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The Witch of the Civil War Cemetery

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:10:01 -0500

The massive winter oak tree stood on the outskirts of the cemetery, towering above the other younger oak trees, its trunk so wide it cast a shadow across the nearby four-lane street. Its black branches snaked in all directions like a witch’s wild, untamed hair. Two of its gnarled, naked limbs reached over the cemetery’s wrought iron fence—the fingers curled and poised to snatch unsuspecting passers-by from the sidewalk below.

Why I Want to Write

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:39:11 -0500

I want to write because writing is sacred. It is the way I pray--how I give thanks. It is the way I make sense of this world--this place I am tethered to. It is how I think--the way I know how I feel about things. It is a lonely path but it is the way for me--although I falter with every step. It is how I heal myself from every wound this life inflicts. It is how I celebrate every triumph, every miracle.

I want to write because it is how I stay awake--how I pay attention to all those things I would walk blindly past if I didn’t write.

I want to write because I want to chronicle my times--not like a journalist reporting the who, what, where, when and why. I want to write about everyday things--the ordinary--like the stand of hardwood trees outside my office window that look like large multi-colored feathers blowing in the wind; their vibrant colors appear muted from this distance as they meld into one another, while a flock of geese fly above them in perfect symmetry.

I want to write about perfect symmetry--the fragile looking dandelion that looks like a palm-sized planet complete with its own shimmering stars or the florets of a sunflower that produce a pattern of such precise and perfect symmetry, mathematical equations were created to describe it.

I want to write because it is what I’m supposed to do--not because I’m some gifted writer who must share her talents with the world, but because writing--in fact, all art--is meant for the ordinary person. Maybe it is even more important to us than it is to all those gifted Mozarts.

I want to write because someday the Infinite Spirit will ask me what I did with my gift and I will point to these humble prayers. I want to write because this is my life and someday there will be a quiz. I’m sure of it. Writing is how I study for it.

The Big House

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 10:03:05 -0500

I was out of college, living on my own in Phoenix in a small, but chic studio apartment. I got my first job as a technical writer, and since I was only in my early twenties, I was, of course, living paycheck to paycheck. Usually all my money was spent before I even got paid--there was rent, food, and of course, killer clothes (this is, after all, a decade that flies by in lightning-fast speed).

One day after an afternoon of shopping for clothes, I returned to my car to find a two-dollar parking ticket on my windshield (no, I’m not that old; Phoenix at that time was a bit behind the times as far as parking ticket revenue). I probably shoved it on some stack of bills that I had deemed of lesser importance. I'm sure I had every intention of paying it--just as soon as I had the money. As I recall, I subsequently got several more late notices reminding me that my two-dollar parking ticket was past due. With each late notice, I'm sure I reminded myself that I should pay the ticket and be done with it. Of course, with the naivety of youth, I also reasoned that the stupid ticket was only for two dollars--and what were they going to do—throw me in jail for a lousy two dollars? Once again, I put the late notices on the stack of bills ("williams" as I sometimes call them) to be paid later.

Some time later on a lazy Saturday, I was drinking my morning coffee and thumbing through fashion magazines (looking hot isn't effortless you know--it takes hours of research and planning) when I heard a knock at the door. I looked through the peephole to see two young policemen standing on the other side of the door.

What could they possibly want, I wondered. If they had come to hit me up for a contribution to the policemen's ball or something, they had come to the wrong apartment. Any extra money I had would be used as payment for the designer clam diggers I had put on layaway two months before. Maybe they had seen me walking around the apartment complex, and they were so captivated by my beauty that they felt compelled to come knocking on my door--hoping only for a glimpse of me--perhaps even an exchange of pleasantries. I quickly dismissed this idea since it seemed highly unlikely. But maybe there was an escaped convict, a deranged and desperate man prowling the apartment grounds, preying on young innocent lasses of Irish and Osage descent--and these two fine gentlemen were warning all the female occupants. With fear and trepidation, I cautiously opened my front door.

"Is your name Kathleen Johnson?" one of the young men asked me. "Yes," I replied in a squeaky voice. Then the other officer said, "I'm sorry, ma’am, but we have a warrant for your arrest."

A warrant for my arrest? Obviously, they had me confused with some hardened criminal who was also named Kathleen Johnson. As I started to politely point out their error, I barely caught something the younger, cuter officer was saying. Was I mistaken? Did he say something about the failure to pay a two-dollar parking ticket?

