Oh look... a Flying Fuckaroo!
Not to be a drama queen but going to work every day feels like a fucking sentence or maybe more of an essay or maybe a fucking dissertation on the sudden proliferation of Flying Fuckaroos narrated by (pause) David (pause) fucking (pause) Attenborough (sigh)
I was going to text my friend David-not-Attenborough to come visit like he does and we sit outside and have a glorious time talking about writing, and the sunny days are coming to an end, so I was going to text come visit Monday because after two solid weeks of homing from work I was going to say I’ll be working from home (wink implied) but I didn’t because I’m getting slightly better than awful at detecting wishful thinking moments and so I approached the invitation with caution and sure as shit I worked Monday.
That was last week and I’ve been going in every day since like a fucking trap which of course it is
So there I am waiting for the train in the mornings again dressed like I work in a daycare, you know, clearly in denial, wearing sleeveless jumpsuits of which I have two so I alternate and maybe people who come to work every other day think something and maybe they don’t although these jumpsuits are pretty hard to ignore I gotta say especially when paired (tripled?) with my platform running shoes which are reminiscent of The Spice Girls or at least their error lol spellcheck I fucking hear ya baby.
Dressing age appropriately is for sissies. We of the Flying Fuckaroos don’t – you guessed it – give a Flying Fuckaroo
Most people on the train look like they work at morgues. I was going to add they look fucking embalmed but couldn’t figure out how to spell it with bomb in it.
I’m missing my 7am swim in Lake Ontario, too, and the white stain it looks like when I take my Fitbit off to shower, my working-from-home-tan exceptional this year which oddly enough was noted by some of my colleagues. Also when I glimpse myself (I really have to move that mirror) stepping into the shower I have a white bikini – a perfect fit which is rare – although it’s a little worn in places. I should get new strings and elastic without the give.
And speaking of, there’s a certain nobility about stress-eating isn’t there?
I mean when you think of it as stress eating you can forgive yourself, you know, external circumstances and all that, but when you think of it as voluntary gorging, forgiveness is not as readily available is it?
But listen… I’m going to let you in on my latest life hack: The Ice Cream Hack!
When a cheerful voice from the kitchen hollers I’m going to Dairy Queen what would you like? – rhetorically of course and also why to have children – and you’ve been suffering a wicked craving like she’s reading your mind, simply follow these few easy steps:
take a small bowl
switch for medium bowl
fill with ice cream
That way when she returns with your Score Blizzard (thanks spellcheck I am for once in full agreement) you won’t hurt yourself getting up so quickly or get that dizzy thing. Also yours will last longer and you can judge those greedy little fuckers who finish before you.
Thank me later and you’re welcome in advance!
And just for fun here’s a little story if you’re interested and if you’re not, here it isn’t.
This bit is a character study if you will or won’t, something I put between chapters of A Carnival Ago when I feel like it. A Carnival Ago is my current project more weird and more wonderful than anything I’ve ever written. Don’t worry who’s who. I think you can enjoy it without knowing the history but might help you to know Fagan is a monkey, One is a circus freak as is Alice due to her great height and albino-ness and such a clever gypsy is Bly. Vidal is also of the carnival, missing and in peril, and they all – and more gypsies, too – are on a journey to rescue him. Come closer let me tell you what happens next…
ALICE-BETWEEN-CHAPTERS
I saw Alice over the years.
She came to Dannyboy’s rides at their inaugurations and joined the hoopla although was forbidden to ride due to a remarkably ill fit. She turned up to the lake for a sleepover not often enough, once every ten years or so, although after our 40th birthdays which were on the same day she stayed as many nights.
There is nothing new about Alice’s appearance after all this time. Her hair always white, her skin also white see-through and taut, her body moving as if motorized, without grace, but when she danced the music evened her out so she was elastic, the notes pinging her long legs into arcs, her arms like willows, her face soft from something temporary spread between skin and bone I think was bliss.
Vidal had loved her with his whole heart, never was he interested in another, but Alice did not understand love and since her body gave no indication that it was capable of reproduction she did not understand love making, too.
When one writes a story things of-the-moment go into it and give it its colour, its peculiarities, maybe I’ll roll the sweet tomatoes I had for dinner onto a character’s breakfast plate or let the shadows on my wall lean into the bus in which the fellowship travel, allow the gold wash of sunset to sink onto the page, little details and speculations, ideas, small-talk, nonsense at times regrettable but these are the knit ones purl twos of stories – the giving the taking – experiences shared through words on the page.
It is this I live for strangely.
Strangely it is this I live for.
This, strangely, I live for.
I want you to feel my nudge like I’m beside you, maybe when I lean and whisper you notice a hint of the fennel seeds I keep one after the other between my teeth, perhaps a lock of my hair falls across your arm, you might notice our shirts the same orange but when you search for my hand to take from the sleeve it is your own, for I am not beside you but instead only in the words.
Still, imagine for a moment a dark seam between our orange shirts, my arm bends into a nudge and when you turn I sharpen my eyes through the window and give a barely there nod.
Look I say at Alice and One.
Doctor Glisten made, at Alice’s request, a cone to amplify One’s whisper, for the distance between them, he like a bulldog at her long feet, prevented secrets. We all could hear One, his bellow like a longshoreman, but for private conversation his whisper made it to no ears including Alice’s until the cone, which they had to trade quickly to maintain conversation, but they both of them were clumsy people – One’s toe-fingers and rheumatoid Alice – and often instead of the words intended, they said forget it and their thoughts, like fairies disbelieved, fell to their deaths.
I don’t often but last night for dinner beans on toast and this morning also, the two cans rinsed and on my counter, for today is recycling, but instead of in my bin at the curb there are quite suddenly two cans, clean, behind a structure of rocks Alice and One near, and Bly One bellows give us some yarn.
Day four we all watch Fagan practice tightrope across the aisle on the yarn taut between two cans, one to the ear of Alice the other to One’s whispering mouth and vice versa on a dime.
Their secrets are about love – I listen, gather, study mouths – but not between the two strung, rather One is describing, for his handsome heart knows the truth, exactly the love possible for Alice who pinks now when she thinks of Vidal.
