Butt Crack

Musings on a Butt Crack

I wonder if she felt it. Almost the entire split of her backside bulged out over too-tight pants as she sat on the picnic table bench across from a Jack Spratt skinny man. The table was situated alongside the busy road carrying workers and moms, students and musicians, athletes and gardeners to and fro. I mean, didn’t she sense a draft back there? Didn’t the tightness of her southerly waistband cut off circulation so that her legs would tingle like when you sleep on your arm wrong? Does she not have nerve endings in the back of her body? Oh, well then. She MUST think it’s attractive. Or maybe sexy. Jesus, there ought to be a law.
How can people a) get that way or b) think that the exposure of such corpulence is appealing? Maybe her man likes the publicity, as in “my wife has a wonderful derrière, and I want everyone to see it.” Has he ever looked at a Playboy? The centerfold has to be unfolded vertically for a reason. They don’t require a horizontal unfolding as well. I have never seen a “large” print version of Playboy. Maybe there’s a market for this mature AARP version. Call it Aging Ass for Retired Playboys.
Back to my friend at the park. She had a long, thick braid descending almost to the top of her bare buttocks--the kind you see in K Mart and 99 cent stores--or at health food stores draping down the backs of gray haired male and female hippies in their sixties and seventies wearing sandals and no bras. I kind of like that idea, though. There must be an age at which it’s okay not to care any more. Or rather, there must be a time when you can choose to dress to the nines OR roam around in the slovenly furnishings of the rich and famous when you’re fixed-income poor and decidedly unknown, or want to be.
Maybe my new acquaintance was a starlet in disguise wearing a Mrs. Doubtfire body suit and a Sacagawea wig for a privately public picnic in no-name Cypress, California on a Thursday afternoon. Or not. At forty miles and hour on the way home from work, I didn’t take the time to circle around for a closer view. After all, it looked dreadful the first time around. However, it DID garner my attention in the sick way writers find grist for the writing mill in just about anything.

Why No One Does Windows

Washing Windows

You don’t know what you’ve missed seeing until
You wash your windows and
Watch your dingy world clarify itself.
You hum as you work and ask yourself
“Why don’t I do this more often?”

The outside looks great until you’re inside
And you see a smudge--a streak that got by you.
You mosey outside, sure it will be the last time
And you look through, assuming perfection.
Now it’s smeared on the inside.
The smudge that wasn’t there is there now.
Crap.
Back and forth; in and out. And then finally…
It looks good!

--BEAT--

You start to walk away; and turn your head
For one last look at your beautiful, flawless windows.
But from this new angle --
Crap!
Another streak.
You walk back-- rag in hand.
You are no longer humming.
In fact, you are cussing.
You think, “Newspapers will do the trick.”
You will win. You know it.
You can smell sweet victory.
You wipe feverishly,
Holding your breath until you are ALL done.
You step back, gasping. Your arms ache.
A smile twitches at your lips.
“HA HA. I Win,” you say to yourself until --

--BEAT--

Your laughter slows. Your grin frowns.
There. In the corner. Right near the bottom.
What is that?
Damn!
There’s another.
One more.
Oh, to hell with it.

Italians

I am half Italian. But I missed out on the beautiful half. Having been in Rome in December, I can honestly say that there were some astonishingly handsome men there. Sexy, dark, sculpted, swarthy, alive with youth or wizened with smug self-knowledge and worldliness. They did seem self-absorbed, but then who wouldn't be with their dark and curly hair, black-brown eyes ringed with luscious, thick eyelashes; lips full and Latin, the whites of their eyes and teeth made whiter by Mediterranean dark skin? And cheekbones. God, the cheekbones. No wait. Check out the tight, telling jeans.
On their arms, or in a clutch of young people, there stood the equally striking women -- long, straight silky how-do-they-do-that-all-day-long? hair with complexions from magazine ads, rouged just right, full of lips, dark perfect eyebrows with just the right arch and no stray hairs, because it would detract from their oval-esque, dreamy, green-brown eyes, perfectly shadowed and lined. Complete with natural beauty marks, dressed in short fur jackets, no-scratch boots, designer jeans, and tight, full tops, they laugh perfect-teeth laughs, not working-class London grins, but affected, Italian grist-for-paparazzi laughs. And they probably spend way too much time in front of mirrors to look that way, say I, middle aged, and with hugely different values, a lot less free time, and thank-you-very-much wrinkles.
In short, men and women of any age can enjoy the eye-candy on the streets of Rome, in a country that struts lust-for-life with its head tilted back laughing. Or at least I'd like to think so.

Writing Reference Books

In this post, I submit yet another couple of citations from a recently purchased how-to book --as if I didn't already have enough. I wish to quote from Noah Lukeman in his book "The First Five Pages -- A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile." Lukeman is both a writer and an agent who is not accepting new authors. That said, the book remains replete with tips and reminders for all writers who wish to publish, indeed all writers who wish to write well. In chapter 1, Presentation, Lukeman puts your manuscript into CONTEXT. "The unknown writer's manuscript [unlike Stephen King's] will be read by an angry, overworked intern or editorial assistant, one hoping to be able to find the tiniest fault so he can get it out of the way and move on to the next five thousand manuscripts."

Here's an example of how to avoid the "tiny faults" they might find: "When rewriting, pretend that someone will give you $100 for every word you are able to cut ... which makes for a tighter read." Which words to cut? Start with Adjectives and Adverbs, the title of Chapter 2 of his book.

I heard about the book from Barbara DeMarco Barrett’s “Writer’s On Writing” Radio show, 88.9 FM. Both her show and this book are musts for the serious writer. See ya.

From "This Year You Write Your Novel"

The author of TYYWYN, Walter Mosley, writes "Poetry is the fount of all writing. Without a deep understanding of poetry and its practices, any power the writer might have is greatly diminished." Why, I asked myself, does this prolific author who claims not to be a poet even address the issue? He says, "Of all writing, the discipline in poetry is the most demanding. ... In poetry you have to see language as both music and content. ... If the fiction writer demands half of what the poet asks of herself, then that writer will render an exquisitely written novel." Wow.
Mosley recommends a poetry workshop. Where do I sign up?

Writing Workshops

I can't help myself. I'm starting another writing workshop here in Chico, nine hours from my home. And the people who are coming tonight are SO excited. Why? Because many people want to write, but they don't know where to start. I want to help them get started, because there is, in my world, just a handful of things that transcend the pleasure of writing. And so, we will draw from Janet Burroway's book Writing Fiction and throw out such subjects from her page 11, such as: from the first seven years of your life, make a list of events, people, your self, inner life, characteristic things. Or, Burroway tells us that a tenth century Japanese courtesan had the following list of Things that she used: Things I wish had never been said. Red things. Things more embarrassing than nudity. Things to put off as long as possible. Things to die for. Acid things. Things that last only a day. These subjects start the fire. Our imaginations can fan the flames and result in a wonderful story -- real or fiction. It doesn't matter, as long as we're dropping it on the page, word after word after word.

My Pushy Muse

Work is a four letter word and an excuse not to write, but it pays the bills. Not working is more fun, but is more the challenge, because my writing muse taps her foot, arms crossed, waiting in the corner, no make that, waiting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear: write, damn it, write.
She's not patient, my muse. She taketh away the right to procrastination and giveth harsh criticisms for all the many ways I can avoid the hard stuff: putting one word and then another and then another on the page, word by word, bird by bird, until the work is done and has to be redone and redone and redone (OY) until it's as right as it's going to get, and even then we want to fiddle with it some more, now don't we?
Enough. She's no longer whispering. She's shouting. IT'S TIME TO WRITE NOW!