Me and Lloyd and a Good Halloween

At the risk of sounding like an old man gassing on with pompous proclamations that begin with “in my day…”, I remember the Halloweens of my childhood as kinder, gentler, more magical times than Halloweens seem nowadays.

Trick-or-Treating was a (mostly) carefree endeavor where children went from door to door in a neighborhood that was safe and full of people you knew (and, perhaps more importantly, full of people who knew your parents :-) We compared costumes…some store bought, some homemade…and collected treats delightful (those little bitty chocolate candy bars) and mildly disappointing (those rock-hard ribbon candies that linger in our bags until we could pawn them off to younger siblings or until everything else was gone.) And we could happily take fruit and homemade delights without fear of them containing poison or razor blades or anything else like that (the idea of taking our Halloween treasure to a hospital to have them x-rayed for dangerous things wasn’t part of our childhood experience.) The worst thing that could happen, we assumed, was a childish prank.

When I was in the 5^th grade I made the Halloween rounds with Lloyd, my best friend at the time. We were both shy boys but we were quite at ease with each other. Lloyd lived across the street from the north side of Manual Arts High School and I lived about four blocks to the west. Most school mornings Lloyd would be waiting for me and we would walk the six blocks between his house and Menlo Avenue School together talking about things that 5^th grade boys talked about.

On the Halloween evening of that year, Lloyd and I made the rounds of the neighborhood together (my brother Guy was off with his bratty little friends which was just fine with me.) I was dressed in my plastic Batman helmet, my vinyl Batman cape, my cool Batman t-shirt, black pants, and my stylish Batman sneakers; Lloyd was decked out as a cowboy.

We went to my block of 40^th Place first making a beeline for the vaguely spooky house of the old lady who lived across the street from me. She was one of the few white people left in what had at one time been an all-white middle class neighborhood and she mostly kept to herself; but every Halloween she made the most amazing little cakes, meticulously decorated, and handed them out. I knew to go to her house early because there were only so many that she made each year and when the last one was handed out she would shut off her porch light and apparently go to bed. Lloyd and I got there in time and took the precious little cakes over to my house to stash them in the refrigerator for safekeeping.

We circled the blocks we were allowed to visit collecting candy and gum and fruit until our bags were loaded down with sugary, chocolaty goodness. Having collected as much as we could…if not, being 5^th grade boys who didn’t always know what was good for them, as much we wanted to…we stopped back by my house. I took off my helmet and my cape and stashed my loot on my bed while Lloyd retrieved his little cake.

As the hour was growing late I offered to walk Lloyd halfway home and he agreed. We sat off…the cowboy and the unmasked Batman…but as we reached the corner two teenage boys came running out of the darkness howling like banshees. Before we knew what was going on they had snatched Lloyd’s bag right out of his hands were running back into the darkness laughing.

Lloyd was devastated. I offered to share half of my candy with him but he adamantly refused so I took him back to my house and got another bag and we went out again. Trick-or-Treat time was winding down so many houses…including the house of the old white lady across the street…had already switched off their porch lights but we went to every house that still lit. I was, as I said, quite shy but I screwed up my courage to explain to people at the doors what had happened. Lloyd was tight-lipped, afraid that he might cry if he said anything he told me later, but the people were happy to give him more treats even though we’d been to their houses before (a couple gave him the remainder of what they had left in their bowls.

By the time we were done, Lloyd’s bag was almost as full as the first one had been. We went back to my house so that I could get my cousin Philip, who was in High School, to walk us to Lloyd’s house. Though part of me really didn’t want to, I tried to give Lloyd my little cake…sitting in its little box in the refrigerator…but, again, he refused. But when he wasn’t looking I slipped it into his bag anyway.

Philip walked us all the way to Lloyd’s house and then walked with me back home.

The next morning, I met Lloyd across the street from the north end of Manual Arts High School. He handed me a little box with exactly half of the little cake in it. We didn’t say anything about it, we just walked on to school.

It was, all things considered, a good Halloween.

The Street (a Halloween story)

The boys had turned a corner and ended up on a street they didn’t recognize. Bobby, feeling sporty in his Spider-Man costume, and Adam, feeling almost heroic as Luke Skywalker, frowned at each other. Each of them were carrying pillowcases half-full of trick-or-treat loot.

“I think we went too far,” Adam said, looking at the row of big old houses running down the street in front of them. “I’ve never seen any of these houses before.”

Bobby shrugged. “Well as long as we’re here we might as well see if they have some good candy,” he said striding up a walkway lit by eerie Jack O’ Lanterns flickering with candlelight.

Adam, always more cautious than his friend, hesitated. “I don’t know about this, Bobby,” he said looking around the street. “How come there’s no other kids trick or treating on this block? Maybe we should go find your Mom...”

Bobby stopped and, exasperated, spun around. “Don’t be such a chicken, Adam,” he said sharply. “If no other kids have found this block then maybe we can really score. Come on!”

Reluctantly, Adam obeyed and followed Bobby up the creaky stairs. The night was suddenly still and cold and when Adam looked over his shoulder he saw a thick fog creeping up the street. He started to say something but Bobby was already knocking on the door.

After a few seconds, the door opened with an awful, almost human groan.

“Trick or treat!” they both said (though Bobby was more enthusiastic by far.)

“Indeed?” a voice as old as time said in reply. The oldest woman either of the boys had ever even imagined stepped into the dim light. A smell…a mix of cinnamon, rosewater, and something musty...assaulted their senses. “My, what brave young men,” the old woman croaked, her eyes twinkling impishly. Her teeth were brown and seemingly jagged and her dress, which looked like it hadn’t been washed in years, was a dingy black. “You brave boys deserve a special treat.”

She disappeared into the shadows of her house and just as quickly reappeared. In her gnarled hands were what looked like two balls wrapped in gleaming golden foil. “I save the best golden chocolate apples for the bravest souls,” she said, holding out the treats.

