Anecdote

By Just a Paperbag Prophet on a Sunday Afternoon, from the blog of the same name.

It wasn’t my fault the factory blew up. Okay, maybe just a bit, but you have to hear me out on this one. I’m a film student. Well, I used to be a film student. I graduated pretty recently. That means I’ve always liked having a story to tell, always liked hearing other people’s anecdotes. There’s always something you can do with a good anecdote, juicy stuff just waiting to burst with the puncture of a couple choice words. I’ve had anecdotes of my own, and they came and went, and then the factory blew up. That’s a damn good anecdote, so I’m going to anecdote it to you. You can imagine some jaunty animation accompanying these words if that makes them easier to visualize. And you’ll want to visualize, trust me.

No one was using the factory, anyway. It had been abandoned for years and it was due to come down sooner or later. People just had to figure out what they wanted to do with it. They used to make boxes in there. My grandpa worked on the production line for a while, said it was awful boring stuff. And hey, I like boring. I thought maybe I could do something with that. It seemed like the most boring thing I could think of for a job, so there had to be something we could do to make it hip to the youth, as they say (they don’t). I had a project due around that time, making a documentary about history.

Excellent. And who could object to local history? My prof didn’t. I got the permits and all, legalized nice and pretty so I could take a look inside without getting arrested. They’d closed it off from the public, of course, but it was only with a shabby fence. Kids went in there all the time to have sex or shoot up, whatever kids needed to do away from other people.

I went in there for a bit, collected some really good footage, but then I got stumped about what it would take to make it interesting. I had vision, but no way to build the ladder that’d get me up to nirvana. Or some metaphor like that. So I went to the good old-fashioned library and looked up the files on the factory. I had to do research anyway, and there was a week left before I needed to start editing. By and by, I came by a newspaper clipping from the early nineteen hundreds. There had been a fire in there, a big one, killing some of the workers and leaving a few managers pretty hurt. This would work out perfectly. Horror, suffering, cinematic substance. Now all I needed was a fire. You think you see where this is going? You’re probably right, but let’s finish what we began.

After a little more digging, I figured out that you could create a little bonfire in a barrel. I assumed that with enough space in the factory, I could burn some old exam papers and no one would be any the wiser. Well, this is what we in the business call irony. I set up the barrels, gasoline and all to make it big, bright, and shiny, and decided to come back the next morning when there would be better light in which I could film more. Not too long after I left, a couple of hobos found the place and thought it looked like as good a spot as any to camp out. I guess they thought my barrels were good fire material, because they fired them up all right. And the fire caught fire.

Now, there’s a massive appeal people find in disaster movies. I spent a lot of time wondering why, why would you want to watch stuff blow up when you know it’s just leaving behind a crater and some rubble. There’s not anything that comes out of it; just destruction. I don’t know. I never got it. Except for right then. I heard the explosion on my way down the road, and turned to look. I knew what it was. Watching smoke strangle the sky, the beautiful billows and plumes of ash caressing clouds. I got it. It’s that feeling of not being able to do anything, that feeling that says, fuck it I’m done here.  And I’m done here for quite a while now.

The hobos were fine, by a beautiful miracle, ducking underneath some deus ex machina called a boiler cabinet. As for me, I plan on sticking to artsy films now, the ones where people sit around in hats and no one talks.

*** ***

I ran across the Paperbag Prophet's writing through the Story a Day in May website. I love his/her writing. Check out more stories at the Paperbag Prophet blog.

If you have an anecdote about film or fires I'd really love to share it her on My Embellished Life - being a former film student and current volunteer firefighter, you'd think I'd have such a story... but I don't! So please share yours by linking to this page. 

Rekindle the fire in your loins

By Donna Barker. An old health column for the now-defunct magazine, Today's Vancouver Woman.



