Scatter Joy

The wind swirled through the open door, biting against the warmth of the diner. Those closest to the door shivered and glared at the old man as he stood at the threshold for a long moment. He stepped through, just enough so that door swung shut behind him, the bell jangling against the glass.

Steam from endless cups of coffee and bowls of hot soup fogged the windows, muffling the view of the sidewalks outside. The snow was starting to fall faster and harder, reducing visibility, until only the glow of the streetlamps stood out to shine on the falling blanket of white.

He moved into the diner, looking neither right nor left, as he headed toward a dark booth in the corner. There were empty booths on either side of her, the other patrons instinctively avoiding sitting too close to her, even if it meant they shuffled shoulders together at the counter rather than have their own table to themselves.

He sat down, waiting quietly as a waitress hurried over with a menu. “Coffee and soup, please,” he said without touching the menu. “And a tin of sardines, if you have it. Don’t open it – I want to take it with me.”

The waitress nodded without commenting. She had had weirder requests than that. “It’ll be a few minutes. Joe is making a fresh pot of coffee now.”

The old man nodded again, before turning his eye to the old woman sitting across from him. She was both older than she looked, and younger than she portrayed. It was a persona taken on so long ago that the lines between her true self and the part she played had long since blurred and melted together. Still, he couldn’t help but smile at the memories of their meetings in past years. Sometimes violent, sometimes erotic. But always, part of the role they both played.

“Have you come for the story again, old man?” she asked, finally raising her face from her bowl of soup to look at him.

“I have,” he said, “if you will share it with me.”

The old woman sighed, her face relaxing as she exhaled. The lines creasing her face seemed to relax, leaving her skin looking decades younger than it had just seconds before. She cupped her hands around her bowl of soup, looking down at the surface.

“As you wish. I remember the giants, they who existed long before you and your people came to this world. They fed me then, giving me bits and pieces of bread, sometimes a scrap of meat. They sheltered me, and taught me of the nine worlds, of the great tree, of the roots that sink below.

There was only the tree. No sand, no sea. Just the tree and the void. And Ymir. Poor, simple Ymir. The gentlest of them all and yet he was slain, slain and ground up into nothing more than dust.” She paused, looking up. “Dust to dust. Did you know the new priests say that? And they have no fucking idea what it means.”

She was quiet for a moment. “The earth was lifted forth. Bur’s sons did well, casting the moon and sun into the sky. And then you came. You and your tribe, seating yourself to council and deciding what to name the bits and pieces of the world. Like you had any clue,” she muttered. “Children playing at being gods. Naming the stars, naming the moon, and then sitting around playing with your gold. “

“Then come the dwarves. Motsognir,  Durin, Nyi and Nithi, Northri and Suthri, Austri and Vestri. Althjof, Dvalin, Nar and Nain, Niping, Dain, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori…

“Are you okay, lady?” The waitress stood over them, steaming coffee pot in hand. “You … was that some other kind of language? I mean, we get all kinds of eastern Europeans in here and I haven’t heard that language before.”

“She perfectly fine,” the man said, a bland expression on his face. “Just going through lines for a play. She’s naming the dwarves that are part of the story.”

The waitress’ brows wrinkled. “What, like in Snow White? I don’t remember those names in Snow White.”

“It’s the adult version,” the old woman replied, her lips twitching as she tried not to smile.

“Oh. Well… oh. Do you guys want more coffee?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but simply filled their cups and wandered off again.

The man sighed. “That certainly broke the mood, didn’t it?” he asked, almost to himself. The woman laughed. “We’ve been doing this little song and dance for eons,” he continued. “Maybe it’s a sign that … well, that it’s time to move on. Accept that the prophecy was just a good story to tell once every hundred years or so and let it go.”

A gust of wind hammered at the windows. The snow outside was whipped into a frenzy, while pedestrians grabbed at their coats and hats, startled by the sudden ferocity of the storm.

The woman stared out through the window for a long moment. “But it’s not just a story,” she said softly. “Can’t you feel it? The cold that comes earlier each year, the heat the strikes harsher each summer?  We created these fools, gave them sense, gave them a soul and … they have wasted it. Yggdrasil begins to droop and the serpent is starting to stir.”

