Seeking Clarity

Claire saw her past as a collection of seemingly unrelated patterns and textures haphazardly strung together like an old, worn hand-sewn quilt. Some pieces hanging by a faded shred, some clearly new to the group, reinforcing old flaws. The only difference was, it didn't warm her when she was cold, it wasn't cozy when she was alone in her apartment and unlike a full quilt, there were unexplained gaps in Claire's self narrative...squares of emptiness. Jump cuts in a life.

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Several blogs that have recently been brought to my attention. And peeps, I like 'em!

1. Something's Hiding In Here

2. The Year In Pictures

3. What Possessed Me

4. Delight by Design

5. Sweet Paul

6. Design Is Mine

7. Oh Joy!

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Book Alphabet! How cool...by Hanna Nilsson and Sofia Østerhus

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Knit-tastic:http://grantedclothing.myshopify.com/

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This Paper Boat

by Ted Kooser

Carefully placed upon the future,
it tips from the breeze and skims away,
frail thing of words, this valentine,
so far to sail. And if you find it
caught in the reeds, its message blurred,
the thought that you are holding it
a moment is enough for me.

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After my college graduation in 2008 I took a rigorous writing workshop (as I've mentioned before) and I wrote my first short story. I actually recall sitting down to write poem and this weird story flooded out instead. Short stories are one of the most challenging genres and it was an incredibly humbling experience. The class workshopped the piece for about 45 min. and I was so grateful for all of the feedback. Anyway, I was thinking of this earlier this morning and went back to read the story again for the first time since May 2008. I haven't touched it since that workshop day, but I still have all of the notes I took and I'd love to go back and actually spend time editing it. It's a little weird, I definitely don't love it....but I think it'd be a good exercise in writing to dedicate some energy to the editing process. I do remember thinking I was pretty cool for choosing not to use any quotation marks throughout the piece. Anyway, here it is, if you're interested (unedited, of course...definitely seeing the flaws, but it's fun to read now.....2 years more mature, ha!):

Blackness Never Came

by Julia Redig Howe

Daniel Irwin Carver III died with his eyes and mouth wide open. It was a look of utter surprise. As if he were astonished that drinking forty ounces of Liquid-Plumber Gel actually could kill a person. As if, because it wasn’t Drain-o, the real plumber gel, it was a fake and therefore the Danger: Poisonous warning was a sham.

He was on his bathroom floor halfway between resting on his back and searching for the fetal position. A small yellow pool of his own vomit circled his head like a halo. Maybe vomit isn’t the right word. Bile. It was a yellow, foamy fluorescent bile that was seeping into his salt and pepper hair.

He was wearing his camel-colored three-piece suit, untouched by both the murderous gel and his foamy insides. It was practically the only suit he wore, he said, so he must have taken great care to keep it so tidy in the midst of his poison seizure.
The only day he didn’t wear that suit, he told me, was on Sundays. Nobody knows exactly when he downed the gel, but it couldn’t have been on Sunday. The police suspect it was about four days ago, late afternoon.

It was a pathetic sight, really. The gray Liquid-Plumber container stood about two feet from the dead man’s chest. The label was plastered with slogans that the company hoped would sway the shopper to buy this brand, the brand that lingers in the shadow of Drain-o. They wanted the consumer to know that just because their product was two dollars cheaper, the quality was just as good, and maybe even better.

Professional Strength.
Clog remover, safe for all pipes.
Destroys the Clog!
Satisfaction Guaranteed.

He wasn’t wearing his dark brown leather penny-loafers. He wasn’t wearing shoes at all. Cream-colored dress socks stuck out from his pant legs. They were the kind with ribs in them and they went nicely with the faint suggestion of a checkered-pattern in the suit. The bottom of his socks were blackish. A little morsel of food was stuck to his right big toe. A piece of a raisin maybe, or a dried cranberry. By that point it had been stepped on so many times that it became a part of the sock. Even the washing machine wouldn’t be able to get it out.

I know all of these details because I was there. I was there after some asshole at the university finally realized that Professor Carver hadn’t been on campus for his Monday and Wednesday classes. The dean of the school called the police because he was too busy to care enough to check on Daniel himself. Upon inspection, officer McGrady told me, they found a small piece of white paper folded within Daniel’s breast pocket. It had my name and phone number on it. But I knew this already. I had given Daniel Irwin Carver III that piece of paper last week. At the time I thought that maybe I shouldn’t do this, I don’t want to get too involved with this guy. But there I was, more involved than anyone ever should be. There I was, the only person who could speak for Daniel Carver on the day that the police found his cold, clog-free body.