Several years ago I was kvetching with two girlfriends about my non-existent sex drive. I’d been married for a decade, was having sex with my husband once every six or eight weeks, and was of the mind that if I never had to have sex again, my life would be no worse.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved my husband. I just had no interest in getting naked with him anymore. My GP prescribed antidepressants. My counsellor encouraged me to explore past sexual experiences. My girlfriends bought me sex toys. None of these things helped. I decided that something in me was broken, and went as far as proposing to my husband that he have an affair while away on a business trip.

He gratefully accepted my indecent proposal. Unfortunately, he fell in love with the other woman and left me. My dream of never having to have sex again had come true… but not quite as I’d envisioned it. Too bad I hadn’t done better research before declaring myself libido-less.

For instance, had I spoken to Dr. Karrin Fairman-Young, a naturopath, she would have asked me about my lifestyle, diet, and the strength of my sex drive when it was “normal.” The most common causes of libido loss for both men and women, says Dr. Fairman-Young, include diet (“A diet that’s too low in fresh food might indicate that antioxidants are needed”), smoking (“Smoking creates free radicals that damage cells in our body, so energy that might be directed to sex drive is focused on repair”), being overweight, and stress.

“When someone comes to see me and their beeper is going off, and they’re anxious to get through our meeting so they make their next appointment, I’ll check cortisol levels and show them stress-reducing breathing [exercises], for instance.”

And if all those possible causes are ruled out? Dr. Fairman-Young says many of her patients have hormone imbalances, which can be caused by estrogen in our drinking water or hormones found in meat.

“Or [it] may be due to vitamin deficiencies that are inhibiting the sexual organs from producing the hormones that influence sexual desire,” she says. “I look at all of these things before suggesting a treatment plan.”

Another perspective on why people lose interest in sex comes from Joseph Schumeckers, an instructor in the Feldenkrais Method: “Sex and sexuality in North American culture are loaded with emotional trauma and taboos that we store in our bodies and minds. This mind-body interaction influences how comfortable we are with the movements that make sex pleasing.”

With the Feldenkrais Method, the muscles that control the movements that make intercourse so enjoyable are worked, so tension is released. From gentle pelvic motions for lovemaking’s subtle moments to improving overall balance for wild explorations, Feldenkrais has been proven to increase sexual pleasure.

Schumeckers believes that “once you are more at home in your body, libido becomes a word with little meaning. What matters is the sensation of two melting bodies carrying each other into blissful experiences.”

Meanwhile, John Ince, co-owner of Vancouver sex toy store The Art of Loving and author of The Politics of Lust, believes that by nature, we tend to become bored with long-term sexual partners and desire newness. Ince suggests trying new ways of lovemaking to re-energize sexual interest—assuming that medical, psychological, and energetic conditions have been ruled out as the cause of low libido.

“Make love somewhere other than the bedroom, perhaps somewhere slightly dangerous, like a secluded public space. Or plan an evening of fantasy role-play, taking different personas, like a fireman hooking up with a waitress. Or, to really transform yourself into someone “new” to your partner, try wearing a wig during foreplay and lovemaking. The erotic mind can be easily tricked into arousing new charge with old lovers. But it takes a genuine interest to rekindle the flame, and openness to experiment to make it work.”

Since my husband had already left, I took all this advice into my new dating life. I even tried the whole wig-stilettos-fishnets thing with one man—but he was the one wearing them, and it did nothing for my libido!

As a relaxed, non-smoking, light-drinking vegetarian, my diet was already pretty libido-friendly. However, when I started dating I did go on the Pill for the first time in 15 years. Did the extra estrogen help? Maybe.

But I think it was Feldenkrais that really reignited my pilot light. I could feel it happening in the hours following each session, in the way my hips moved when I walked. I still have a Feldenkrais treatment once a month—and the man I now share my life with has never heard the words “I have a headache” from my lips.

Donna Barker is a native of Quebec who shares the common French-Canadian attitude that the only subject not to be discussed in mixed company is one’s political beliefs.

