Tag: ten-minute write

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Day is Done: Ten for Today

Death is a symbol. People stand in for other people, incarnation after incarnation.
 
My father comes in my room late one night earlier this week. “Al died.” His face is pale; he collapses to sitting on my bed, head bowed as he cries into his hands. Only he raises harrowed eyes to warn me, popping out through fear’s door where the pain gripped his voice,
 
“Be prepared. I’m next. And mom. I haven’t been feeling too good. I didn’t tell you but…”
 
And he sinks back into despair.
I try to hug him but his body and mine are too long-limbed, his back too rounded, mine too straight, and we clash. I never fasten my arms firmly to his shoulders. Maybe he resisted. The torment had him.
 
At the funeral, he told jokes, said inappropriate things that suggested the man he knew nearly all his life–his only sister’s husband–was not the best friend he appeared to be. There were hurt feelings, slights in the last ten years. And he learned early to protect his sister.
 
“I’m here for my sister.”
 
We drove five hours there in morning traffic after dropping our younger off at the airport to begin her college visit. Her flight left at 6 a.m. for Boston, Newark first. We had to get her there by 4:30, and then took to the road, sailing in to the Veterans Cemetery by 9:30 and thirty minutes to spare. This honored last rite in exchange for a leg he left in Korea.
 
And I cried. For the man, for his children and wife, for my father and mother, for my daughters, all the endings and beginnings swirling inside the belled mouth of a trumpet, steady-sweet, singing taps to signal day is done. As if we didn’t know it with our guts sunk into the intoning rabbi’s throaty prayers.
 

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Being writerly me: Ten for Today

October 10, 2016
 
This week I am the writer. Most weeks I’m more the teacher than the writer, and a bit of a dabbler in word pretties on the side. And every day I’m the mom.
 
But this week, I am working like a writer: writing, procrastinating, struggling, and mostly feeling insecure. I’ve been badgered by contract bosses breathing down my neck. “Is there a draft yet?” “Take your time (I gave you a week and it’s about 3 days in), but let me know when you have a draft.” And then, “How about now? Now? What about now?” Fuck, I’m trying to work!
 
So yesterday I sent my draft–twice. Once by message on the writing platform and once by invitation to Google docs. Nothing. Hurry up and wait.
 
But it didn’t take long before I got not one but five requests to view the doc. How big is this organization? I guess I never ask the important questions when I interview. They ask me if I can write, and I say I can. End of story.
 
What you want me to write, I can write it. For two days, I have been writing about robots and other godsends in upcoming AI applications. Health care will continue to automate for decades, delegating jobs to bots–therapy chat bots, vitals chat bots, and take two aspirins and call me in the morning chat bots. Amazing.
 
And then there’s IBM’s super duper Watson, kicking ass on Jeopardy when he’s not diagnosing disease and prescribing medicine. Watson will find the cure for cancer. Makes the post human age moniker I go by more real each passing year.
 
Today was rah rah cheerleading day for how wonderful corporations want their worker bees to beam good health and cheer–and not just for monetary reasons. That one was a hard sell–especially adding a little soft wit and snarkiness to make it less dull.
 
Tomorrow I’m the editor.

 
pixabay: dog writer

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Why work when there’s soccer on? Ten for Yesterday 

October 7th
 
It’s supposed to be feel-good Friday. How do I feel? Not as good as a Friday. Perhaps there’s too much pressure to respond to the collective psyche of the week day or weekend start day. That kind of pressure–conformity–always bums me more than just a little.
 
Measuring the days is a waste of time, though I’m programmed (self) to do just that. Yesterday was a productive day. We’ll call it productive Thursday, or throwback Thursday to a time when I was productive every day. Yesterday, I paid bills, cooked a meal, landed a couple of contracts, wrote a couple of blog posts, wrote a short essay for the blog, posted my social media blurbs for dollars, and enjoyed an entertaining evening and night.
 
