07/04/00 -- Happy July 4th

Still haven't seen any fireworks...

Only fireflies.  Did I mention the fireflies?  They're amazing.  I hadn't seen them in forever.  Like the last time I spent a summer in St. Louis.  It's kinda weird.  I remember catching them as a kid with my sister and my cousin and my grandmother in my grandmother's back yard.  Jumping up to get them, putting them in glass jars.  Watching them light up like strange little lanterns.  Part of me really misses that.  And I'm not sure what I miss about it.  Is it the innocence?  Being a kid?  A world where catching fireflies was still a magical thing?  My grandmother?  Being able to laugh and laugh because nothing else in the world mattered except catching those fireflies so we could look at them and then let them go?

Sometimes I didn't want to let them go.  They were so pretty.  I wanted to keep them there forever.  Little blinking light.  Like fairies, I guess.  Or something more magical.  Looking outside of Van Hoosen earlier this evening, I thought about that time again.  About the hill in Grandma's back yard.  About rolling down it during the day.  About catching fireflies on it at night.  About the tomato plants and the green beans.  About the snap of fresh beans and the giggly fear of squishy tomatoes.  (Didn't like tomatoes as a kid.  Still don't, really.)

It's a strange thing to have all sorts of memories like that flood back to you.  Strange to start missing someone who has been dead for four years.  Who you haven't seen in almost six years.  And then, that time six years ago, it was only for a day or two.  A funeral.  For Grandpa.

And before that?  Before that, I was too young.  Young enough that the rest of the world didn't matter.  That what mattered was Tang in Grandma's frige and the glass bottles of Pepsi downstairs in the basement frige.  The smell of fresh ketchup.  The funny look of Metamucil in glasses.  The plastic horses and cowboys and soldiers in the toy chest that my sister and I always divided as evenly as we could when we were visiting.  The grass between my toes and that hill.  Rolling again and again down to the chain link fence then running back to the top.  Grandpa's riding mower because even then the yard was too big and he was too old for pushing a mower around.

A little more vague was the garage.  The place the car never was.  A storage place.  A place with a tool bench.  Dark.  Different.  Not like the mothball smell in the back bedroom where the board games were, and my parents' old bed.  Not like the basement with it's exercise bike that my sister and cousins and I tried to ride too fast and with the ping pong table that perhaps once enjoyed ping pong games, though none that I remember.  Not like the little alcove with the washing machine and the wringer or the back yard with clothes on the clothesline.  Not like the storage room in the basement where there was a giant lay-down freezer full of meat and where there were jars and cans of all sorts of things on shelves.

I think about all of this and I feel tears.  I feel my heart breaking as I miss my grandparents and my childhood.  As I miss a time I forget more often than I remember.

 

I can't write a story right now (I've been searching all day for one), but I can feel so much that I'd forgotten.  Strange.  Wonderful.  Painful.  And still strange.  Or strange again.

I wonder if I can somehow capture it.  Or if, like the fireflies, it'll die if I try and hold onto it too tightly, hold onto it for too long.  If all I can do is look at it and think about how magical it seems before I let it go again into the night.

 

I don't mean to wax sentimental.  Or weepy.  Today was a lot like any other day here at Clarion.  Critiques.  Lunch (grilled cheese instead of the tread-marked chicken sandwiches with ham).  A run to Meijer's to get soda and Hawaiian bread for me.  Other things for other people.  Jennifer got stuff.  David got blueberries.  And a new lighter, I think.

Then back.  Tried to find a story.  Something about a crow or a raven.  Couldn't find anything, though.  Took a nap.  And instead of truly sleeping, my brain turned this little itch of a story idea over and over and over and tried to make something of it.   No success when the alarm went off.  I wanted to keep sleeping.  I've been so tired this week.

Mark came by.  We talked a bit.

Went down to Van Hoosen for free writing and pizza and maybe Mafia.  We did a short group freewrite.  Had pizza.  No Mafia.  I stayed down there and read/critiqued stories for tomorrow.  Looked at the fireflies.  Read and critiqued another.  Looked at the fireflies.

David and Jennifer came by and we talked.  David gave me a backrub.  I needed it.  It was wonderful.  I could've fallen asleep right there.

Instead, after he and Jennifer were gone, I looked at the fireflies some more.  Looked.  Watched.  I don't remember some of them being greenish when I was a kid.  Just yellow.  Or yellow-orange.  Some of them seem almost green here.

Looked for a story.  Only saw fireflies.  Came back to my room.  Still no story.

Only fireflies.  And memories.

Maybe they'll both be gone by morning. 

 

Okay, so other folks are talking about their productivity here.  I decided I may as well, too. This list (and my productivity) is subject to change without notice. :)
Title	Word Count	Finished	Critiqued?
"Where the Blood Roses Grow" Week one, first story.  Wahoo.  And I was worried that something wouldn't come.	5000	6/13	6/15
"Uprooting the Tree" Will probably change the title at some point.	3400	6/16	6/19
"Mockingbird Girl" I think I'm happiest with this story, so far.	2800	6/19	6/26
"Poor as Paupers, Rich as Royalty" My challenge story from Sean's week.  I hated writing it.  It gave me a toothache.	2000	6/22
That fucking first person narrative (not yet complete) - May never be completed.  Don't I feel like an idiot...	(400)
"Switched to Overload"  (That other fucking first person narrative) Actually, I like this one better than the one above it ...  Even if it did wind up being two first person narratives in one story.  o.O	4900	6/27	7/3
"Sweeter Than Honey, Stronger Than Wine"  (My Tananrive Due challenge story.  Write a story in the style of an author whose work you admire.  Aieee!  It was sort of supposed to be in the style of Tanith Lee.  I'm not sure I hit that.  But it's definitely got a Christina Rossetti influence.)	9200	7/2