My One Year with Avishek

By Indrasish Banerjee

When we reached the crematorium, we saw Avishesk’s lifeless body lying supine on a concrete platform. It was tightly wrapped with a white cloth from neck to toe, so that the body was straining against the cloth as if to break free from the grip of death. Avishek was just 28 years old. He was full of life – which no one knew would escape him so suddenly.

A small crowd of Avishek’s relatives were milling around the body. Among the present were Avishek’s mama (maternal uncle), kaka (paternal uncle), a cousin sister and an aunt. Unsure of whether she would be able to bear the trauma of having to bid the last goodbye, Avishek’s wife, Tani, hadn’t come to the burning ghat.

The pundit started chanting mantras and tossing petals on Avishek’s body. The petals, a mish mash of various colors, were in stark contrast against the white chaddar.

Our manager slowly walked to Avishek’s mama for a small talk and we quickly circled around them to catch up on details, if we had missed out on any. It was a sudden death, which had left everyone shocked. Avishek’s mama confirmed that it was a natural death. Then he averted his large and expressive eyes, with his lower lips curling back a little, and said, “It reminds me of Gogol’s (Avishek’s) rice-giving ceremony, which I had presided over, when Gogol was just a few days old.”

“The name is Avishek Bosu,” Avishek had said when I had first seen him at the company, emphasizing the surname, to confirm that he, like me, was a Bengali.

He looked worried about something, and after his brief introduction, he turned to Girish. As I along with others who had - like me - joined the company a day earlier stepped aside, Avishek started explaining to Girish in graphic details how he had been struggling with on-boarding formalities and how they were completely unnecessary. Enthralled by Avishek’s eloquent narration supported by equally expressive animations, we continued our stoic silence.

Although after a while Avishek finished his discharge with a loud “bullshit”, his bent knees, stretched hands and taut fingers pointing upward - took sometime to return to normal. The verbal onslaught revealed two aspects of Avishek’s personality that we would always associate with him: excitement and high energy.

Four pallbearers ascended the concrete platform and lifted the body. Then they laid the body on a bamboo stretcher. We followed them inside a large hall. We farther trailed them into a big rectangular hall adjoining the previous one. As they laid Avishek on the floor at the centre of the hall, the small crowd retreated to the walls; the walls were very cold to touch.

Shady Promises

[Prompt provided by Summer Ross: 'Shady promises oozed from...']


"¡Viva la Revolución!" cried José Martí on May 19, 1895, breaking away from the Cuban forces and riding straight into the Spanish line and to his death.

Fifty-eight years later, in 1953, inciting the 160 members of 'The Movement' to rise up against President General Batista, Fidel Castro encouraged, "In a few hours you will be victorious or defeated, but regardless of the outcome–listen well, friends–this Movement will triumph. If you win tomorrow, the aspirations of Martí will be fulfilled sooner. If we fail, our action will nevertheless set an example for the Cuban people, and from the people will arise fresh new men willing to die for Cuba."


"¡Viva la Revolución!" chanted the tens of thousands, lead by Ernest "Che" Guevera on New Year's Day 1959, the day after President General Batista fled Cuba.


Three months later, to cheers in Revolution Square, shady promises oozed from under Prime Minister Fidel Castro's scraggly beard, “I will lead the country to economic and cultural progress without sacrificing individual freedoms."


And then one truth, "When we have fulfilled our promise of good government, I will cut my beard."

Cuban Customs

"Are you going to include everything on the customs declaration form?" Dave asked, an hour before landing in Cuba.


"Of course."


He sighed. A sound I knew meant he had misgivings. He may have been sighing while I collected the antibiotic ointment, maternity vitamins, infant formula, Tylenol and prescription pain killers. He may too, have sighed, while we packed the night before. In fact, I'm quite sure he did. But I wasn't willing to hear it.


"If you get pulled out I'm not leaving you alone with the customs people," he said with conviction. Then he whispered, as an aside,"We're so close to Guantanamo..."


"It'll be fine. I'll be fine. As long as I declare everything, I'm not breaking any laws."