He did indeed. Two of Phoenix's finest arrested me for failure to pay a two-dollar parking ticket, however, the older officer said that he didn't think it was necessary to handcuff me. Handcuff me?? Was this guy serious? I wasn't Hannibal Lecter or OJ Simpson, I was a young working woman who had foolishly paid for designer clam diggers rather than paying for an overdue parking ticket. The dramatist in me wanted to shout a la James Cagney, "you'll never take me alive, copper," but wisely I refrained.

On the way to the police station, as I sat in the back of the patrol car with tears streaming down my face, I heard the younger, cuter policeman say to the older cop, "I don't know about you Jack, but I sure as hell didn't become a cop so that I could harass little girls for failure to pay a bleeping parking ticket--I mean, haven't we got better things to do?" (I'm pretty sure he didn't use the word "bleeping." Oh, and another thing: when I was in my early twenties, I looked like I was about fourteen--that's why he referred to me as a little girl). The older cop said something to the effect that he just minded his own business and did what he was told to do.

When we arrived at the police station, the policemen told me they had to process me. I don't really remember much about this--except for one ordeal--they fingerprinted me. This is when I absolutely lost it. I stood there and openly sobbed while they pressed my well-manicured fingers on an ink pad. This was it, I figured, I was now an official criminal, and I was only one step away from turning tricks to support the monkey on my back. I saw my life stretch out before me including long stints doing time in "the big house," and I shook with the realization that my life would never be same. I looked with pleading eyes at the younger cop--and I think that was his undoing. He really felt sorry for me. He put his arm around me and handed me a Kleenex. Then he gave me a little pep talk about the importance of fingerprinting. If he had his way, he told me, every person that walked through the police station doors would be fingerprinted. By the time he finished talking to me, I felt as if I just performed some patriotic duty.

After they fingerprinted me, they took me to the cells. I probably stopped dead in my tracks when I saw those iron bars. The younger cop said something to his partner like, "there's no way you're gonna stick this little girl in there with those scumbags." The partner said I could sit on this bench right outside one of the cells until the judge was ready to see me. The cell I sat next to was full of women--but these were unlike any women I'd ever seen. These were some hard looking women. Nasty looking women. Women who looked like they could beat the shit out of any guy from the WWF--and probably had. Regularly. They sneered and snarled at me. They leered and growled at me. I expected a man snapping a whip to appear at any moment. Since I certainly felt like I was being fed to the lions, I figured I may as well have a final cigarette (yes, I smoked for a brief time during my misspent youth) so I grabbed the pack out of my leather purse. As I brought the Bic lighter toward my face with a shaking hand, I heard a gravely voice from behind and above me. Standing right behind me--so close she could have reached through the bars and snapped my neck like a broccoli stalk--was a frightening woman who made Charles Manson look like an angelic choir boy.

"You got an extra one of those?" she growled as she stared at the pack of cigarettes in my hand. I thrust the entire pack of cigarettes into her outstretched hand. "Here," I said, "you can have them all--just please don't hurt me." The half-woman, half-beast grabbed the cigarette pack and looked at me as if I was out of my mind. I merely hung my head, waiting for the other prisoners to slit my throat--after all, I wasn't totally naive, I'd seen prison movies before.

In the end, I was brought before a judge and ordered to pay a twenty-five dollar fine. The money, of course, was meaningless. It was forgotten when it left my hands. The incident, however, haunts me still since on almost every job application, they ask the question--"Have you ever been arrested?". I am compelled to answer truthfully. It's that next question that's a bit harder: "If yes, what for?" Failure to pay a two-dollar parking ticket sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Maybe I should change my answer to "indecent exposure."

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Sun, 4 Nov 2007 13:46:18 -0500

