Wild Pages is an exercise that students in the Beautiful Lies/Beautiful Truths writing class took on each week. Instructions are simple: Fill up 7-10 pages on any topics you choose. Write fast. Don’t go back and edit or correct. Just keep the words flowing. Here are some of the gems Gregory created. Enjoy!
I bit my tongue last night trying to eat a tomato. You never see it coming. One second you’re losing yourself in the wonder of tomato flesh and the next your tongue is screaming at you, “what kind of idiot are you!!” I should know better by now. I’m a grownup, a sober adult with seven decades of eating under my belt. This should not be happening. I hazard a look in the mirror. Black and blue already. Left up front on the bottom. Swelling. Half an inch long and three eighths wide and one eighth of an inch bulging. Such a feeling of helplessness! Nothing to be done really but bear the pain for a couple of days, eat mostly liquidy stuff. Smoothies! Great idea. Blending frozen fruit, yogurt and nuts together will soothe and nourish all in one drink. I feel better already.
The apple trees droop with the weight of apples this fall. It’s time to start picking, preparing for pressing cider, making sauce, and drying them for snacks. Maybe a gallette or cobbler will emerge from the oven smelling of cinnamon and nutmeg. The work of obtaining the apples is brutal for me, yet it must be done. Climbing trees, hauling the full crates like an ox across our fields in a garden cart. I’m exhausted just getting two crates full. And there need to be five crates. Maybe some pears to add to part of it. In the past, this was more about making hard cider, but I eschew the demon alcohol these days. Not that I was ever a heavy drinker or an alcoholic like my father, but being the socially awkward child of an alcoholic with all the family patterns such a burden carries, I did enjoy sampling the world of tipsy with an occasional topsy turvy all fall down. Not anymore. These days I prefer a good night’s sleep. I wonder if my father slept well. I have no one to ask, save my sister, the family historian. She may have an inkling, but he was gone from our lives by the time she was ten. It’s all hearsay after that.
A cougar sighting was reported in the valley and up on the ridge where people like to walk. One of the young women living in the valley walks her dog there regularly. Last week she rounded the last corner leading to the field of chestnuts in tall grass only to bump into a deer that was standing in the road staring into the field. She looked and saw a long tail sticking up out of the grass not 100 feet away. Then the tail moved toward the road and emerged onto the road connected to a large cougar. Calling her dog softly back to her, she leashed her and began backing away down the road. The cougar turned its head to stare at her but did not move in her direction, continuing instead into the woods across the road. At that point she turned around and ran back down the half mile winding road to safety, screaming the whole way. Said she had never been so scared and pumped on adrenaline in her life. Took her several hours to calm down. I feel for her. I have walked our past dogs up there alone many times, walked with friends up there many times, met a young bear up there without incident or fear. But cougars! Just reliving the incident vicariously in my head has brought up fear and anxiety in me. I’m not sure I can go there again for awhile, even in a group and we have no dog anymore. Funny how one sighting can change everything. There have always been rumors of cougars but the absence of sightings lulls one to non-alertness. I am now alert.
At the library yesterday, writing my wild pages, I spared a few moments to look around and observe the place up close. As a public space, it ranks highly on my list of places to spend time while in town for the day, sometimes waiting for others, sometimes meeting others. But mostly just because of the ambiance. Aisles of books somehow both well-organized and a chaotic maze to get lost in. Various areas for study, now mostly equipped with electricity and even USB ports for our latest tech gear. When did that exactly happen? A section of public access computers for those so inclined. A children’s area all done up in color. People sit alone and in groups talking in low tones. Two old men discussing the ineffectiveness of government, a woman on her phone with a girlfriend talking girl talk. Teenage boys playing video games on the computers. Readers in the reading area. And several librarians bustling amidst it all, shelving books finding books for folks. The epitome of civilized society. Peaceful yet stimulating. My time productive. My sense of well-being enhanced.
I asked a friend of mine if he and his wife played cards or board games. He said no, that they both suffered from bad cases of productivity. I get it, knowing them as well as I do. He constantly writing a book, taking notes, organizing his schedule, planning their next journey, she keeping in touch with family and friends, organizing her calendar, etc. Oh, they enjoy life. Baseball games, hiking, trips to Italy to see family, kayaking throughout the Salish Sea, SCUBA diving, playing music, skiing. It’ tough to find a slot for me in there, but he and I have two standing dates each year. The first is a Mariners game in the spring with another friend of ours. The second is a multi-day hiking trip in August. Both of these dates have been going on for about 15 years.
I don’t believe in multi-tasking. My whole MO is one thing at a time. My wife would say I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, but I do not consider that to be multi-tasking. Studies show that true multitasking is a serial process of doing several different things one after another but somehow being able to remember where you are in the process of each task. No one can actually do two tasks at once that require their attention. Some would argue the pianist controls two hands doing different things at the same time, but it really doesn’t work that way, the hands have been trained to be one thing controlled by the mind of the pianist. Consider the center fielder watching the deep fly ball to his right arc through the air as he runs toward the spot the ball will land. Was he working out the trajectory in his head and telling his feet how fast to get there? No, it was the result of 10,000 similar events practiced until it became “instinctive”. Another aspect of serial multi-tasking is the lack of coherent focus that comes from spending so little time doing each task. Otherwise known as short attention span, a big problem of our culture. Again, I would argue for a slower pace, one that allows sufficient attention to the tasks at hand.