He sighed again. I laughed and had a flashback to a trip I'd taken to Sri Lanka by myself, the year before I met Dave. In Columbo, the capital city, soldiers with automatic rifles stood on every street corner, perched atop buildings, surveilled the parks. I'd never felt uncomfortable, even when I had one of those rifles pointed directly at my head while four soldiers ran at me, full speed, yelling. I was standing on a bridge, taking a picture of a train. In a city where the most recent terrorist bomb had exploded just three days earlier, I should have known better. My faux-pas was considered serious. But just for a moment. My Canadian passport was my 'get out of jail free' card.


Perhaps I was naive. But Cuba, and the possibility of upsetting a customs agent, and our proximity to Guantanamo Bay, made no impact on me.


At customs, Dave and I were separated. All couples were. Dave carried the suitcase with our bathing suits and aloe vera lotion, and the carry-on that held our Kobos and headphones. I dragged the suitcase and carry-on we were leaving behind in Cuba. Dave's bags went through the x-ray machine. Several other Vancouverites and Calgarians similarly walked through the screening without incident. The agents appeared to be asleep with their eyes open.


My carry-on entered the x-ray machine. The man with the sleepy eyes raised his right hand high and yelled something. Then he looked at me and pointed to the bag, "Yours?"


"Yes," I said.


"What?" he asked, pointing again at the bag.


"Glasses," I said, taking my own off my face and pointing at them.


As the saying goes, that's when all hell broke loose. Five agents and a security guard surrounded me. I could tell the security guard from the others by the fact that he wore a serious scowl and a gun. The female customs agents, by contrast, wore high heels, super-short skirts and blouses that emphasized their generous assets. Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.


My bags and I were escorted to an open area at the side of the large customs room. Dave was told to wait for me outside. He refused but was prevented from entering the roped area I was now standing in. I smiled, nodded to the agents and motioned my request to say goodbye to my husband. They agreed. I kissed Dave and told him I wouldn't be long, "See if you can find Pastor Moises and Jose. Maybe they can come in and explain."


Two of the five agents spoke English: the head agent and the younger of the two female agents; the one wearing the torn fishnet stockings. She smiled at me. He did not.


"What is all this?" he asked, waving his hands over my bags. "Open them! They're for the black market!"


"No! It's all declared. I have a right to bring this medicine to your country," I said, surprised at my confidence. "Wait. I have a document," I pulled a one-pager from my handbag, written half in English, half in Spanish.


He read the sheet and looked me up and down, shaking his head. "Empty your bags."


While the other four agents stood behind the table I'd been placed at, I emptied all of the medical supplies from the suitcase. "Do you want me to take out the clothes and toiletries?" I asked.


"Are they yours?" the young agent asked.


"Yes," I said, hoping she wouldn't test me and take out the brand new children's shoes or the size 2 jeans or the men's handkerchiefs or the six tubes of toothpaste; all the items we were bringing as a gift to the families of the two men who ran the community clinic from their Church. I closed and zipped the suitcase and placed it on the floor, away from me. I put the list of items I'd declared beside the pile of medicines. I prayed to Pastor Moises's God (since I didn't have one of my own to pray to) to keep that bag from being re-opened.


"Now this one, please," she asked.


I unzipped and opened the carry-on. All of the agents simultaneously gasped.


"They're just glasses," I said, not able to hold back my smile, wondering if perhaps a spider had made its way into the bag.


"For the black market," said the head customs man.


"No! For Pastor Moises. He's outside. For a clinic. Can you talk to Pastor Moises?" I asked.


"No," he said. "How many pairs do you have?"


"One hundred and forty."


"This is very, very bad," said the head agent walking away.


The junior agents spoke among themselves. Two started to write an inventory of all the medicines, checking expiry dates and making sure none of the containers had been opened. After an hour (they were working v-e-r-y slowly), the other two agents went through the exact. Same. Procedure.