“I’ve heard that a litter of wolf-pups have been born to the Jotuns.” The Volva looked up at the All-Father, her eyes glittering. “Is there any real need to continue on with the story? We know what is coming.” A wry smile. “After all, I foretold it. You sacrificed your eye to know the truth. The war is coming again, Odin. Fenrir will be loosed, and the serpent will devour the earth.

The grey-haired, one-eyed god bared his teeth at her. “If it comes, then it is time. But do not expect me to throw myself down on the sword simply because I know my destiny is to die by it. What I want to know is how to stop … the false wars. Someone is stirring the pot, someone not connected to the prophecy. How do I stop that, seeress?”

They sat quietly, while the woman’s eyes focused on something unseen in the distance. “There’s a girl,” she said finally. “Find her, find your weapon. Find your chance.”

The wind gusted again, and someone on the other side of the diner screamed as glass shattered. The wind howled inside the building, snow swirling through the broken window. Odin turned back to the Volva, annoyed at the distraction. He stared at the empty seat opposite him, only a dirty coffee mug and a few crumpled dollars remaining.

“So be it, old witch. We’ll see how this game plays out.”



This is my entry for LJ Idol. It's an open topic week, so I decided to share the other bit of writing that's been buzzing around in my head. This is the opening part of a longer story I'll be working on over the next few months. If you like my entry, I would appreciate your vote when the time comes.

“Hey, you know who you look like?”

Those words always make me very uncomfortable because I really don’t know what’s coming next. I’ve heard:

“You look like that girl who played Laura Ingalls on Little House!” I heard that when I was seven and it made me absolutely giddy.

“You look just like … who was it? Oh yeah! Kathy Bates!” That came when I was 17 and greeting the audience after a theatrical performance. I had no idea who Kathy Bates was at the time so I didn’t know how to react. Today, I think it’s a flattering comment, only because I really like her style.

“You know who you remind me of? A WHALE!!” Ah, teenage boys. I roll my eyes at this now, but my 14-year-old self was devastated.

But the one “wow, you look like!” comment that makes me cringe is to be told I look like my mother. And I do. We could easily have been sisters, and were mistaken as such many times when I was younger. When it comes to appearance, it’s like I have no father. And I hate it. I flat out hate it. Not because I think she’s ugly – at least, not on the outside – but because of who she is on the inside. I hate hearing that comment because somewhere, in the not-so-logical part of my brain, I equate ‘you look like your mother’ to ‘you are your mother.’

It’s something I’ve been running from my whole life, and it’s something I’m never going to get away from. That super-logical part of my brain scoffs at me. The compassionate side of my brain tells me to find that compassion and to learn to accept it. The abused-little-girl part of my brain is terrified and all I can do is try to soothe her, to remind her that no matter what our outsides look like, our insides are nothing alike.

And it works. At least until I hear someone else say “Oh my god! You look just like your mother!” Is it true? Yes. Is it flattering? If only they knew.

Watching her fly used to be such an innocent thing. I remember when she would gleefully follow me into some mischief or another. We’d gang up on our younger brother in the pool, or watch MTV in the summer, dancing around in the living room or making weird choreography to go with the music. She would laugh and smile and dance with her arms outstretched, but there was always that smoldering underneath the happiness.

“Feisty” my grandfather used to call her. “Trouble,” would come the knowing response from my grandmother. She and I lost our common ground as teenagers, when she started hanging with people I had no interest in. There were the rare moments of sisterhood, then we would spin apart. I was content to fly just above the ground. She wanted to fly high enough to get away from it all.

Now, years later, it’s hard to watch her. A marriage broken, two kids clinging at her legs, living at home again with our mother. She is tethered, back against a wall, and the anger is rising up.

She says she isn’t an alcoholic. She gets angry when you try to talk to her. She puts on a show for the world to see, but under Jack’s blanket, she is angry, abusive, alone. Alone. She feels so alone, that the world has done nothing but shit on her. Her life has fallen apart while everyone else is happy and fulfilled and has everything they ever wanted. So she sits in her bedroom, trying to find the heights one more time in the bottom of a bottle.

Her wings are tattered, the wax that holds them together melting drop by drop into the abyss below. She is falling and she doesn’t even know it.