The boys glanced at each other and then, warily, they held out their pillowcases. The old woman deftly placed a golden apple in each. “Thank you,” Bobby and Adam said as one.

“Off with you now, you young scalawags,” the woman said. “You don’t have much time to finish your rounds before the witching hour strikes.” The door creaked shut before either of the boys could ask her what that meant.

Adam spun on his heels and fairly ran down the stairs and down the walkway. Bobby, full of more bravado, pretended not to be fazed as he sauntered behind his friend.

“Okay, Bobby,” Adam said anxiously, “I think we should get home now.” He glanced around and the fog was dancing all around up and down the street and he realized that he wasn’t completely sure which way they had come.

“Relax, Adam,” Bobby said, finding his courage again. “Did you see the big ball of chocolate that old lady gave us…I’ll bet all of these old houses are giving out cool treats! Come on!”

Bobby marched off towards the next old house and Adam, unwilling to be left alone on the increasingly foggy lane, scurried to catch up.

At each house the boys were greeted by old people with gleaming eyes and wry smiles and at each house they were given delectable treats: bags of chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil, tiny cakes in protectively little boxes, glistening green apples, little wooden chests filled with plump jellybeans.

The fog was down to the ground by the time they reached the last house on the avenue. Adam paused at the gate of the last house because something about it looked so very familiar.

“C’mon, Adam,” Bobby said, “this is the last one and then we can go home.” Bobby wasn’t as confident as he sounded as the fog had spooked him as well but he knew that Adam looked to him to be the strong one and he wasn’t going to let his best friend down.

Adam couldn’t shake the feeling of familiarity as he walked towards the porch behind Bobby. This house was smaller than most of the others and it was well-lit and actually welcoming. As he approached reached the top stairs he smelled a familiar aroma…gingerbread…and his heart started to pound as Bobby knocked on the door.

The door swung open and a woman, with a cherubic face and wearing a neatly pressed white apron, opened the door.

“Trick or treat!” Bobby said, relieved that this old woman looked like a normal person at least.

“My, my, my” the old woman said, smiling warmly, “what marvelous costumes!” She reached to her side and held up two large, meticulously decorated gingerbread men wrapped in plastic. “You young men deserve my best gingerbread men,” she said carefully placing one in each of the boys’ bags.

“Thank you!” Bobby said enthusiastically. Adam looked up at the woman with his mouth agape but he found he couldn’t say anything.

“You boys need to get back on home now,” the old woman said. “It’s too close to the witching hour for you to be here.”

“Okay,” Bobby said, turning to leave, “thank you, ma’am.” He started down the stairs into the gathering fog. “Come on, Adam.”

The old woman smiled at Adam who was still standing staring at her. She bent down and kissed his forehead. “Get along now, sweetie,” she said.

Adam nodded and turned and walked down the walkway. He turned and looked up at the old woman who smiled again and waved as the fog closed in all around. Adam waved back and then turned to Bobby. “Where are you?”

Bobby, his face pale, stepped towards Adam. “I’m here but I can’t see anything in this fog…I don’t know which way to go…”

Unconsciously, the boys took each other’s free hand and started to walk. Their hearts were pounding and there were tears in their eyes as they inched their way through the all-encompassing fog. They couldn’t see anything and their only contacts with reality were the ground beneath their feet, the pillowcases in their hands, and the tight grip they had on each other’s hand.

The fog grew darker and darker and from somewhere close they heard the howling of a wolf and cackling laughter that sent shivers down their spine. The boys stopped, not knowing which way to go and not knowing what was in the fog. They both wanted to cry out for their mothers but they didn’t want to let each other know how afraid they were.

And then, suddenly, there was a spot of golden light off in the distance.

“That’s the way home, boys,” the kindly voice of the last woman they met said softly. “Get along now.”

The boys, still hand in hand, started running towards the light as the dark fog around seemed to grow agitated. They ran and ran until, quite suddenly, they ran into someone. The boys both closed their eyes and screamed expecting to be brutally killed in the next moment.

“There you are!” a quite familiar voice said. “I lost sight of you for a moment.” It was Bobby’s mother, their escort for trick or treat. She was holding the hand of Alice, Bobby’s little sister, who dressed as Cinderella.

Bobby and Adam looked at each other. A moment? They smiled at each other nervously and only then did they realize they were still holding hands. They quickly released their grips.

“Come on, boys,” Bobby’s mother said, it looks like you both have more than enough treats for one Halloween night. Besides, it looks like the fog is starting come in. We’d better get home.”

Bobby and Adam looked into their pillowcases as they followed Bobby’s mother and sister. All of the treats they’d gotten on the strange street were there. Right on top were the smiling gingerbread men the last woman had given them.

“Dude, that was strange,” Bobby whispered. “Good thing that last old lady showed us the way home.”

Adam stared forward. “That wasn’t just an old lady,” he said solemnly, “that was my grandmother.”

Bobby looked startled. “It was? Why didn’t you say something before?”

Adam continued to look forward. “My grandmother died five years ago.”

Bobby’s mouth fell open with surprise and confusion but he didn’t say anything more as they continued home neither of daring to look back where they’d been or at each other.

150 Words: The Right Answer

I swallowed hard and waited. Mr. Lopez, as imposing a man as I’d ever met, stared at me. Rosa hadn’t wanted me to accept her father’s summons and I was beginning to see why.

“So, you’re the boy who wants to marry my Rosa?” he said finally.

I decided to believe that he called me “boy” because of my age and not because of my race. “Yes, sir.”

He eyed me as if he was trying to decide how best to kill me. “And why do you think this is an acceptable idea?”

I swallowed hard again and then looked him in the eye. “Because we love each other.”