"Why are you looking so closely at the vitamins and baby formula?" I asked the young agent, who'd told me her name was Yanni.


"Two, maybe three years ago, a tourist like you brought poisoned baby formula to our country. Many babies died. We have to be careful. Not everyone is as nice as you are."


I'd shown Yanni the pictures I brought of Pastor Moises receiving suitcases of medical supplies from other Canadian tourists. She'd immediately recognized him, "He was my pastor when I was a child. That was my church. He is a very good man. He helps a lot of people."


While the medicines were being examined, the reading glasses and sunglasses had been separated and counted out - not once, not twice, not even three times. Each of the four agents handled then counted every pair of glasses, enjoying themselves trying on the nicest sunglasses, posing for each other. A brand new, tags-still-on, pair of Oakleys were obviously coveted by all of them and sat to the side of the two, long runs of lenses.


After two hours, the head agent returned. The four junior agents laid into him, waving their hands, raising their voices, shaking their heads, walking away then returning to wave and yell and shake some more. I watched from a safe distance, seated on the one hard bench in the inspection area. I rose when he finally walked toward me.


"You have caused me a great deal of trouble. My staff are upset with me because I have to follow the rules and they want to let you take the glasses. That makes me very upset with you," he stared hard at me and I could tell his anger was sincere. "You can take the medicines out to your Pastor, but we are confiscating all the glasses."


I must have smiled. I certainly didn't on purpose, but he added, "They will be destroyed."


It took another hour for the paperwork to be completed. I was given a copy and sent on my way into the now dark night. Dave, Pastor Moises, and Jose were standing in a row, arms crossed, heads bowed. Obviously exhausted from three hours of standing and waiting.


I danced to Dave, tired but laughing. I threw my arms around his neck and we kissed.  "See," I said, "all that worry for nothing!"

The Sacred Door

With irrational enthusiasm, I opted to climb five flights of stairs and experience the hotel as I’d been lead to believe He had in the 1930s, '40s and ‘50s. My destination? A door so sacred that bus tours stop here to let tourists see it. A door so famous that it has websites devoted to what rests - and who rested - behind it. I needed to see this door. To open it. To step inside and breathe in the remnant oxygen molecules expelled by Him. I knew that the room behind that door would have the answer to a question I’d been too afraid to ask out loud.


I wasn’t alone in my journey up the five flights but it was my compulsion to sit where He had created His masterpieces that kept us from experiencing the offerings of the chocolate museum or spending our converted pesos on Che key-rings or photographs of vintage cars at the tourist-oriented craft fair.


“You’d rather visit an empty hotel room than taste world class chocolate? The heat must have melted your brain,” my husband, Dave said.


“You don’t understand! His energy will still be in that room. I need to stand in his chi, to absorb his vital force.”
The door to room 511 was grubby and stained, the residue of thousands of hands having pushed it open, many like me, with reverence. I truly believed that if I opened the door slowly enough, quietly enough, I might catch Hemingway at his typewriter, bleeding his stories on to the pages. But the room was empty of men. His bed was made and roped off, making it difficult--but not impossible--to lay where Papa had once slept and dreamed. His typewriter sat under the cover of a plexi-glass box, its keys protected from dust and the inexpert fingers of wannabes, like me.


I stood and I gazed and I closed my eyes and I breathed deeply and I tried to open myself to the brilliance that I knew must still be hanging in air, waiting to be absorbed by anyone open to receiving it. But nothing came. Room 511 was… a creative void.


“I don’t understand,” I said, almost in tears.


A Cuban man with near-perfect English stepped into the room, “So, what do you think?” he asked.


“It’s not at all what I expected. I’m disappointed,” I admitted.


“Did you ever hear that the cigars made by the Romeo and Julieta cigar factory were rolled between the thighs of virgins?” he asked.


“Yes.”


“And do you believe it?”


“Of course not.”


“Of course not! So why would you believe that simply because Ernest Hemingway is said to have stayed at the Ambos Mudos Hotel that he wrote anything here? What do you see in here?”