She sat slouched on the bus, her face in her hands, sobbing. No one was there to see her off. No one knew she was leaving. No forethought had gone into getting on the bus, but somehow here she was, tears running down her arms, on to her clothes. A man in gray came down the aisle and sat down next to her. He wasn’t sure what to say or do. Was she mourning the death of a loved one, stricken by a failure on the part of herself or another, or just realizing the hopelessness of the human condition? He couldn’t tell. Perhaps a direct approach. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on, but if I can help, I’m happy to do it.” She only sobbed harder.
I approached the ledge with trepidation. The emptiness before me was an abyss to fill with fear and exhilaration. An updraft from below brought a pungent smell that stirred me to action. Now or never! I ran the last step and leapt out over the lip of rock, grabbing at the sky to hold me up as the terrible descent began. Oh, how I wished to scream. But simultaneously, my stomach flip-flopped, my violent inhale wouldn’t release, and I experienced a sense of time stopping. The grip of gravity was quick and thorough, nothing left behind, all of me hit the water with a mighty splash, burying my body in the cold depths. The trance breaks. I fully wake and stir to action, swimming to the surface as quickly as possible and whooping jubilantly – more from the cold shock than the gravity express. Somehow, that short time in freefall does not imprint other than as fear. I must return to the ledge to try again to stop time.
Perry goes into his windup. Bottom of the 9th. The Mariners lead New York 7-3. The delivery and the ball is hit into the ground a foot or so in front of the plate bouncing high into the air. Perry runs forward, positions himself to catch it with his right hand, arm cocked and ready to throw. The batter scooting down the line toward first and it looks like he’s going to beat it out for an infield single. Perry’s got the ball, he whips it to the first baseman and holy cow, he gets the runner at first for out number 2. What a play! My oh my! (You and I were there Keith, that was the night of his 300th career win. May 6, 1982) At least that’s the way I remember it…
Hurricane Milton bears down on my son in Orlando. Tomorrow night they shall meet. I’m nervous, I admit it. He claims to be ready, prepared, excited and safe. Imagining 125 mph winds whipping around the neighborhood terrifies me. Uprooting trees, throwing cars around like giant stuffed animals, removing roofs, and taking out the electricity, wires, poles and all. I’ve walked in woods during high winds – perhaps 30-40 mph – and had branches falling around me, heard large cracks and watched large limbs ripped from their home on a tree and spiral to the ground. Nerve-wracked and fearful I hightailed it out to safety. I only pray my son will not have to experience anything worse than that.
Toss a baseball across an open space. Watch the ball move gracefully through its arc. Smooth and continuous, slowing down as it reaches its apex, speeding up as it returns to Earth. Interfered with only by collisions with air molecules in its path, which act incrementally to slow its progress in any direction it moves. After all, air permeates the atmosphere. It’s everywhere! Drag forces. Gravity also permeates the atmosphere – gravity permeates the universe! — but gravity prefers attraction as a means to involve itself with the affairs of objects. Along the surface of the planet, this translates into “attraction to the Earth”. So, our baseball, object that it is, has no choice but to follow gravity back down to Earth. A quirk of language might cause us to interpret “no choice” as an implicit capability of the baseball to enjoy volition. Not so, in fact; but colloquially, the point is taken: objects follow paths dictated by gravity. I guess one could argue that gravity has volition if it can “dictate” the path of an object. Words are funny things that way. I digress, let’s return to the baseball en route to the surface, battling gravity and air molecules, striving, against all odds, to achieve the intended purpose of its tosser. Yours was to observe the ball. Gaylord’s third out of his 300th career victory was a slider down and away that Willie Randolph managed to ground to second base, only to be gobbled up there and tossed to first. Out #3, end of game, Yanks lose 7-3. Tossers have many intended purposes, as we see. From pitching chicanery to tossing your friend his keys, to tossing treat cookies to dogs, to tossing a coin as a means of setting starting conditions or deciding the result of a dispute. All such tossings taken together create the wonderful tossed salad of object obedience to gravity.
A final note re: tossings. Volleyball delights me. Hitting the ball in so many ways, tossing my body around as if nursing a passel of sore muscles through the night and trying to get out of bed tomorrow didn’t matter. Each contact with the ball spurs my competitive nature. I want to win. There it is, plain and simple. But we all chase the dream of victory, putting ourselves out there as tools for achieving the goal. Long volleys, the ball popping like popcorn, diving, leaping saves, all contribute to the exhilaration. My boundaries crumble as I melt into the game, emerging sweaty, out of breath and beaming. Win or lose, no matter. Put it out there one more time.