November 12th, about 1pm. This was the first time I saw Daniel. I remember this because I had just been promoted to shift supervisor at the coffee shop. I had made a conscious effort to not care about the promotion. A recent college graduate, I didn’t want to end up like one of those guys who couldn’t find real work and became psyched when they were promoted to shift supervisor. Then, they think, well this is good for now, I don’t need to find a job right away, I’ll just do this for a year. And then they become manager. And they get comfortable with being the dictator of one of a million of these shops and the thought of finding a real job is just too much. Why do that when they can boss around fifteen other people and make enough money to live in New York City?

So it was my first day as shift supervisor when Daniel came in. I was busy behind the counter showing Alice how to make a blended mocha chiller. Just as we were putting three pumps of mocha flavoring into the cup, Jerry, the airhead at the register, called out, One grande Americano with an extra shot!

A grande Americano with an extra shot? Nobody around here got that. The drink was just two shots, or in this case three, of espresso mixed with hot water. People in SoHo always got the drinks that were a pain in the ass to make. A venti, non-fat, wet, decafe cappuccino, or a tall soy butternut latté no whip, with sprinkles. But an Americano? Far too bitter, dark and simple for these people. I told Alice I would be right back.

And there was Daniel, in his camel-colored three-piece suit waiting in front of the register for Gem, our barista of the day, to make his simple beverage. I told Jerry it was time for him to take his break. But I just got here, he told me. I told him I was shift supervisor now so he better go take his break and be back in fifteen minutes.

Daniel looked like some character you might see at one of Jay Gatsby’s parties. He was unreal and because of this I was drawn to him.

Gem finished the drink and handed it to the suit-wearing espresso-drinking man.
That’ll be three sixty-two, I said. Way too expensive.

Daniel must have thought so too because his eyebrows rose a bit as he sifted through his tattered brown leather wallet.

He must not have had the cash because he handed me a credit card. I swiped it and several moments later, slid the receipt his way.

Just sign at the X please.

And I knew that was my chance. I had to ask him something and I didn’t know yet that he was a professor so I asked him what he was.

He looked at me and then down at the little piece of paper he had just signed.
Son, he said, I’m just a copy of a copy, see? And his eyes urged me to look down at the receipt. Daniel Irwin Carver III.

He asked me if I always worked that shift and I said yes, unfortunately, but hopefully not for long.

He winked at me, grabbed his triple-shot Americano and sat down at the little table in the corner by the window.

I didn’t know people still winked. I didn’t know what it meant exactly. And I didn’t know that random middle-aged men still called twenty-two year old men son. And because my dad kicked the bucket when I was six months old, it felt good to have somebody other than my lonely mother call me son.

I called Jerry back from the break room.

But it’s only been five minutes! He said. Just do it, I said. I’m the shift supervisor so you better listen to me.

I was already feeling the hint of power that being shift supervisor permitted. No, I said to myself, you can’t be like this, don’t let it get to your head. You’re better than this. Don’t end up like those other guys. I decided that I would look for jobs once my shift was up. Real jobs that only college graduates have a shot at.

I didn’t want to be obvious, but I kept glancing over at Daniel Irwin Carver III. What a noble name, I thought. Maybe that’s why he wears three-piece suits. Has to live up to the name. Maybe being a copy of a copy was a real burden. Maybe the suit lifted that burden.

In between caramel macchiato milkshakes and green tea lattés I examined Daniel. At 1:28 he was still at that table. Writing on a yellow legal pad. A few pages had been turned over and he looked pensive. I figured he must be a writer.

He would take these long pauses. Even though I was safe behind that god awful counter and he was way back in the corner and we were in no way engaging in any discourse of any kind, those pauses made me uncomfortable. And then an idea or something would come to him and he would write furiously for a few minutes. And then pause again.

Yes, I thought, he must be a writer. He probably thinks that his suit is intellectual and artsy. If that’s what he thought, I agreed.

He got up to go to the bathroom at one point and I considered sweeping crap off of the floor right near the john as he came out. That way I would have another chance to say something to him. But a big lady dressed in full leopard print needed a double chocolate chip mocha chiller with extra whip and Alice couldn’t do it on her own so I missed my window of opportunity. Alice was a moron and I resented her for that.

By 2pm my shift was over and Daniel Irwin Carver III was still there. I told myself, Hell, just go talk to the old man. What’s the worst that could happen?

Something about that three-piece suit, the name, the wink. I was being pulled in his direction and before I knew it I was sitting across from him at the little table in the far corner by the window.

I figured you’d be over this way, he said without looking up.

Ok, I could play this game. I asked him what he was writing about.

Nothing, he said.

I told him he was a liar, I saw him attack that paper with his pen as if whatever was in his head was as valuable as the holy grail and if it wasn’t put on that paper in that instant, well, then it would be gone forever and for some reason or other he’d be screwed. So what was he writing about?

He said he didn’t say that he wasn’t writing, he just wasn’t writing about anything.