He didn’t leave me time to answer, “Nothing!” he said. “Hemingway lived and wrote in Havana for over twenty years, but not from this room. He lived in a giant hacienda on ten acres of land with a swimming pool and a library where he hosted friends like Ava Gardner and Gary Cooper and Jean-Paul Satre. He didn’t live in this small hotel room. The very idea is ridiculous!”


I felt like a fool. Snookered. I’d given up the chance to eat a chocolate Che Guevera head and buy grey market, communist trinkets for the false promise of artistic inspiration. As though reading my mind, the man said, “I can take you to a place where Hemingway did find inspiration-- Bar Floridita.”


“That sounds perfect,” said Dave with the enthusiasm of man who’d very quickly grown to love the Cuban rum that was served all-you-can-drink at our resort.


We sat at the bar with the Bronze, life-size Ernest, dressed as casually was we were, down to his sandals. We each ordered a ‘Hemingway daiquiri.’ Then a ‘Papa Doble,’ the same, but as Hemingway drank this lime and grapefruit slurpee, as a double.


“You know,” said our new friend, “Hemingway wrote that daiquiris felt, as you drank them, the way downhill glacier-skiing feels running through powder snow.”


“Then we need to order another round because I’m not feeling the snow yet!”


Before I left Bar Floridita I finally had the courage to ask the question that I'd been worrying over for weeks.  I leaned over to Mr. Hemingway and with drunken enthusiasm, whispered into his cold ear, “Papa, is my novel ready to be submitted to publishers?”


Papa leaned heavily on the bar and put his hand to his hip. Looking into my eyes without blinking, he said, “Donna, I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”


“Thank you, Papa. I’ll hire an editor.”

Ridiculous Retribution

By Indrasish, from his blog Indrasishblog

Sometimes a sudden anger leads us to an action we don’t approve of later. But, unable to lid our emotions, we perform it anyway.

Our company provides us with ‘pick-up and drop’ cab service because of our unconventional working hours aligned to US time zone as they are. Ours is an outsourcing company.

Although we spend a few hours in cabs during commuting, the cab becomes a world of its own with its characteristics and uniqueness.

You make new cab mates, a mix of employees from various departments, and the cab becomes a host to a mini social unit.

A part of this small and mobile social circle is the cab drivers. Some drivers participate in small talks with employees and become a part of the circle while others just stick to driving.

But travelling in office cab isn’t always about camaraderie.

There are two types of vehicles in service, Tata Sumo and Tavera. The latter is a heavier one, and because of its studier built one needs to be very careful while shutting its doors.

While closing a door, you have to bring it close to the vehicle’s body and then give a gentle push; otherwise, the door will shut with a bang, shaking the whole body of the vehicle.

Unmindful, I forgot to follow the door-shutting ritual twice. And each time the driver snapped at me. Although I apologized each time, the driver’s insolent bursts left me feeling a little uneasy.

The chauffeurs keep changing every two days or so, and there is an army of them. So each time a chauffeur replaces an old one, you don’t see the earlier chauffeur for sometime. The moody driver was withdrawn from our cab and I didn’t see him for a while and somewhat forgot the incident.

Yesterday it was his turn to drive us back home again. As I was stepping into the cab, I heard a blast of brazen laughter behind me. There was a cluster of drivers sharing a joke.

After a while, in the cab, it occurred to me that maybe the driver was bragging about the snubs he administered to me; I tried dismissing the thought as petty concern about something whose veracity I wasn’t sure of.

But, strangely, the more I tried to wriggle out of the grip of the thought, the more firmly it gripped me, until it led to a dull anger, seeking an outlet.

As the cab stopped in front of my house, I swung the door wide open. I got down, but held the door at a distance. Then I slammed it into its frame. Bang! As the driver burst into a garrulous roar, I coolly walked to my house’s main gate.