The old man stood up and loomed over me. He almost smiled when he put his massive hand on my shoulder. “That’s the right answer, son,” he said, his voice suddenly warm. “It’s the same one I gave to Rosa’s grandfather.”

150 Words: Unexpected Encounter

She smiled warily. She wasn’t sure if she was happy to see me and I couldn’t blame her for that. I was surprised that she was at the party…I didn’t know that she knew Vince and Mary.

I took a deep breath and started to negotiate the throng. She shook her head…pausing for a pregnant moment before she did so. I stopped and lost myself in memory: the first time I saw her smile, the first time I held her, the first time I kissed her, the first time we made love, the look in her eyes when I confessed, the only time she slapped me.

I started again but stopped when the tall man handed her a drink and then kissed her tenderly. He put his arm around her and they disappeared into the crowd. Someone put on a Billie Holiday record. I had another drink before I left.

The Fires This Time

Things are nowhere near to "normal" in greater San Diego County...fires are still blazing in various parts of the areas (new ones are still cropping up even as I write this)...looters and scammers (supposedly representing charities or cleaning services) are starting to crop up here and there...and hundreds of thousands of people are displaced because of evacuations and/or because their houses are destroyed...but things are slowly but surely heading towards "normal" as the air attack beats back the fires and some people are allowed to go home.

The skies are still hazy with smoke but there are expansive patches of blue fighting to reclaim the sky.

The fires this time are being beaten back and the aftermath is starting to begin.

Perseverance furthers.

150 Words: High Dive

Regret flooded Jack’s body before he was completely off the board. The stark terror and insistent screaming from inside his head…”go back down the ladder!”…should have been heeded. But the merciless taunting…Ronnie, Bobby, TJ…from below had tweaked the macho fool who only came out to play with the guys.

Gravity was no friend to Jack as he towards the shimmering water and he started to make a list of all of the things that he would never get to do after they fished his lifeless body out of the pool.

For a split instant he saw himself knifing through the water with grace so heartbreaking that it would bring tears to the eyes of his friends. But then, concentration lost, his body lost all sense of dignity and hit the water at a most ungainly angle. “Ooo,” he thought as he sank beneath the water, “that’s gonna leave a mark.”

Smoke in the Night

We are miles away from the flames but the smell of smoke permeates the air and there is an ominous haze that is evident even in the nighttime hours. There is an eerie orange glow on the far eastern horizon. And ash, cool and black and gray, is falling on my neighborhood. My eyes are burning and my animals are anxious and out in the night brave men and women are putting their lives on the line to try to tame a fierce force of nature.

There are two uncontrolled wildfires…fed and swept inexorably along by the hot Santa Ana winds that sometime sweep in from the desert and bake and blow through Southern California…burning in San Diego County tonight. They started this morning and this afternoon and there is no end in sight. At least one person has already died…more than a dozen people have been burned (including four firefighters) and are in hospital…thousands of acres have already burned…homes are lost…

And the smoke…and the acrid, pungent, forbidding smell…hang ominously over the entire city blown west towards the sea by the aforementioned winds.

Four years ago, a monstrous fire brought havoc and destruction and death to our area and, of course we have not forgotten those days.

And so we watch the skies…we are far away but not so far away that we can not feel vulnerable…and listen to the winds…which have not, as they more often do, abated with the coming of night…and we pray for those in the capricious paths of the flames and for those who struggling to save lives and struggling to bring the rampaging flames to bay.

Blogs of Note: A Writer's Edge

The blog world is populated by, among others, an expansive community of writers. Writers who earn their living by writing….writers who want to earn their living by writing…writers who will never earn their living by writing but who write for the sheer love of it…writers who write because the words filling their minds and their souls and their feverish imaginations demand to be set free…writers who write because that’s what writers do. It’s a gentler madness…a wondrous calling…a sublime compulsion…

A community of writers is almost an oxymoron because writing is, in so very many cases, a solitary endeavor but a community exists just the same. There are many blogs for and about writers…for and about the art and the business of writing…so very many to explore, to learn from, to draw information and inspiration from. Georganna Hancock’s A Writer’s Edge is my favorite of these. It is warm and welcoming, very well-written and wonderfully informative.

A long-time resident on my blogroll, A Writer’s Edge has always been a blog of note to my mind and now it’s a Blog of Note officially :-) If you’re a writer, you’ll find an excellent resource with a compelling and charming hostess…if not, you’ll still find it a wonderful reading experience.

* * * * *

And, of course, the previously featured Blogs of Note are still heartily endorsed:

Worldman

Michele

(The post on Michele's wonderful blog also features links to other Blogs of Note)

150 Words: Brenda's Reverie

(This being the first of a series of vignettes told in exactly 150 words. It's an exercise in brevity in storytelling engaged in mostly to challenge myself. "150 Words" will join "Blogs of Note" and "Talking with Bob" as an (irregularly) recurring feature of Bread and Roses. And, for the record, the words between these parentheses do not count in the total for the story below :-)

* * * * *

In the middle of a boring day Brenda felt herself smiling humidly when she thought of Christian. The buzzing around her faded away as she remembered the way he pulled her to him and then stroked her hair as he was kissing her…roughly but never too roughly…before he left for his trip.

Christian wasn’t the one…Brenda knew that…but he was close enough to being the one to make his absence something that made her heart and her lips and her breasts ache with undeniable longing. In the confines of her four-post bed he was more than close enough for the time being.

Brenda drew in a measure of cool air and closed her eyes. Brenda lingered in the place of longing and loneliness…of memories of passions indulged and expectations of passions to come…until the telephone rudely shook her out of her reverie and dumped her unceremoniously back into her workday.