I had more completed tasks than today. This morning, I completed a writing assignment due by noon with time to spare, so rewarded myself. I played with the puppy, started research on my next project, took a break to lie a bit, thought about writing some more, ate lunch, tried to walk the puppy (not successfully), and wrote a little more. Then I napped, and awoke to the cat staring at me. So I started writing this.
 
When the kids came after school, I watched Cameroon and Germany play for the Women’s Final something or other in soccer. My 8 year old great nephew watches soccer with me while his little sister downloads apps to my phone, ones with many animated pink girls, animals and purses. They are supposed to be my daughter’s charges, but somehow the powers of procrastination and the loose hand of the babysitter drive me to play.
 
So soccer on a Friday isn’t bad. It’s just that I didn’t get very far into researching that article I’m supposed to write. But I did make inroads into breaking my procrastination habit–one of the top items on my to do list for today. I thought about procrastination most of the day.

 

pixabay/soccer-competition-game-women

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Coffee College: Ten for Yesterday

October 5, 2016

For a change, I am spending my gap time between the two classes I teach on Wednesdays, in a cafe. Usually I flop on the adjunct faculty room couch to grade essays or research for some writing project I’m working on.
 
But today the weather hints fall, a pinch of bite in the temperate weather that makes an overly air conditioned room inside an old brick building edgy-cool. It’s a cold-settling-in-the-bones sort of day, and not just from the weather.
 
I awoke too many times last night, went to bed too late with a question on my mind after a day that went awry. I like my days to hang straight, not all crooked and dangling. Yesterday wobbled and pitched. I thought today was about recovery.
 
And to a degree, it is. The job I thought I lost yesterday is won today. I suspect I undersold myself again. I have no perspective. I simply press ahead, demanding fees and contracts, due compensation. I just keep writing. Somehow I believe I will write myself into something good.
 
Maybe that’s why I craved a cafe today. Writers write in cafes, don’t they? Or is that just hackneyed ones? I write in bars. Same thing. Today’s cafe writing is meant merely to bear the weather, watch the caffeinated crowd rather than the distilled, lilting and tipsy crowd (which I prefer).
 
Coffee intellect collects in the corners of cafes–in game board challenges and earphone mufflers, round table-ettes with stiff aluminum chairs and their hard comforts. I am cool. I sip espresso and write stupid observant shit about the gathered students in Star Wars shirts and floral, short dresses absorbing smoke from the lone cigarette dangling between two fingers of the Vietnamese girl in lipstick and roses.
 
No one else smokes. No one else of the 10 or so, have dressed for a party. They–all but the girl in short dress, leggings and hijab–have dressed like college students, the jeans and tees uniform.
 
And me, the teacher behind the window watch the outside patio group, denim-clad, capped, gum-chewing students of varying interest and attention spans. And as they shoot a glance at me behind my glass shelter, silently speaking aloud, do they wonder a whit about me?

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Mulligan Stew: Ten for Today


Someone kicked me in the head. No, it just feels that way. Like a rubber soled tennis shoe attached to a leg cocked back in ready mode, ready to slam into my head on the ‘go’ of Ready, Set, Go! The phantom bump on the base of my skull aches. 

It’s just pressure. The day’s failure oppresses me and manifests itself in an overblown-balloon-ready-to-pop tension. That’s me. Ready to pop. And it’s not popping time. Not for 4 more hours on this miserable shift.

To boot, the lady who pulled down the lever on a broken machine marked “out of service” complained about the dripped water on her food and wants to start her frozen yogurt creation over. Whatever. Sign of the times. Stupid.

I’m stupid. I spent all day writing for two new clients, two good blog pieces, solid stuff, just to blow the deadline on one by a minute and the instructions on the other. I actually wrote the wrong thing, on the wrong topic. How could I have misread the directions, completely ignoring the point of the whole blog site?! I could not even argue the post was remotely related, though I did offer to fix it. 

But first impressions are lasting, and I made a shitty one. Twice. Two jobs lost in one afternoon. Impressive–Not. Hours of work for no pay. My fault. And the drum in my head keeps beating it: Twice. Work. Zero. Pay. Zero. Work. Twice. No. Pay.