Even as I walked out of the scene, his loud verbal onslaught continued, and reluctant to be outdone, I first asked him to shut up and then dared him to come and stand before me.

He rushed to the spot and a full-blown remonstration followed. I used harsh words in English and Hindi, he used some in Kannada. We didn’t follow each other.

PS: Probably my ridiculous retribution, clumsy outburst - or whatever you may like to call it – had to do with the fact that I tried too hard to divert my attention from the incident and the harder I tried, the more focused I became. Maybe sometimes we should just relax and let a concern die its own death and not try hard to stamp it out.

READ MORE from Indrasish at his blog Indrasishblog, where you'll find film reviews, literary criticism and other less emotionally charged stories from his life. I quite like the opening to his March 12 post, The Iron Lady: "Usually, I am not my own man when it comes to choosing the movie I want to watch."

Murder on Main Street

By Martha Moravec, excerpted from her blog Mad Genius Bohemians

Brattleboro, Vermont has been my home for thirty-eight years.  When I first arrived, I was told by a number of people that I would have to be a resident for sixty years in order to be considered a Vermonter.  Fair enough.  I was there to get through college.  I had no intention of staying on, as I had no desire to strike root in a place where I didn’t feel especially welcome.

I did stay, however – in fact, I never left – because I happened to have landed in Brattleboro and Brattleboro was the kind of big small town that just took you in.  Whether you were a low-residency psychiatric patient from the Brattleboro Retreat, a Colombian or Japanese student from the Experiment in International Living, a Cambodian refugee, an aging hippie or a transplanted artist, writer or musician, you were tolerated, you were absorbed.

While at college, I began writing the books and lyrics for five musicals that were being produced as fast as my collaborator and I could turn them out.  One of my lyrics shaded my nostalgia for Beaver PA, the hometown of my parents, into my new sentiment for Brattleboro, which was beginning to feel like home.

If it were mud or made of stone,


If it were cobble or clay,


I still would never walk alone


Down Main Street USA.

I could tell you more about Brattleboro (and I probably will eventually) but if you live in a small town or a big town, a reasonably sized city, a city with distinct neighborhoods or a village in Surrey, Guangxi or Mpumalanga, you probably know what I mean.

There would be no one to disturb


But an old friend on the way;


There’s always someone on the curb


Of Main Street USA.

This summer, the town of Brattleboro, which proudly hosts annual events like the Harris Hill ski-jumping competition, the Women’s Film Festival, the Vermont Theatre Company’s Shakespeare-in-the-Park, the Brattleboro Literary Festival, the Marlboro Music Festival (in nearby Marlboro) and the Strolling of the Heifers (a jubilant celebration of sustainable local agriculture), also unexpectedly played host to a series of misfortunes whose psychological effects were very likely magnified by their proximity in time.

The season began with a disastrous fire at Brooks House, one of the town’s historical and architectural prizes on the corner of Main and High Streets.  The gutting of the top two floors of this landmark building left seventy people without homes, while smoke and water damage closed ten street-level businesses.  Some of the businesses relocated and re-opened within two weeks, some we might see again in a year and others we will never see again.  We lost the Book Cellar, one of the smartest independent bookstores I have ever been in, and for a time we feared losing the Brooks House tower, which gives that part of Main Street its distinctive profile and provided Archer Mayor with a suspenseful site for a chase in one of his Joe Gunther novels.

If we were feeling complacent after the fire because Brattleboro expects a disaster of that magnitude only once a year, we were startled and dismayed when a few months later another prized historical and architectural feature on Main Street was wiped out by an impatient truck driver.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings, the Latchis Memorial Building (which houses a hotel, a brewery, several theatres and businesses) is one of only two authentic Art Deco structures in the state of Vermont.  Built in 1938, the Greek Revival-themed interior of its movie palace and old vaudeville house is near and dear to our hearts. The impatient truck driver drove up on the sidewalk in an effort to get around some cars that were – I don’t know – stopped for a red light?  It’s difficult to imagine what he was thinking, but let us be glad he didn’t take out any pedestrians and merely completely mangled the Latchis Theatre’s classic marquee.

