Knock knock

I ran into a writer friend of mine at Trader Joe's the other day. My friend is very nice but struggles with melancholia, so I like to try to cheer him up.

"How wonderful to see you!" I said. "Did you have a fun summer?"

"No,"he said. "I spent the summer defending my house from woodpeckers."

"Woodpeckers are so cute!" I said.

"They're destructive," he said. "They poke giant holes in my siding and make so much noise I can barely concentrate on my writing."

"You sound depressed," I said.

"I am," he said.

"There must be some way to make this fun," I said. "Since birds are technically dinosaurs, you should tell people you spent your summer defending your house from dinosaurs."

"You sure are full of bright ideas this morning," he said.

"Seriously," I said. "You should take a picture of yourself dressed like a caveman and then post it on your Facebook page. It will get you lots of attention and help your writing career."

 "I don't do Facebook," he said.

"Why not?" I said. "Facebook is a valuable career-building tool for a writer like you."

"I don't have time for Facebook," he said."I'm too busy defending my house from woodpeckers."

"Dinosaurs," I said.  "You're defending your house from dinosaurs."

"Okay, dinosaurs," he said.

"Now, didn't I just make you feel like your life is a TEENY bit more fun?" I said.

 A smile played across his lips. "Maybe."

"See? I'm like a woodpecker poking holes in the siding of your depression," I said.

"I guess that would be one way of looking at it," he said.

Merry-go-round

Sometimes I find myself very annoying. Such as this morning at 4 a.m.

 I was sleeping quite soundly (dreaming of sunshine and lollipops and toyboys) when suddenly...I woke myself up.

"Go away," I said to myself. "I'm sleeping."

"I know, but I need to talk to you," I replied.

I kept my eyes closed, feigning sleep, but it didn't work. I kept on talking to myself. Finally I sat upright in bed. "What do you want?"

"I want you to read the short story I wrote last night," I said. "I don't know if it's any good."

"Okay. I'll give it a read." I got out of bed, sat down at a table, and quietly read the story. When I finished, I put down the manuscript and stretched my arms over my head. "Nice work. It's a cute story. I like the way global warming is described through the eyes of a bumble bee."

"I did that because a bumble bee has multiple eyes, and global warming is a complicated issue." The excitement in my voice was palpable.

"Yes, I got that," I said.

"Did you like the plot? " I said. "I storyboarded the hell out of it beforehand."

"The plot is great." I stood up and paced back and forth. "But I don't think 'It was a dark and stormy night' is a good opening sentence."

I sat down at the table and leaned forward, shaking my head in protest. "But it matches the title".

"The opening sentence doesn't have to match the title," I said.

I folded my arms. "Mine always do. It's the way I stand out from the other writers."

"When did you decide that?" I said.

"Just now," I said.

"Well, then you'll have to change the title too," I said.

"Why?" I said.

"Because I read somewhere that a short story should never begin with a description of the weather," I said. "That's the kind of dumb mistake amateur writers make."

"It wasn't a description of the weather," I said."It was description of the apocalypse."

"Good point," I said. "But since the bumblebees rescue everyone in the end, it's technically not the apocalypse."

"Okay, I'll change it so everybody dies in the end, including the bumblebees," I said.

"But then what are we left with, if everybody's dead?" I said.

"We're left with a dark and stormy night," I said. "Everything will come full circle."

 "Now, that would be a great story," I said. "Nobody ever wins against a circle."

Narcissus and Echo

I was traversing the lobby of a medium-sized local art venue when I encountered a ruggedly-handsome man of my acquaintance. He's a painter (a good one) and I respect his opinion a lot.

"Hey, Nancy," he said. "I saw your show at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts."

"Cool," I said. That show happened six years ago but I still hear a lot about it.

"That was a great show," he said. "Almost every painting in that show was a masterpiece."

"Thanks," I said.

"There's one big problem with your art, though," he said. "There's too much of you in the paintings."

"That's kind of the point," I said. "Putting myself in the paintings."

"But you could make big bucks as an illustrator if you took yourself out of your paintings," he said.

"Other people have told me that too," I said. "You might be right."

He aimed his big, gorgeous grin in my direction. "So, do you plan to follow my advice?"

"No," I said. "But thanks anyway. It's very good advice."

And I meant it. It's very good advice.

Nobody Understands Me the Way That You Do, oil on canvas, 2014

Running Amok

I went to a huge party the other night in Minneapolis. As I sidled up to the refreshment table and grabbed a handful of corn chips, I overheard some 20-somethings reminiscing about their teenaged years. They were engaged in a fierce competition about which one of them was most delinquent during their wild youth.

"I was so evil, my parents gave up on me and disowned me," a woman in a flowered sundress said.

"Well, I was kicked out of the corner grocery store...for life," said a man in a baseball cap.

"I dyed my hair green and climbed up on the roof of the neighbors' house. They had to call the fire department to get me down," said a woman in tortoise-shell glasses.

Much to my annoyance, the group totally ignored me and didn't ask what crazy things I did as a teenager. I racked my brain to think of something to top their tales. The problem was, I couldn't remember much from those murky and chaotic times. I decided it was best to stick to recent occurrences as I strove to prove to them I was the most outrageous miscreant of them all.

"Well, just last week my friend and I were kicked out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City," I said.

They all stopped talking and stared at me. I basked in the glow of their attention.

"Really?" the woman in the sundress said.

"Yes," I said, "Really."

"What happened?" the man in the baseball cap said.

 I paused for effect before I replied. "The museum was closing for the day. They kicked out everyone, not just us."

The group greeted my story with such stunned silence, I knew I'd won the competition.

Girls! Girls! Girls!...and You!

Twenty years ago I was angry with a famous male writer. I'm not going to say who it was because he's dead now, and it's not fair to diss dead people who can't fight back. Not that I think the famous writer would be reading my blog if he was alive, but you never know...my blog is on the Internet, and he might have typed the word "Nipples" into his search engine and found my June 10th blog post. (In case you were wondering, the "Nipples" blog post snared twice as many readers as usual.)

But I digress. Ten or twenty years ago I was angry because of something disgustingly OUTRAGEOUS and perverted and sick, sick, sick which the famous writer said in a magazine interview. He said, "...

The Simple Life

A couple of weeks ago I had dinner at a Greek restaurant with a writer friend of mine. After we'd gotten off to a good start with some calamari and  wine, we settled into the kind of breezy conversation which interfaces nicely with a warm summer night.

"What have you been up to lately?" I said.

"I'm teaching myself how to read ancient Sanskrit," he said. "I'm interested in how the language interfaces with contemporary forms of communication such as the emoticon."

"Cool," I said.

"What have you been up to?" he said.

"I'm trying to figure out what to pack for my trip to New York City," I said. "It's really stressing me out."

"Why?"

"Everyone in New York is so stylish, and all my clothes are stupid."

"That's not true," he said. "You have nice clothes."

"Like what?"

 "Like what you were wearing the other day."

I furrowed my brow.  "What was I wearing the other day?"

"That thing you wear all the time."

"What does it look like?"

"Low cut. Accentuates your cleavage."

"Is it blue?"

 "It might be blue."

"I can't pack it if you can't tell me what it is," I said. "Do I have any nice clothes you DO remember?"

"Yes. That bra you used to wear when we were going out." His eyes grew dreamy. "It made your breasts rise up and point forward like magical cones. That bra made your breasts look huge. I could never figure out how it did that."

"This is all very interesting," I said, "but it's not helping me figure out what to pack besides my magical bra."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," he said. "All you need to pack is that bra."