I guess the picture says it all. The hubster and I were rapidly spiraling downward into the deep abyss of booze, smokes, and excess facial and body hair. How did it happen? How did a young couple so full of promise deteriorate to this extent? We’re not really sure. Maybe it was the computer games. Oh sure, laugh all you want. But maybe when it happens to you, you’ll remember this menacing tale of degradation and sorrow—and the ensuing struggle for redemption to break free from the evil clutches of Ms Pac-Man.
It started as an attempt to escape the horrors—the whirlpool of suckitude that we call our jobs. Jobs more vacuous and pressure filled than the tools of the trade that we use daily at said jobs at the nearby car wash. Oh sure, yuck it up. By I’m here to tell you that the pressure at the Suck and Blow Car Wash is as constant as the water that floods that place from 9 to 7. In the beginning it seemed like such a friendly place to work. But little by little, it revealed itself to be a petri dish of bacteria or “employees” who would perform any atrocity to climb the corporate ladder so that they might become floor manager. And by so doing, have power over other human beings and be able to say things like, “hey, douche bag, you missed a spot.” It was a surreal Salvador Dali nightmare—a dark mirror of what is happening to mankind during these so-called civilized times.
So the hubinator and I started playing a little Tetris to unwind at night—no big deal. We’d play for a half hour or so and then like the rest of the country, we’d watch mindless drivel on television. One afternoon, the hubmeister brought home a new game. I started noticing that he’d play this game longer and longer and that—and this should have been my big clue—he’d play it behind a locked door. One night—it was a Tuesday so luckily he didn’t have to go to work the next day—he stayed awake the whole night playing this new game. I—unbeknownst to him—cried in bed all night wondering if he was starting up some online romance with Suzy, the new floor manager at the Suck and Blow who rumor has it will do ANYTHING for a dollar. The next night like Adam giving Eve the apple—oh wait a minute, it was the other way around, wasn’t it? Okay, like a junkie giving a kid in the playground a “magic” pill, the hubby gave me a just a taste of nirvana—Ms Pac-Man with six different mazes, fruit bonuses and ghosts with pseudo-random movements.
OMG, I can still feel the rush of pleasure that spread through my body like Ben Gay when you put just a touch in each nostril. The hubba-bubba told me to slow down and take it easy. “Hey, babe, slow down, why the rush? You’ve got all night to chew up those little dots.” I told him to go f*ck himself. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what happened.
Then something truly horrible happened. Ms Pac-Man was all we could think of. We played every chance we had. We dreamt about her. We pictured the mazes in our heads during work. Then one night, I beat the hubilator’s high score. He went berserk. He started jumping up and down. Then he started screaming until he sounded like Christopher Lambert in that Greystoke movie. Now that I think about it, his body movements were the same too. An hour later, the same thing happened to me. We were de-evolving and we knew we had to do something fast.
Now you’re not laughing anymore, are you? Now you want to know—OMG, what happened? What did you do? What if it happens to me? Oh sure, NOW you want to know. Well, maybe I’ll tell you. But not right now. I’m tired. I don’t want to write about this any more. It’s bringing up a lot of unpleasant memories. Like the time I dreamt that Pac-Man, jealous of Ms Pac-Man’s success, turned into a blood sucking Pac-Man who chased the screaming Ms Pac-Man through the mazes while she was screaming, “please, God” but the blood sucking Pac-Man said “No God” and grabbed Ms Pac-Man, but Ms Pac-Man doesn’t have blood so it ended up okay—but it traumatized me for weeks and I don’t want to write about it any more. Maybe tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.

Lucky Me!

Thu, 1 Nov 2007 22:01:56 -0400

So we’re sitting here in the family room watching some drivel on television—and I’m struck by what a wonderful ordinary moment this is. This is a moment like so many others—and that is part of what makes it so wonderful. We’ve shared all these ordinary things together (my hubby and me). Geez, we even share our own language—a language that no one else could possibly understand. In fact, anyone overhearing it would find it very strange. We finish each other’s sentences, and he tells me that it kind of creeps him out that I can read his mind (pssst—I can). I think about all the people who dread leaving work and going home to their own houses. I never do.
By the way, have I mentioned that my Mac is alive? It is. It’s alive! It won’t let me leave it alone for the day. If I try to leave without it, it calls out to me. It also calls out to me during the day if I haven’t written anything the day before. And when I do write, it sings—actually it’s more like purring. It matters not whether I write crap or lovely prose, as long as the letter keys are clacking (and I’m not playing a game), it hums and purrs (and winks at me from time to time).
So one of the things that the hubster and I talk about is what we’re going to name our dog when we get one. I think “Buddy” is the early leader. I also like the full name of “Sir Reginald” and then we could call him (assuming the dog is a male) “Reggie” for short—or “Mr. October” when we’re in a baseball kind of mood. The hubmeister also recommended “Manny” and tonight “Caesar” seemed to catch his attention. I always said that if I had bulldog, I’d have to call him “Winston”—I’d just have to. How can you even look at a bulldog and not think “Winston”? If you have any ideas, drop me an email. But no “Spot” or “Scamp”—come on, we do have some standards (we’re just not sure what they are).