just a little scared and at a distance. He likes to describe himself as unpredictable and anti-social. Neither word describes who I’ve ever known him to be.

But the room is all his, and it’s safe. He has the freedom to lock his door. No one goes marching into his room here. I don’t rummage through his things or tell him how to arrange his books. Since he’s come back to me, I’ve tried to give him much-needed space. Sometimes, I have to coax him to get out of his room and out of the house on the weekends. I have to reassure him that he’s allowed. He’s a senior in high school now. In two months, he’ll be eighteen.

His bed is a squeaky pull-out –on loan from my step-mother—and it takes up the whole length of his room. He uses an old artillery box for a night stand. On it, he’s stacked an apothecary of empty antique bottles (most were medicinal, one has a skull on the label – poison, another was once filled with formaldehyde), several cheap pocket knives, his scientific calculator, and a dead black lava lamp. All over his floor lie dirty wads of t-shirts and ripped-up blue jeans. Letters from his girlfriend – each intricately folded into small squares – have fallen out of his pockets. He’s hung a feathered dreamcatcher from the end of the curtain rod that fits his one window. On the wall, there’s a sloppy painting of an iguana that I once made in high school; I had thrown it away, but he pulled it out of the trash and claimed it. He’s tacked up a paper calendar advertising bright green John Deere tractors and combines – It was a gift from the farmer he worked for last summer, the same tired farmer who passed along an unforgotten proverb: “Wouldn’t be caught without your pecker, would ya’? Well, don’t be caught out without your pocket knife on ya’ either.”

He’s hung a poster of a flaming phoenix, wings expanded, beak open mid-scream. Above the bed, he’s nailed up a yellow caution sign that reads “Trespassers Will Be Eaten” next to another rectangular street sign that states in red letters: “Justin’s Parking Here to the Corner.” His TV set is in his closet, at the foot of his bed. He leaves the wooden paneled doors slid open, then stretches across the bed from one end to the other and plays his old Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo 64. Mario. Sonic the Hedgehog. Zelda. Turok. He plays video games constantly, like he’s catching up on all the time lost.

He’s letting his hair grow out – partially to hide his ears, but there are other reasons. For years, he was made to keep it buzzed and prim –military – and I had no say in it and he had no say in it. Now, his hair has grown out in dark wispy waves. His eyes are brown and clear like fresh strong tea, and his face is covered in light freckles, barely spotted with pimples – just how I remember his father.

My son’s not far from being six feet tall – 5’11” maybe – and only weighs about 115 lbs. He’s used to being told he’s “skinny as a bean pole” or “nothin’ but skin and bones.” Of course, he ingests food like a behemoth – like any typical teenage boy who breathes by the grace of high metabolism. He drinks milk from the jug when I’m not looking. He drinks coffee with me in the mornings – always adding at least three heaping spoonfuls of both sugar and powered creamer. I’ve given up protesting. He must buzz in high gear through the hallways of his high school every morning. Surely, he has trouble focusing. He is failing English because he shrugs off the homework and hates the teacher.

But, I know he loves History and Literature better. He has the potential to be brilliant. He likes to tell me about the intricate story lines of his video games and about the fantasy/sci fi book he’s been writing bits and pieces of since middle school. We’ve talked about all of the world’s wars, vampires and druids and werewolves, Tom Petty and Kurt Vonnegut and Helen Keller. We’ve talked about the possibilities of a looming apocalypse. We have had conversations about God; he’s told me he doesn’t believe there is one, but he still believes in magic. We used to talk more when I’d drive him back to that estranged apartment in Indy. It was always just him and me, alone for a little under an hour, in that beat-up light blue Dodge Caravan cruising west on I-70 every other Sunday, avoiding the obvious, only bringing up the bruises or the screaming or the imposed militant rules on rare occasion. And on rare occasion, I’d end up angry or crying. Helpless. On rare occasions, I'd stop the van, risk cutting off flying semis, and then we'd argue. Justin would deny everything. He never knew that we could just keep driving that Dodge right on up to Canada, that I could’ve hid him and not let him see that apartment ever again if I had to, that I could’ve saved him if he’d let me or even confessed that he needed me to.

Tonight I tried to make it at least half-way through Nguyen's Stealing Buddha's Dinner, but after flying through Marguerite Duras' The Lover yesterday evening, I have to say Buddha's Dinner has only hit me like a sleeping pill. I mean, I get it. I sort of relate. I was born in the year of the tiger too. Maybe I'm jealous. She tries to make it sad, but it still feels too clean. A pillow factory isn't the worst place to work. At least she barely skirted out of free lunches. At least she can claim a culture. Pork chops are NOT so wonderful.