Mrs. Zimmerman

I was not a very good student in High School. I am neither proud nor ashamed of this, it is simply a fact. I made good grades (I graduated “with honors”) but I really didn’t push myself as hard as I could have. Mostly, however arrogant it might sound, I was bored. Mostly, however foolish it might sound now, I was itching to be done with school and childhood and get to the promised land of adulthood. Being a grownup, I found, was okay but not nearly as magical as it seemed when I wasn’t one…but that’s the way of things when we are young and running too fast to not be young.

My High School (dear old Alexander Hamilton High in a western corner of Los Angeles) was culturally diverse…blacks and whites in abundance with a good number of children of Latin and Asian descent making the school a racial stewpot; a good percentage of the white kids were Jewish as we were reminded anytime a Jewish holiday coincided with a school day (lots of filmstrips and independent reading time on those days because so many of our classmates were away and teachers didn’t want to go over the same material twice)…but full of the same schoolyard politics (cliques and gossip and the like) as any other school.

I found all of that political stuff tedious beyond words and I ignored it as much as I could. I sought out isolated corners of the sprawling campus to read and be to myself but I rarely had them to myself as a stalwart circle of friends…social outcasts, by choice or by happenstance, like myself…gathered and we created an inclusive clique all our own.

Our principal…a diminutive silver haired, eagle eyed woman named Mrs. Jimenez…ruled Hamilton with an iron fist in a velvet glove, easily alternating between nurturing grandmother and unrelenting tyrant as required.

I did the homework for one class while half-listening to teachers talking in another class so that I didn’t have to lug books on the half-hour walk from the school to my house any more than I had to.

I had a small circle of loyal friends (a state of being that continues to this day) and secret crushes that are part and parcel of the existence of a teenaged boy (I think Gina knew that I was smitten with her but I don’t think she ever took me seriously.)

And I had Mrs. Zimmerman. I was blessed to be taught by several motivated and motivating teachers in my school days…Mrs. Levy in the 3^rd grade, Mr. Daniels in the 5^th grade, Mr. McIntosh in the 6^th grade, Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Allen in Junior High, and Mrs. Zimmerman. Mrs. Zimmerman was an English teacher and she kind of took me under her wing and taught much about the one thing that did really engage me back then…that being writing, of course.

I ended up taking 5 or 6 classes with Mrs. Zimmerman over the course of my 3 years at Hamilton and she always challenged me to dig deeper, strive harder, to put my reality into the things I wrote. More than any other teacher I ever had I gave my all to reach for the bar that she kept raising higher…and I loved her for that.

I never told her that, of course…teenaged boys don’t have the words to tell teachers how much they appreciate making them reach for the fullest potential they can…but I hope that she knew it somehow just the same.

Supergirl

We were lying side by side on a blanket in the backyard underneath a buttery moon and a sparkling canopy of early evening stars when the Little Miss chuckled softly to herself. This was, I knew from experience, the prelude to a grand pronouncement.

“I know who I want to be, Daddy,” she said resolutely.

I suppressed a chuckle. Last week she had decided on being a fire fighter; three weeks before that, she was ready to be a pop star, and a month or so before that, after a trip our family had taken to visit my in-laws, she was going to be an airline pilot. The perennial jobs…mommy, doctor, cowgirl, pet store owner, and princess…stayed in the mix no matter what else she was considering. “What’s that, sweetheart?”

“Not ‘what’, who,” she corrected me with as much patience as a five-year-old with a very, very active mind could muster. I thought I heard her sigh…sometimes she thought I was the most amazing man in the universe and sometimes she seemed to wonder how such a moron could be her father…but I wasn’t sure. “I’m going to be Supergirl.”

“Are you now?” I smiled. She liked to look through my comics…a childhood interest I had carried into my dotage…and sometimes we would read them together but I never thought she gave them much thought past that.

“Yes,” she said, “I think what this world needs a good super-hero.”

“And that would be you?”

“That would be me,” she replied without hesitation. “Somebody’s got to be Supergirl and why shouldn’t it be me?”

The logic was, of course, irrefutable. I looked up the lazy moon and smiled. “Why not indeed?” She nudged her little head against my shoulder in the shy way she did when she knew that I was giving her the space to dream whatever fearless dreams she chose to dream. “Maybe one day…when you’re not fighting crime and stuff…you could take me to the moon. I’ve always wanted to go to the moon….okay?”

I could feel her smiling at me but I did not turn my head. “Okay,” she said. “As soon as I have a day off…Supergirl’s got a lot to do, you know.”

“Yes I know,” I replied. “Thank you.”

She snuggled a bit closer and joined me at looking up at the bright and beautiful moon. “You’re welcome,” the Little Miss…my Supergirl…said before we both into the same waking dream…a dream of flying to visit that welcoming moon.

That Afternoon

It was their afternoon and they embraced it greedily. In the genially rambling crevices of her house they shut the rest of the world…their children, grandchildren, parents, friends, and acquaintances…out and luxuriated in each other’s company.

They had never had an afternoon like it before. And they would never have an afternoon like it again. But that afternoon…that languid, sensuous, sensual afternoon…was one that would linger in their hearts long after their passions had cooled and their paths had diverged.

That afternoon…that sweet, silly, amazing, wondrous afternoon…was filled with music (rock and roll to save their amorous souls) echoing through the soft shadows of the charmingly gothic corners of her house and with whispered, romantic, affectionately smutty whispers as they kissed and danced the dance of love in her bed, their energies so intimately entwined that they slipped casually, easily into positions that would have made Sting green with envy and which belied the number of years that they had each spent on the mother planet.

The house was filled with the savory aromas of food…seafood and sauces and pastas and salad greens…prepared in graceful tandem wearing only undergarments and secret smiles…and the steamy musk of enormously indulgent and gratifying sex lingered in passionately and with no care or need for time limits.

It was their afternoon…unplanned and unstructured and all the more magical for that…and they basked in it even as the evening crept over the horizon, through the windows, and all through the expansive comfort of her grand old house.