Sometimes the climb out of hell hits loose, slippery, rocky mountainside. I slipped and fell, though I probably won’t make the same mistake again. I hope. Back to the grind.

“No, see the sign? It says it’s out of service, so you hit stale water, not yogurt. Yeah, I guess you should have read the sign. No, it’s all right. Start over.” I smile weakly. She takes her do-over in sheepish confusion. I’ll take mine tomorrow.

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Taco Love: Ten for Today

Another night. Of course, I had to. He tries so hard. And it is taco Tuesday all over the world, right? Okay, all that matters is he wants to feed me to say thanks. He believes I saved his life. But I simply nursed him back to health. He saved his own life. No one can save another’s life, not if he doesn’t want it saved.
 
His meds have changed him. Some would say for the better. He’s loving, kind and sentimental. Before he was mean, sad, angry and mournful, broken up with biting moments of crass humor or cutting sarcasm. We actually were more amused when he was an awful curmudgeon. I mean awful. The kids laughed at his foulness, how he’d get pissed off and tell his grandchildren to fuck off, or I hate that fucking kid referring to one of the small neighborhood children.
 
Not that he meant any of it–or not for long. He had no patience. He still doesn’t; he just doesn’t care. He’s Celexa free-bodied now. Numbed to the pain. Some would wonder why all the pain. But I know. I see him suffer in rage and frustration. That life he thought was promised, the kind with growing old with your wife of 63 years, bickering, holding hands and reminiscing.
 
He was always himself with her, no matter how much that meant the ogre unleashed his ugly all over us, all over the place. But he could apologize and laugh and lie peacefully in spooned sleep, snoring away the reality of another 12 hour day on his feet in the noise, no one treating him right, yet his duty, loyalty and ethics marching on, always.
 
On time. He had to be on time, always. Not miss any days in the factory go round. Proud of his stamina and responsibility. If anything, he’s been responsible and enduring. Sisyphus and the invisible rock.
 
And after all those years, those endless hours watching, walking, minding the machines, his retirement a promise of hundreds if not thousands of dealt hands and studied numbers (he’s a card counter and that’s why he’s so good), he finds her gone, only her bodily remains shadowing him like the cool shady relief of memory. But she’s a wound too.
 
So he feeds me. He thinks it’s love. I take it. My belly begs me not to. Because it’s not enough to love me two tacos large. It’s always four taco love, despite my refusal. Today, I ate. Burp.   

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Coddled College Kiddies: Ten for Today


It’s the gap. I teach from 1 to 3 then 5:30-9:45 on Wednesdays. So, I work in the adjunct faculty room in between classes, lounged on the couch, correcting papers as it so happens today. Last night, I had 8 more to correct for tonight’s class, which is right next door to the faculty room. 

Two other young instructors inhabit the room. A knock at the door, and I let in a muscular, sleeveless t-shirted young man, who could be a very young adjunct (they all look young these days) or a student. He drops his backpack next to one of the room inhabitants as he whisks past me without so much as an acknowledgement of my existence. He is intent.

Beginning with a list of his laudatory behavior loudly proclaimed–I completed this chapter, did this review…Will there be a quiz on this today?–he engages his young, dark, curly haired instructor with the milk chocolate skin and thick, black eyebrows. She has a gentle manner. 

“Yes, good, good. Very good…”

But then he moves on to the speech he made the other day in class, when he came to class dressed up in formal clothing, something not so easy for an out of state student who pays high fees to attend. 

“It’s unfair, you know. You kind of beat me down, took my wind a little, you know. I mean it was a great idea, dressing up, and then, you know, you go make it a requirement that everyone has to dress up. And it’s not fair. You know what I’m saying?”

She’s listening patiently, and so am I, though my thoughts are racing with this kid’s typical college student at this community college by the beach stance: the classroom is a democracy and I get to voice my feelings about what the teacher did, how it’s run. I shake my head motionlessly. 