I told him that didn’t make sense.

He pushed the pad of paper my way and said, look son, I wasn’t writing about anything.

He had filled six sheets of lined paper with various lists of names. Each group of names was under a different category.

Kindergarten:
Besty Alcost
Jeffrey Briggs
Suzy LaRoth
Bus Driver

First Grade:
Allie Clapton
Seth McGreggor

Second Grade:
Jeffery Briggs
Ms. Dummar
Red-headed Lunch Lady

The lists went through every grade, several workplaces, regions of the world and so on. Jeffrey Briggs showed up seven times, I counted. Kindergarten, second grade, eighth grade, all-stars baseball league, California, and People I actually want to kill.

I asked Daniel Irwin Carver III who this Jeffrey Briggs character was and he said just some jerk that had made his life miserable.

I asked what the lists were and he said they were just lists of people who had made his life miserable and what did I care.

I was just curious I guess and I asked him why he had lists of people who had made his life miserable.

Because son, he said, one day you’ll wake up and wonder why you hate your life and you’ll need somewhere to put the blame, people to point the finger at and say You! If it weren’t for you, my life could be wonderful and all of my dreams could have come true!

I thought about this for a few seconds, it seemed stupid and I told him that.

Don’t you think, I said that we all control our own fate and we can create the lives we want, regardless of the assholes that get in the way?

He said he guessed so, but he declined from thinking of it that way, it was easier to blame other people.

We sat together for twenty-six minutes. I know this because I had to run two blocks to the nearest subway station to catch the 2:30 train and that always takes four minutes and I just barely made it that day.

In those twenty-six minutes, Daniel Irwin Carver III told me he was a professor of Physics at NYU. More specifically, he taught fluid mechanics and when I asked him what that was he started throwing around terms like advection, dynamic pressure, spin-down time, rotating fluid and Stokes velocity. And I stopped caring and he asked me what I was doing with my life.
I’m only working at this place until I get a real job, I told him. I wanted to be an engineer and he told me he knew some names and would I like to give him my phone number so that he could pass it along?

I was hesitant, but figured it couldn’t hurt. So that’s why, on the day he died, he had that little piece of paper in his breast pocket. I guess he never passed it along like he said.
He told me he was divorced, had no children, had published five physics books and one book of poetry which he said was shit because he wasn’t a poet and they only published it because he had made somewhat of a name for himself by then.

I said it was nice to meet him but I really had to go catch the train.
He called me son again and I dashed out the door.

###

And so on that day, the day the police called me and asked me if I could please go look at the body, I said, sure I guess but I really didn’t know the guy.
Officer McGrady gave me directions to the apartment and when I got there I immediately regretted going at all.

I didn’t want to see that dead, bile halo, three-piece suit body on the floor.
I asked one of the other guys in blue who had called the squad.
Dean of NYU, he said, Jeffrey Briggs.
I said oh, Daniel Irwin Carver III hated that guy.
The officers asked me to tell them everything I knew about the professor, so I did.
It wasn’t much.

And then they put a black sheet over Daniel Irwin Carver III’s cold, clog-free body and it struck me.

I knew I had to go to the coffee shop and quit. I hated every employee there and I didn’t want to be the next dead guy with a bottle of Liquid-Plumber Gel next to him because I had let those guys get to me.

So I told the cops, nice chatting, but I really do have to go now.
They said thanks for the help, they would call if they had more questions.

I ran eighteen blocks to the coffee shop and I quit. And it felt so good. Then I went to the bookstore and found Daniel Irwin Carver III’s book of poetry. It was entitled, Blackness Never Came. And maybe blackness never did come for Daniel. I really have no clue. Maybe even though he was dead he was still tortured by these people who made his life on earth miserable. And he was right, the poetry was bad.


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Happiness itself is a commons to which everyone should have equal access.



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ummm....awesome? I think so:

Pedigree Dogs ad shot 1000 FPS using the Phantom camera





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Dork Yearbook! Thith ith tho thweet you guyth...

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Advice To Writers

Even if it keeps you up all night,
wash down the walls and scrub the floor
of your study before composing a syllable.

Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.
Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.

The more you clean, the more brilliant
your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take
to the open fields to scour the undersides
of rocks or swab in the dark forest
upper branches, nests full of eggs.

When you fiind your way back home
and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,
you will behold in the light of dawn
the immaculate altar of your desk,
a clean surface in the middle of a clean world.

From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift
a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,
and cover pages with tiny sentences
like long rows of devoted ants
that followed you in from the woods.

- Billy Collins

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Wow, loving these fade kitchen bowls! Too cool

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Check out this super cool list generator! You'll be hooked...




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Forgot how much I loved playing on this Jackson Pollock site

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This Gummi Bear Chandelier is...unreal







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xo