That afternoon…their afternoon…they had never had one like it before…they would never have one like it again…but it was, in the perfect measure of time, as magical an afternoon as the lovers could have dared to have imagined.

Okay

He slipped, warily, expectantly, out of the shadows and into the soft light. She didn’t look up.

“Hey,” he said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.

She took a sip of her wine and put the half-full glass back on the end table. She sat back and looked up at him. She hoped her expression was more noncommittal than she felt. “I wasn’t sure that you’d come home tonight.”

He sighed heavily and nodded. “Me neither.”

She allowed herself a wry, weary grin and stood up. “Oh so now you’re into honesty.”

He curbed the urge to snap off a cutting retort to her naked barb. “I can go if you want…”

She stood up and took three steps towards him. “You can go if you want…”

He winced. The old feints weren’t going to work this time. He held out his hand but she waved it off with casual, wounding grace. Taking a deep breath, he took three steps towards her. He could smell the tart sweetness of her perfume dancing with the intoxicating tartness of her own wondrous feminine aroma, he could almost taste the bouquet of the chardonnay coloring the warmth of her even breaths, he could feel the tension sparking off her aura like tiny pricks of cold lightning.

She looked up at him. He smelled of sweat and soap and scotch and guilt and arrogance and longing that he would never have words for. She loved him. She hated him. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to hold him and remind him…yet again…that no one would ever love him the way she loved him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He meant it. He meant it this time as he had meant it before.

“Yes you are,” she agreed. She stepped into him and even as he stepped into her; he wrapped his arms around her.

“Are we okay?” he asked as she put her head against his chest.

“Not yet.”

It wasn’t the answer he was praying for but he tried desperately to keep his composure. “Are we going to be okay?”

She could feel his heart beating a staccato rhythm underneath his sturdy chest. She fought back the urge to wound him anew. “Yes, we'll be okay,” she said. She meant it. She meant it this time as she had meant it before. She closed her eyes as he, enormously grateful and enormously relieved, gently kissed the top of her head and then lifted her up into his strong, welcoming arms.

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

a morning in the life

…woke up, got outta bed,
dragged a comb across my head…

Okay, I continue to shave off my hair on a regular basis so I didn’t drag any combs anywhere…but it’s a lovely October morning here and I’m doing my best to enjoy it…or at least appreciate it…after having dragged (see, I knew dragging was involved somehow) myself out of bed.

I have a low grade fever and a sinus thing so I slept fitfully…staccato bursts of intense dreaming alternating with sudden (but thankfully fleeting) returns to the waking world…and I’m achy (but strangely not cranky…”go with the flow” is the motto I always endeavor to live by and it actually seems to be working even as I sit here waiting for the Tylenol to make the soft but insistent pounding in my head go away.)

I’m one shower and a second mug of tea (Twinings’ Irish Breakfast…a lovely brew) from possibly becoming a productive human being today…wish me luck (and send me any positive healing energy you can spare), gentlefolk…

Thank you for your attention to this feverish ramble…and, as always, thank you for dropping by this here blog o’ mine. Enjoy the day (or the night if you’ve suffered through this while the golden moon was languidly dancing across the starry sky.)

Namaste, y’all.

“A Day in the Life”
words and music by John Lennon & Paul McCartney

waging peace (we are walking)

We are walking…slowly, surely, not needing or wanting to look over our shoulders…walking towards the golden near horizon. The bright sun is beaming down as if it understood us and approved of our collective change of heart.

We are walking…watching old men and old women waltzing gracefully in autumn fields, listening to children laughing and running unabashedly on verdant summer lawns…walking towards the valley where the people are singing joyfully. The languid clouds are sailing high above and waltzing and laughing and singing in happy tandem with all of us.

We are walking…throwing open our doors and our hearts and letting foolish cares go free, embracing the wind and reaching for the distant stars…walking, alone and together, with faith, with courage, with the knowledge that strength is at its finest when it need not be used.

We are walking…glorious fools waging peace with all of our might…walking in the soft light of dreams just one heartbeat out of reach.

The October Road

The years winds into its final quarter and we're on the October road heading towards Halloween...towards Thanksgiving...towards Christmas...towards New Year's Eve and the new year and all that it will bring.

The October road seems to beckon more rapidly with each passing year. This is doubtlessly not true...time flows as it flows...but it feels that way just the same.

But still we welcome wise, thoughtful, kindly, patiently impatient Autumn...a time of harvests and rebirths, of lovers and poets; a time of cool blue moons and joyous celebrations of frivolity, family, a time of faith, love and brisk days and healing moonlit nights...and dance, openly and guilelessly, in its burnt orange and soft golden musics.

We're on the October road...like we've been so many amazing times before...and it's a quietly amazing, utterly wondrous place to continue our journey down the magical, mundane, bittersweet, awe-inspiring path that each of our lives is.

Namaste, y'all.

- thanks and apologies to JT -

My other corners of the interweb:
Pop Culture: Neverending Rainbow
Eclectic Sites and Images of Interest: StumbleUpon
Comic Books: Suspending Disbelief

A Zombie Johnnie Cochran (a Talking with Bob interlude)

I was hanging out with my friend Bob; Bob was, unsurprisingly, grumbling as he read the newspaper.

At one point Bob sighed heavily. “O.J. Simpson is back in the news again,” he said testily, “why can’t that guy go away and leave us alone?”

“O.J. just needs some crack legal help,” I said. “He needs to hook up with Johnnie Cochran again…that’ll do the trick.”

Bob sighed again, more heavily than before. “Michael, you do know that Johnnie Cochran is dead, don’t you?”

I took no umbrage because I knew that on some level Bob thought I was an idiot and we’d long ago made our peace with that. “Yes, Bob, I know that. But I was thinking that O.J. should go find himself a good voodoo woman and have Johnnie brought back for one more hurrah!”