*****Voting is now open for this week's round - if you liked my entry, please vote for me. I'm in tribe two!*****

The orders come down and they say goodbye to their families. They stuff their lives into a duffel bag, their feet into their boots and they go. They march through sand, through jungles, through snow and ice. They do it because they had no other options, because they want to someday go to college, because they want to fight, because they want to protect their country.

The reasons don’t really matter. What matters is that they go.

Most of them don’t talk about it after. My grandfather rarely did. My biological father refuses to even acknowledge his time in ‘Nam. For some, it’s a code – what happened there stays there. For others, it’s self-defense at its most basic level – if you don’t think it, the nightmares won’t come.

My uncle didn’t have the chance to talk about it. My great-uncle and cousin and the boy I grew up with never had the chance. Their marching orders took them to their deaths. They get sent home in a bag, a flag draped across their bodies and we cry. We mourn. We are proud of them. We are angry at them.

They serve. Some die. Some live. And for almost all of them, if the call comes again in the middle of the night, if they are needed, if we are threatened, they will say goodbye to their families, stuff their lives into a duffel bag, and go and do what they have to do.

The reasons don’t really matter. What matters is that they serve.

*****

Voting is now open for this week's round - if you liked my entry, please vote for me. I'm in tribe two!

Imagine a world where these headlines don’t automatically cause a brouhaha:

’Mom and Dad, I’m Gay’- How to Plan a Coming Out Party For Your Daughter or Son

Hemp revenues add $50 billion to California economy

Westboro Baptist Church quietly closes after years of shunning by nation

Right To Die Act passes peacefully in House; Senate promises swift vote

BP completes transition to biomass and solar production

Southern Baptist Association of Churches launches ‘Befriend a Muslim’ program

Vatican reverses position on contraceptives, allows priests to marry

President Elizabeth Westfall elated after passage of the Marriage Equality Act

* * * * * 
Another week, another bit of writing, another round of voting. If you enjoyed my entry this week and feel so inclined, I would appreciate your vote to keep me in the game for a while longer. 

I’ve been with you longer than you know.

I’m so tired now. My trunk aches from picking up all your secrets. My legs are tired from carrying their weight. My skin has hardened from all the anger, all the fear and rage that your secrets carry with them.

I wear all of your scars too.

It wouldn’t be so hard to let some of them go. Let them fall to the ground, let them turn to bone, white in the sun. You can go back and touch them, touch the bones of your memories, to remember where you come from, but you do not have to carry them.

I should not have to carry them.

I want to rest now. So many years together, and you have never seen me, never thanked me for what I do for you. I’ve flapped my ears at you, I’ve thundered about the room trying to get your attention. But you talk pleasantly of the weather, of what you’re watching on TV tonight. You don’t look at me; you don’t talk about what lies between us.

And until you set me free or die, I will never find my own peace.

  ***** This is my entry for therealljidol - I hope you enjoy it. If you did enjoy it, I would appreciate your vote when the time comes!*****

I come from a long line of Southern women. Strong women. Crazy women. Feisty women.

Women who cook.

One of my greatest regrets was that I only learned to love cooking after I moved to New York, far away from that line of women. Before I had the chance to realize what those moments in the kitchen meant to me, they started dying. An aunt, then a cousin, and then my grandmother. And suddenly, all that cooking was gone with them.

I asked my mom to find their recipe books, to make copies, to send me what was left. I craved my Nanny’s chess pie, my Aunt Helen’s canned grean beans, my cousin Laura’s hushpuppies. But there are no recipes, my mother told me. They just cooked, they didn’t need recipes.

I’ve spent the last ten years trying to recreate those dishes, wandering through my memories, remember family gatherings and the food those women would make. My grandmother would cook a kind of Mexican spaghetti on the weekends when I would pop over for a surprise visit. She was one of those women who created meals from whatever was in the pantry – there was no going out to the store for special ingredients just to make a meal. I spent over two years deconstructing that dish – trying version after version, taking away ingredients here and there, and adding new ones. I finally hit on a close version but it still wasn’t quite the same. It wasn’t hers.

Her pea salad was a bit easier. I was so very close  – and I finally got it right when my mother sent me a can of peas from the grocery store near my grandmother’s house. They didn’t sell that brand up here, and apparently, that’s what it needed for everything to click.