I suppose it didn't help having the four year old clinging to my thighs, telling me to play another episode of SpongeBob, literally clawing at me and crawling onto my head for attention, grabbing my cheeks and turning my face away from my book so that she could tell me about her invisible friends, so she could ask me "why" SpongeBob was crying like a baby on the TV, so she could tell me she loves me and I'm her "dream come true" (a line she's picked up from me), kiss me again and again, steal my nose and keep it as a thumb wadded up in her little fist. This makes for a disdain of forced reading. I let her stay up too late.

Meanwhile, my teenagers have taken turns with the telephone all damn day. My seventeen year old has a creepy thing going with a chick from North Carolina whom he met on WOW. They've talked on the phone for endless hours. I keep telling him to drop it; he has a real life, fleshy girlfriend. But he won't; it's this claimed freedom and his fleshy girlfriend is working every night at the IMAX. They can never work out plans or a date. I figure I should start worrying - something's oddly wrong when you try to coerce your 17 year old out of the house on a Saturday and he won't go. My 14 year old daughter did pause to make a mess of the kitchen and create massive, flat peanut butter cookies. She dribbled powdered sugar over them (for some reason) and burnt them until they were as crispy as graham crackers. Still, they went well with my coffee. This was our supper.

I'm tired, have a massive head cold, and I'm still in the same sweat pants and shirt that I wore all day yesterday, the same clothes that I slept in. I called in sick yesterday and stayed home. I might as well have morphed into this corner on the couch. Coughing. Sniffling. Sneezing. I missed a poetry reading at an art gallery today. Matt's been running between the upstairs bedroom and the computer downstairs, trying to get a handle on statistics for a Math test on Monday. Poor guy - I am no help to him. He created his own little study area upstairs today. He moved the little desk that used to harbor our television set, and now it's taking up the corner where we had been tossing our dirty clothes.

We have a flat tire on the van - a cracked hub. This will be more money coming out of what was supposed to be an extra house payment - We're trying to get ahead.

I dug through some old computer files this morning and realized that I have written ALOT in the last few years. ALOT lies on my hard drive . . . more than dormant Word files. I could have most of my master thesis on here. I wish I could be hovering over those stories now, instead of fiddling around blogging, instead of making myself read Nguyen.

Why I fell in love with Duras' The Lover:
"Sometimes I realize that if writing isn't, all things, all contraries confounded, a quest for vanity and void, it's nothing." (8)

"I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door." (25)

"She has the pink and brown complexion of the mountains . . . " (72)

Once again, I'm up too late reading and responding to class blogs (about my purpose as a future comp teacher) that I'm too tired to do much on my own.

All these long days have passed between posts and all I have is one measly little conversation:


Smoke break by the dumpsters. Designated well-hidden smoking area. It's windy. Gray clouds. Chilly. So fresh October.

I say: "I think I'll have to take down my confessional blog, once I start teaching. It might not be practical, to have myself on display like that. It's probably not professional."

He gives me a funny look. Puffs on his Camel Wide Light. He always holds his ciggs on that same corner of his bottom lip - and they leave a little brown stain there.
He says: "Now wait a minute . . . "

He's let his beard go to crazy-fuzz status again. He's wearing his blue jean jacket. I talked him out of wearing a black leather zippered motorcycle jacket this morning. I told him it was too small, and that he couldn't carry it off without looking like he was trying to hard. He's a big man. I crushed him.

He says: "Don't be so quick to think that you have to get all grown up."

Beforehand, we'd been watching a short white-haired man standing in a suit across the parking lot trying to hand out mini green copies of the New Testament. We'd been making bets on which students/professors will pass him up without a nod and which ones will smile kindly and take one. The freshmen are all taking them (and we can tell who's freshmen).

I chuckle. I want to light up another Pall Mall. I wonder what he's getting at. Maybe he's trying to keep me "sweet" or "cute." Maybe he thinks if I try on "grown up," I'll slip out of sexy. Maybe he's not that shallow and selfish and, instead, he knows that I'd legitimately loose something worth keeping - like identity. I'm either rightfully suspicious or naive.

I consider calling out a defense, but then I say: "Well, I've never had a problem with that before. Maybe I just need to change my confessions. Ya' know, save the risky for elsewhere."

Then I wink, drop my chin, and peer over the top of my glasses at him. I raise my eyebrows a little. I put on a little deviant smile. I'm either offering up reassurance for him or for myself or I'm suffering from an internal stutter. I make him laugh. The moment's over. I open my pack to pull out another smoke, but I'm out. I miscalculate often.