Here is something. I wrote it. It isn't really anything, so I can't say it's 'not finished', exactly. It's just a very small something.
It’s been an insomniac morning. I woke at five, crashed around the house for a glass of water, then came to the annoying realization that I was actually awake for the day. The sun was taking forever to rise. I crawled back into bed and read for a while, but the wheezing radiator was too hot and it was a stupid time of day and the reading material was too esoteric. I got out of bed to do the next logical thing, which was to make coffee.
There is something about this early-morning light that I have come to associate with Europe, probably because I always woke up so early during those two-week vacations to run the cobblestones with my dad. I don’t even remotely enjoy running, but I’ll join him on his morning routine of compulsive chemical needs—twenty minutes or so of jogging quickly transitions into the pursuit of the elusive Decent Cup of Coffee, which really means something strong enough to stick a spoon in so it could remain vertical, suspended in the steaming, bitter liquid, since he is also going to need a pitcher of cream and four packets of sugar. Travel dehydrates me, but he’ll buy me one as well, which I drink black from the small porcelain or Styrofoam vessel, and I can already feel it working through my bowels while we watch farmers and their wives erect their market stalls of lettuce and radishes, the dew already evaporated from the clumps of dirt still clinging to the rots. There are men in the bar drinking those thin glasses of pale beer, a sight that turns my stomach at that hour (or maybe it’s just caffeine and stomach acid) and offends my father’s sensibilities, but we conclude that it is perfectly civilized—nay, every working man’s right—to enjoy a beer or two with his buddies after work, even when it’s the third shift. It’s odd how our vices are acceptable as long as they are on schedule.
It is not possible for me to become a Real Person before ten a.m., so I’m thankful that this is one of the things my dad can order for himself: Deux cafés, s’il vous plaît, and if the person behind the counter doesn’t speak French, the coffee won’t be strong enough and we’ll move on.
The machine in the kitchen emits five chirps, and I pour a mug that is too hot to drink. It is still too early. I realize that my dad is probably running right now, doing this little cloverleaf pattern through the streets around the house I grew up in, despite the February chill and icy sidewalks. After 2.6 miles, he will stretch while the cats sniff at him inquisitively, probably wondering what that man is doing on the floor again. He will fill the kettle and brew his cereal bowl of sugary, intensely coffee-flavored half-and-half. My mother makes her own pot of coffee in the regular machine, because she isn’t picky, either, but needs something before she can put her eyeballs in that morning.
Out on the porch, watching steam rise from my mug, I concentrate on these little wisps of feeling like we’re all together on vacation right now, enjoying a little quiet time before another day of glorious adventures in Belgium or Germany or France. I’m sure it’s later than I think it is, that I should shower and do something about my hair and stop pretending I’m not in Wisconsin in February. . .
In other news: http://puttingweirdthingsincoffee.com
I have been “ordered” to blog again. I’m going to leave that in the passive voice to create the illusion that there is more than one person who ever reads this.
My initial reaction was hey shut the fuck up you can’t tell me what to do you’re not my mom, but after further consideration, I guess I could start doing this again. I’d like to focus it more on my clumsy messings-around with creative writing projects, but I guess we’ll see what happens. I just ordered a new camera charger this morning, so there may soon be further forays into food porn.
In case you care, I’ve been fine, thank you, but busy with the usual Life Stuff like Getting Paid and New Haircuts and Maintaining a Presentable Room, which I am getting pretty good at. Stella has gotten fatter, I went to Arizona over Christmas, and I’ve settled in nicely at the Turkish restaurant as my latest Stressful Job That Kind Of Takes Over My Life, which is not an altogether bad thing. It’s cold in Wisconsin. Spring semester has started. Everybody, myself included, has been sick, and morale has been low. I’ve also got a new stack of books, which includes:
Most recently, though, as I mentioned, I have been quite violently under the weather, and though I may have spent the past four days quarantined in the squalid nest of infection that was my room, I have since bathed in the noxious green waters of the river of NyQuil, and here I am, emerged, renewed, though finding it difficult to hear out of one ear, which is kind of awkward.
Anyway, just writing to let you know I still care, sort of. I’ll be back later with something interesting.
xoxo
Ellie
When in the house of Saturn there are things an EMF member must do, instructions that were given to us, drawn up under roofs of lead. Things to be done if one is ever lucky enough to be in proximity to the enemy. The carnation knife must be pulled out of the waistband and then put to the throat of Saturn, dragging the blade across the skin and stubble of his neck, letting his ink drip. Because if that is what he wants, to write, let him write his own blood letter on the cloth and foam of his mattress. A dense, warm prose that stains the floors and always reappears six coats of paint later. Something that will remain longer than any novel will.At the very least, if rushed, steal the plot lines and the hundred and five pages that have been written. Leave nothing behind but the title page and table of contents, on which you write, "you are not so powerful."But I left my carnation knife in my pocket and was careful not to touch anything. Sabotaged nothing, simply waited for Saturn to rise and walk into the living room.Even if I believed in Federico de la Fe's cause and in the fall of Saturn, there is an etiquette that must be followed, even in war. You cannot kill or steal from a man while he is asleep and heartbroken. While it is said that everything is fair in love and war, the dictum is nullified when both love and war occur simultaneously; then, the rules of battle become more stringent. The politics that lead to war can always be argued, but there is an undeniable sympathy that must be extended when a woman leaves a man. Saturn waited ten years from the time Merced left Federico de la Fe before he decided to invade the privacy of Federico de la Fe. I would only be extending the same courtesy.
I never told de la Fe. I unbuttoned my shirt, shaking it until all the bits of sky were emptied from its pockets. At night, from my porch I could see the gap in the sky. The unpatched hole, twinkling as the light from Saturn's bedroom was turned on and off."Smiley, do you think Saturn is gone?" Froggy asked."It is just sad," I said."Planets cannot be sad," he said."What about Pluto?" I asked."Yes, but that is a very small planet."Froggy was of the belief, grounded in ancient philosophy, that after a certain amount of accumulated mass, sadness ends. And so he cited:Saint NicholasDon HoWinston ChurchillSir John FalstaffAll fat and jolly people. Though jolliness was the saddest form of happiness, it was a happiness nonetheless.But Froggy did not mention the nights when Don Ho wept on Hawaiian sands, not rising until long after the tiki lamps had been extinguished. or the hours Saint Nicholas spent pulling splinters from his fingers and sniffing turpentine. He never even mentioned the sadness of the Elder Elvis. Or the saddest of them all: Don Francisco, always tangled in velvet with hired women while commercial jingles played in the background, ditties for soap and mops. The women were not the prettiest, but they all resembled his first love, and he asked them if they would not mind very much if he could call them "Porfedia."