“So you’re saying that Simpson should get a zombie Johnnie Cochran to come back from the dead to defend him?”

“Exactly!” I replied excitedly. “That would be so cool!”

Bob rolled his eyes and went back to the paper. “I don’t know what the problem is with people in so-called “professional” sports. You got that idiot baseball player who hurt his own stupid self because he let somebody get him riled up beyond control. You got that bicycle guy who lost his title because of ‘performance enhancing’ drugs. And don’t get me started on…Michael…Vick…” Bob’s words trailed off as he looked over and saw me staring off with goofy grin on my face. “And you’re not listening to me at all, are you?”

I shook off the reverie. I knew that the truth wasn’t the answer Bob wanted to hear but I decided to go with it anyway. “Um, no I’m not. Sorry, Bob.”

Bob cocked an eyebrow. “You’re still thinking about a zombie Johnnie Cochran, aren’t you?”

I smiled, almost laughed, and nodded. “Yes! I’m mean, come on, you have to admit that it would be something cool to see!” Can’t you just see zombie Johnnie Cochran in court, skin rotting away under a sharp $3,000 suit?” I shifted into a spooky voice. “If it rains you must feed me more brains...”

I thought I saw Bob stifle a smile. “You need help, Michael,” he said as soberly as he could. “Besides zombies don’t talk that fast.”

“Zombie Johnnie Cochran would be as glib as ever,” I opined confidently. “…until the jury delivers, I needs me more livers…”

“Stop it,” Bob protested, though I could tell he was desperately trying not to laugh.

“…when the feasting starts, I’ll have three human hearts…”

“I’m not listening to you anymore…”

We Are

We are laughing…in the boisterous way that children do…sharing secret comedy…in the earnest way that best friends do…and it is a good moment. And then the moment passes and we go on with our carefree day bolstered by healing mirth and undying kinship.

We are crying…in the way that only true loss can bring on…separated by our shared but unshared grief…and then we closed our eyes to hide our naked tears and held on to each other for a brief eternity…and it is a real moment. And then the moment passes and we comfort each other in self-conscious, self-healing, cathartic and empathic silence.

We are singing…in the unabashed way that only lovers totally comfortable with each other could dare do with each other…making a cheesy love song ours in a way that would linger with us long after our paths had diverged…and it is an amazing moment. And then the moment passes but the smiles and the ardor linger and keep us and our hopeful hearts warm.

We are dancing…soft and languid, passionate and almost ruthless…dancing the carnal dance in the humid sanctuary of our lovers’ bed…we are dancing to a soft symphony of whispered endearments and sweetly profane declarations and reaching for the bright light crescendo as one…and it is a magical moment. And then the moment passes but the tender laughter, shared while catching our breath and setting off sparks on each other’s satiated bodies with the most fleeting of touches, fills the darkness and bonded us as our senses reach for the calm.

We are laughing…we are crying…we are singing…we are dancing…we are sharing the universe and letting the universe share with us…we are dreaming and waking, shouting and whispering, loving and hating…we are accepting and denying, reaching out and holding back, discovering and losing…we are flying and we are falling.

We are being.

We are.

Blogs of Note: Worldman

The world of blogs is, of course, expansive and fairly all-encompassing. There are blogs for just about any interest and we all have our reasons for preferring the ones that we do. My personal favorite blogs tend to be those that are written by inquisitive, open-hearted people who share themselves and their view of the world (both personal and at large) in engaging ways. It is, therefore, not at all a surprise that one of my favorite blogs to visit and savor is Peter Voegtli’s charming, witty, and thought-provoking Worldman.

Worldman is never anything less than a delight to read and Peter is a wonderful blog host who makes sure that everyone who visits his site feels welcome and totally engaged. Another plus from my point of view is that music informs and permeates the entries which adds to the experience of the blog (especially considering that he has wonderful taste in music :-)

I am an unabashed fan of Worldman and I heartily recommend you visit…chances are you’ll become a fan, too (tell Peter that Michael sent you :-)

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FYI: This is, according to Blogger's count, the 400th Bread and Roses post. Yay! :-)

Babies

I’ve been thinking about babies lately. I’m not sure why. I’ve been blessed to play a part (hopefully a positive part) in the lives of a good number of amazing children in my time…stepchildren, foster children, cousins, nephews, nieces, offspring of friends, friends of the other children in my life…and babies have always seemed to like and feel safe with me.

But circumstances never came together in a way that allowed me to co-create a biological child. In our increasingly crowded world, maybe that’s not a bad thing….but sometimes, just sometimes, there is a void that tugs (however foolishly) at my heart.

When I was a teenager I had already decided on names for my first two children…it was a silly thing but it was a gentle madness and I just went with it…but, of course, life happens the way it’s going to without regard for any plans we make for it (the boy’s name ended up being used by my father and his third wife for their son…the girl’s name came to be associated with a friend I would meet in my twenties.)

And I understand and accept that. And I’ve got no complaints about the love and kinship that has filled my cynically optimistic life with bountiful gifts of love, light, and laughter…but sometimes, just sometimes, I still find myself wondering “what if?”

Sometimes I think about tiny hands grasping my fingers or touching my face…I think about small, wondrous heartbeats and warm breath of sleeping children playing like the sweetest, softest songs imaginable against my chest or on my shoulder…and I still find myself wondering…

Sometimes, just sometimes, I find myself thinking about babies…thinking about a child I’ve co-created blooming strong and sure in a nurturing womb, a child coming into the world and into arms that would always be welcoming and protective, a child growing strong and sure under watchful (but hopefully not overprotective) eyes and never-ending love, support, encouragement, and acceptance.

Sometimes…even at my “advanced age”…I think about babies. It’s a silly thing but it’s a gentle madness so I just go with it until it passes.

Share Hugs

There is something sublime and amazing about hugs. Maybe it's because they can be shared in so many emotionally intimate and emotionally satisfying ways.