He would do well to sit in on my class where I make it clear that college is not a right but a privilege. Don’t take my class if it doesn’t suit you. It’s not high school. There are other teachers for this intro course.

“I am trying to understand you. What’s not fair?” She replies to Mr. Whiny pants.

“Well, I thought of the idea of dressing up and then you make it a requirement. You know some people can’t afford to dress up for a class, like lower income people. And you made it a requirement. But you know I thought of it, kind of my advantage, you know, and then you made it for everyone to do. You took away my leg up.”

I groan–audibly. I’m not cut out for teaching any more, maybe. I get my carcass up from the couch and leave the room. 

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Decay Doldroms for the Season: Ten for Today


September 19, 2016

I haven’t written in a while, not here on the blog anyhow. Not for ten minutes or any minutes. My time has been taken up with ghost blogging and raising some cash. Writing under deadline drains me. That and mid-night walks with the puppy. Not sure how I’m still standing and working this late hour.

Jump starting the ten minute write is just what I need to get my groove back. I fear the return of the malaise, the block—the doldrums. Don’t want to go back there where I could not write a word as my mind swore there were no more to write. The mind trap viciously snaps shut. Sometimes it feels as if there is nothing to be done about it.

Another September, approaching fall, which has always been my favorite season, full of the color of dying, a ravaging display of decay and splendorous leaf parades (not that we get that much here in Southern California) and summer heat relief. There will be an Indian summer here in a bit—if the weather isn’t totally deranged as it has been (no such thing as global warming). But then the crisp Halloween night will remind me that it’s fall, time to bring the crockpot down from its box atop the refrigerator.

I like cold weather foods—roasted root vegetables and butternut squash soups and pumpkin everything (not latte, please)—and I like cold weather wear: big bulky sweaters, leather boots and wool beanies. No, there’s no snow here, but we can look like we are expecting it at any moment. Pullover sweaters are the reason for the season.

The year winds down. The count down to my most unfavorite time of the year, holidays and forced cheer, overspending and time pressures. This year I may find myself alone for the holidays with my family going overseas, but I think I might welcome that more than dread it. Perhaps not on Christmas Eve, but that’s never been my tradition, except for my kids’ sake, and so I’m always slightly estranged from the spirit and light of it.

I might actually get time off without the hassles of shopping—my least favorite thing to do—and agonizing over selecting, wrapping and presenting gifts. I’m not a Scrooge. Just over it after too many seasons. Ah, who am I kidding? I am Scroogie.

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Puppies, Language and Gender: Ten for Today


September 14, 2016
 
Between classes in the adjunct faculty lounge, I researched a little for those 600-word blog posts due in a couple days and then decided to lie a bit on the couch before my class in an hour. Teaching a two-hour afternoon class and a four-hour night class, Wednesdays are double espresso shots over ice with soy milk days. It’s just too long. And with the sleepless night discovering that 5-week old Husky puppies howl like wolves when they’re small, scared and lonely at night, I almost went for a third shot. That might have made me jump up and down in class, scaring students.
 
The lounge/work station/office is usually empty when I enter with maybe one or two other adjuncts tapping keys or eating lunch. Today there were two, then just me for a stretch, until five minutes ago when the mom-toned, 50-ish, Spanish teacher came in with the young Vietnamese student. She encourages the young man with the thick Vietnamese accent in her thick Spanish accent. She is gentle. He is intent, trying to understand nuance, detail and idiosyncrasy of the language. He frets over Spanish gender words.
 
For good reason. Gender confuses me too these days. I agree with Judith Butler and many who followed after her: gender stretches out over the arced spectrum of identity, biology and psyche. Binaries are a relic from a bygone era. But the English language hasn’t caught up to reality, how people live. It lags. Pronouns shift; grammar is slow to follow. The plural “they” is now more apt a singular designation for the individual, neuter, than a plural. 
But aren’t we all a plurality of identities? Ethnicity, nationality, biology, anatomy, culture, class, IQ, ideology, lifestyle, and a myriad of other particulars–including gender? Tracking gender in language, on government forms and in questionnaires is obsolete.  

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