It’s become more and more apparent, though, that no matter how much I take the recipes apart and put them back together again, it’s just not the same. My cornbread and milk just isn’t the same because I’m not eating it while sitting at the dining table with my grandfather late at night, the house dark and silent everywhere but the kitchen. He didn’t take the leftover cornbread from supper, crumble it into a glass, and pour milk over it. He didn’t hand me the long teaspoon to eat it with.

My fried catfish just isn’t the same because my grandmother didn’t spend Saturday at the pond, three fishing rods set out before her, as she contentedly whiled away the day just fishin’. It just isn’t the same because my grandfather didn’t clean them out back, or carefully pick out the bones before giving me my plate.

It’s the same story with the wilted lettuce and onions, the squash casserole, the fried green tomatoes. I’ve tried making them, I’ve spent hours tearing the process apart and trying to rebuild it. But there’s that one, vital ingredient missing – my family.

I’ll keep trying though. I’ll mutter when the cornbread is too sweet, when the chicken fried steak is too tough, or when the potato soup is too runny. I’ll keep trying because even in those moments of frustration, the women of my family are in the kitchen with me. Even if they are laughing at me.

Especially if they are laughing at me.



***** This is my entry for therealljidol - I hope you enjoy it. If you did enjoy it, I would appreciate your vote so that I can move forward with the competition! *****

Case Profile: Crystal, 36 year old female, married, no children.

Sun in Cancer:

 Sun in Cancer natives have a strong survival instinct. They are protective of those that they care about, and of themselves too.

Learned at a young age that self-defense, both physically and emotionally, sometimes means going numb. Has learned to open up again over the years. Protective instincts are high for those she cares about, and the innocent.

Moon in Leo

The moon represents our deepest personal needs, our basic habits and reactions, and our unconscious. Lunar Leos often feel a need to organize, and even control, their families and friends. They can be rather lazy at times, and a little bossy too.

Tends to be quiet in the early days of relationships. Then can become domineering. Will take charge if no other dominant personalities are present. Internal need to organize hampered by prior diagnosis of ADD (Choi, 2008).

Mercury in Cancer

In modern times, we tend to “meet” people’s Mercury first. You can bet that Mercury in Cancer natives will remember almost anything – from their own past, to your conversation two months ago. You might notice their memory is a little skewed in the direction of emotion. The truth is, these people remember the mood surrounding all the moments they have stored in their memory. This is because they ‘feel you out’ when you are talking to them. The words are not as important to them as the emotions behind them.

Memory issues are fascinating. Will forget easily where she put her keys or what is next on her to-do list, but can recall events that are tied to emotions with remarkable detail. Can give the appearance of not paying attention, but will surprise you later with observations.

Venus in Gemini

Venus in Gemini people will try to win over the object of their affection with witty conversation, displaying just how much they ‘know,’ and demonstrating their diverse interests.

Eclectic interests over a wide range of subjects. Tends to become immersed in a certain topic until she requires a certain level of expertise, then moves on to the next subject. Can lend to a distracted quality, but also plays to innate intelligence.

Mars in Leo

Mars rules our animal instincts for aggression, anger, and survival. Impatient with small-mindnessness and disloyalty, Mars in Leo natives generally have a strong idealistic streak. They easily get fired up when they feel they’ve been humiliated, and they defend their high principles with ardor.

Passionate about many issues. Tends to be unconventional in personal philosophies. Not physically aggressive, but can be verbally blunt to the point of being offensive. Slow to become angry, but has the potential for disturbing thoughts past a certain point. Tempered by compassionate qualities found in most Cancerians.

Capricorn Rising

More often than not, Capricorn rising individuals are success stories. Their childhoods may have been difficult, but they slowly but surely turn their lives around. Saturn rules this Ascendant, and this generally means a kind of backwards way of living--as children, they are serious and bear a lot of responsibility; and as they grow up, they age beautifully, learning how to loosen up.

Comes from a dysfunctional family. Forced to grow up at a very young age. Despite early obstacles, displays a warm, if dry, sense of humor and appreciation of whimsy.
 

Advocate’s notes: Patient is ongoing in her work in understanding her life and her place in the world. Creative outlets tend toward the written word, or in activities that provide a grounding effect. Most accurately described at this stage as a work-in-progress.