Hugs are democratic expressions of love, friendship, concern, fidelity, celebration, sadness, empathy, passion, grace, understanding...they get through the barriers we erect around ourselves (if only for a few connecting moments) and bring joy and empathy and delight in ways that words often fail to.

So share hugs whenever you can...share them with your parents and your siblings and your cousins...with your children and your grandchildren...with people who who make you smile and with people who need to know that they're not alone. Share them with people you love and with people who've done you wrong but want to atone. Share them with people you know who are blue and with people you've done wrong and you need to atone.

Share hugs with your lovers and with people you want to be your lovers (even if you know they never will be.) Share them with your significant others (even and especially when you start to take your lover for them for granted.)

Share hugs for selfless reasons (most of us need hugs from time to time) and for selfish reasons (most of want to be hugged sometimes even if we pretend that we don't)

Yeah, it's a ditzy, flower power idea but so what? In our sometimes gray and cynical world, maybe we need a little flower power in our lives every once in a while...

So share hugs...they're good for you...they're good me...they're good for everybody.

Namaste, y'all.

Lover and Friend

Darlin’, in the end, I've got you
as lover and friend
Funny how it goes
We'd be the last to know
We were made for each other
And from friends we became lovers
Keep on being my friend
Our love will never end...

The music is so distant...sweet Minnie's voice caressing the lyrics from very far away. The woman in his arms stirs and he softly strokes her sleeping head; she shifts lazily pressing closer to him. He luxuriates in the intoxicating nearness of her...plush and warm and, even through his slightly inebriated haze, so very arousing...against his chest, his thighs; from somewhere far away, the music...the late, great Minnie Riperton in her prime...echoes soothingly and he just stares up just...feeling.

The music ends and he just lies there silently. He looks down at the woman sleeping against him feeling...love, anxiety, lust, confusion...just feeling.

Her face brings a wandering: smiles shared softly in the night; laughter, feigned and not, shared, like conspiratorial children and lovers, generously in the daytime. Dreams revealed…coy lies told…innuendo playfully exchanged…passion freely indulged. She has always been quite a woman, but...

"Jimmy?" a voice calling.

"Jimmy?" her voice calling.

"Jimmy, are you all right?"

"...uh...yeah, Kathy, I’m good...are you okay?"

There is a soft, pregnant silence. They will make love now...or they will go for coffee. She groans in boozy discomfort and sits up.

They will go for coffee.

She turns to him, her eyes bleary; her smile lustful and apologetic at once. "Damn, what time is it?"

He doesn't speak.

"Jimmy...?"

Other hangovers and other women's voices play back as he watches her rise and make her way gingerly to the bathroom. She is Mary who never had hangovers...and Maggie who did and loved to wallow in them.

She is Connie lying deathly still and emitting a constant, rumbling snore against his neck as she slept off the previous night's revelry.

She is, quite suddenly and quite delightfully, herself, arms thrown across his shoulders, kissing him.

"Wake up, big guy," she says with a strangely provocative yawn, "it's time to go to bed." No coffee after all.

He smiles impishly. "Isn't that a bit at cross purposes...?"

"Not necessarily," she smiles back, poking him gently in the stomach. She jumps up and makes her way to the bedroom door singing, "...darlin’, in the end, I’ve got you as lover and friend..."

He smiles humidly, that's not Minnie but it sure sounds fine; he chuckles affectionately and lifts himself slowly up and, unsteadily, he follows in her wake humming,"...darlin’, in the end…"

- for J & K -

“Lover and Friend”
words and music by
Riperton, Rudolph, St. Lewis, and Dozier

Remember

Remember? Yes of course I remember. I remember where I was. I can’t imagine that I will ever forget.

I was in Virginia and I had overslept because I had slight head cold. The first tower had already been hit by the time I finally got out of bed. My head was stuffy and my night had been restless and it didn’t make any sense.

I sat in front of the TV in my pajamas…my granddaughter, all of 8 months old, sleeping on my shoulder…and watched as the other plane hit…as the first tower fell…as the second tower fell…as the world came to a dead stop in a horrible symphony of blood and tears and death, of destruction and terror and awful amazement and stubborn defiance. I sat in front of the TV and wondered when I was going to wake up from the surreal nightmare I seemed to be having.

The world didn’t stop spinning…though at times it seemed like should have…and time kept moving forward…though seemingly not at as a rapid and regular a pace as it should have been flowing. We held our collective breath and tried to make sense of our collective fear and grief and rage and confusion…and the world kept spinning.

Six year later, I still remember…we still remember…we are not allowed to forget…we are, for the most part, not willing to forget. The memories of the fallen…on that day and on the bloodied streets and battlefields that followed that day…defy us to even try to forget.

The world keeps spinning…the blood keeps flowing…and I remember…yesterday, today, and tomorrow, I remember…

Dream

(His point of view...)

He was a man who walked through life with a song in his heart…it was the only way that made sense to him, the world could be a disheartening place sometimes that was true but that was no reason to let that change the way he felt inside. Like all men, he had his melancholies and his blues…sometimes he looked back and realized that the life he was living was not quite the one he imagined when he was 17… in the full hubris of youth…and he had laid out a roadmap for the rest of his time on Earth. But he didn’t dwell on that too much…his life was what it was and when he looked back on the path that he had taken it all made perfect sense.

He wasn’t much for dancing or singing out loud…if he was self-conscious about anything, it was his two left feet and his inability to sing on key…but he kept that song in the forefront of his heart just the same.

He knew that he had more than a lot of other guys and he was grateful for that. He was…in the way that men sometimes embraced…content. He had a job that challenged him and kept him from getting bored when it took up 40-48 hours of his weeks. He loved…and got to celebrate with passion…football and baseball and comic books and classic rock & roll. He loved that his circle of friends was small but fiercely loyal and supportive.

And most of all…most of all…he loved her.

He loved the way her eyes twinkled when she laughed…or when she held her baby niece…or when she looked up at him and told him that she loved him. He was a strong man and yet he was moved sweetly that such a tiny woman could make his heart sing with just a smile…or a touch…of just by walking into the room.

He loved the way she snuggled next to his chest and put her arms around his brutish neck when he impulsive swept her up and kissed her just because. He loved the way she sang idly and danced naturally as he went about her workaday life. He loved the way she patiently indulged his love of football and comic books and classic rock & roll.

He loved the way she effortlessly gave as good as she got…with carefree, laughing, thrilling, greedy and generous abandon…when they made love. He’d foolishly thought that she would not be up to the task of accommodating him given the difference in their sizes but she quickly disabused him of that silly notion by proving as ardent and fearless a lover as he could possibly imagine.

He loved so much about her…he hoped to never lose the amazement over the fact that such a wondrous woman could love someone as unabashedly ordinary as him.

He loved the way they talked…about anything and nothing at all…in the darkness before sleep took them to the dreaming realms. And he loved to watch…in the cool of the night and in the golden moonlight…as she slipped off to sleep. He loved to hold her to his chest and watch as she let herself slip off into deep sleep…he loved to watch her face turn so peaceful that it was sweetly, unimaginably wounding…he loved, almost more than anything in the world, to watch her dream.

(Her point of view: Breathe)

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Pop Culture: Neverending Rainbow
Eclectic Sites and Images of Interest: StumbleUpon
Comic Books: Suspending Disbelief

Breathe

(Her point of view...)

She was an early riser and sometimes…just sometimes…she would wake while the morning was still dark and still…she would wake while the nighttime stars had yet to give way to the dawning sun…and she would listen to him breathe.

She would wake with her head nestled against his chest…sturdy and broad, rough-hewn and hirsute and always so very warm and welcoming; with his arm curved… gently and protectively and chivalrously… around her; with those soft sighs and whispers, so random and so endearing, that occasionally crossed over from his dreaming world into the safe haven of their bed punctuating the darkness and making her smile. She would wake and just listen and remember, even on those rare days when they had been at odds over something silly, all of the reasons why she loved him.

She loved the way his eyes crinkled up when he laughed…and she loved the way touchdowns and comic books and Jimi Hendrix solos still brought him so much child-like joy. She loved the way his hands, so large and seemingly ungainly, always touched her with courtly and sweetly wounding tenderness.

She loved the way he knew when she needed him to listen and when she needed him to make her laugh; she loved the way that she knew when he needed a shoulder to lean and when he needed to be teased out of his shadows and back into the sunshine.

She loved the way he would sometimes literally sweep her off her feet and into his arms and kiss her…ever so passionately…for no reason other than he felt the urge to. She loved the way she sometimes caught him looking at her…as if she were the most precious thing in all of God’s creation and he was blessed to have her in his life.

And she loved the way their bodies flowed together…with rhythmic grace and un-abandoned ardor in natural turn… when they were making love; the way their carnal symphony…sweet asides and bawdy, humid endearments, tender, whispered encouragements and growled, exuberant lovers’ exclamations…filled their bed…their home…their universe…with music that was theirs and theirs alone.

And on those days that she woke before he did…before the sun did…she loved to listen. She loved to listen to the sighs and whispers…to the steady, soothing beat of his mighty heart beating in his mighty chest…she loved to listen to him breathe.

(His point of view: Dream)

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My other corners of the interweb:
Pop Culture: Neverending Rainbow
Eclectic Sites and Images of Interest: StumbleUpon
Comic Books: Suspending Disbelief

Blogs of Note: Michele

Blogs of Note was at one time a reoccurring feature of Bread and Roses; it spotlighted interesting sites that I had encountered during my excursions through the blog-o-sphere. As time and circumstance shrank my time to surf as much as I would have liked the feature fell by the wayside. But now I have been inspired to resurrect Blogs of Note by the site being spotlighted today.

You can find no more engaging a site than Michele Agnew’s delightful eponymous blog. She is a warm and welcoming hostess who encourages her readers to become part of an ever-burgeoning and interactive community through clever posts that ask thought-provoking questions, make pithy observations, and encourage dialogue and discovery by sending them out to visit each other’s blogs. It’s a lovely site well worth a visit…though I warn you if you visit once you will be visiting often (when you visit, tell her Michael sent you…it’s a Michele thing that you’ll understand when you get there :-)

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Some of the Blogs of Note that were spotlighted in the past have stopped being published or updated for one reason or another but most of them are still going strong and are still highly recommended (as are all of the sites on the blogroll on the left.) I happily direct your attention to:

A Gag Reflex (our very first Blog of Note. Most of the original posts have been removed because, happily, Cori Crooks' harrowing, beautifully-written memoir is going to be published next year but attention must still be paid. The original Blogs of Note post about this site is here.)

Dog Eat Doug (a delightful comic strip by the talented Brian Anderson...now being featured in newspapers around the country...that presents the sweetly humorous adventures of a puppy and a baby...the original B of N post is here.)

The Donegal Express (a thoughtful, well-written, and challenging site which features politics...but not exclusively. Original B of N post is here.)

My Neighbours are Hoors (a wonderfully charming blog featuring the wry and witty observations of a woman whose downstairs neighbors are "ladies of negotiable affection". The original B of N post is here.)

PSotD: Political Site of the Day (a great, incisively written site that, despite its title, is not exclusively political. Original B of N post is here.)

So What Can I Do? (Karima Neal's engaging positive action advocacy site. Original B of N post here.)

Waking Ambrose (the ever-erudite Doug Pascover's witty updating of Ambrose Bierce's classic Devil's Dictionary is always entertaining, thought-provoking, and undeniably clever. Original B of N post is here.)