People started asking, what the hell is going on?

On July 29 the body of a woman in her early thirties was discovered in the woods off the East-West Road in nearby Dummerston.  She had been shot in the head by, it was quickly discovered, her boyfriend and a buddy.  All three of them were involved in “drug-related activity,” specifically the sale of crack cocaine.  This event, although unfortunate, did not have a notable impact on the local mood and media.

Maybe drug dealers are expected to shoot each other in the head but old hippie types who subscribe to wellness, social change and sustainable living are not.  The death of the woman on the East-West Road acquired a new significance and air of menace when it was followed two weeks later by a shooting at the Brattleboro Food Co-op.  The Co-op had just opened for the day when an employee who had recently received a poor job evaluation walked quietly into the store and shot and killed the general manager.


READ THE REST of Murder of Main Street at Mad Genius Bohemians. 

Developmental Milestones

By Ife Togun, excerpted from his blog The Skye Chronicles.

Skye turned one month old on Saturday, which means a number of things should have happened by now including but not limited to:

• Lifts head for short periods of time
• Prefers the human face to other shapes
• Brings hands to face
• May turn towards familiar sounds or voices
• Blinks at bright lights

Skye mastered all of these and moved on to some of the behaviors reserved for two month olds, such as tracking moving objects, smiling, and making noises other than crying.

I know, I know, I’m likely making the proud father mistake of taking meaningless gestures as signs of advanced baby genius.  But it’s hard not to.  At least not until such a time around the age of sixteen when she goes on a nationally televised high school quiz show in Washington, D.C., and proceeds to embarrass me by proclaiming “Texas” as the capital of the United States. 

Only then…perhaps.  Until then, super baby genius.  I’ve already started reading her “A Brief History of Time,” and she seems to like it.  She stares at my mouth with rapt attention as Stephen Hawking’s words flow from it.  Of course, it may just be the cadence of my voice.  But again, until that fateful day in D.C., I’m sticking with the super baby genius angle.

Now that Skye’s a month old, it’s time to return to the doctor’s office at Kidcare Pediatrics.  We’ve been back once before, at 2-weeks, for a routine check up.  This time is different though.  This time Skye has to get another immunization shot.  All the shots and tests are not fun.  The last time Skye got stuck with a needle, it was for the battery of tests required by either the state or the federal government to ensure she doesn’t have any odd illnesses that need to be immediately addressed.  

I literally had to hold her down as a buxom, jovial, black nurse named Angie, squeezed her heel with the strength of a thousand pound press, and stuck a needle into it to draw blood.  Imagine holding something so fragile in your arms, telling her it’ll be okay.  She trusts you.  She’s calm.  And then, contrary to your word, it is not okay.  A needle enters her tiny heel and she starts to cry.

Once she is able, through her moist, red eyes she levels you with a gaze of anger and loathing you would not have thought possible of an infant.  It reminded me of growing up as a kid in Nigeria, watching my father and his friends slaughtering chickens in the backyard.  Sometimes, after losing their heads, the chickens’ bodies would kick into survival mode and they’d take off in a headless, manic run.  

But did they head for the men who lopped off their heads?  Of course not.  They came for me, the skinny, well away from the carnage 7-year-old boy, as if to say, “I knew they were mean, but you, I trusted you!  You fed me corn!”  I’d run across the yard, screaming for my mother, as the headless, flapping, soon to be dinner chicken gave chase in a surreal reenactment of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” I no longer eat meat.  Haven’t in years.  These “chases” likely played a part.

At the doctor’s office, a nurse named Debbie directs us to the “2nd to the last door on the left” at the end of a long corridor.  The room looks exactly like all the other ones we’ve been in at KidCare, from the location of the examination table down to the placement of the big tub of generic Purell on the table.  It’s comforting.  Like finding a Burger King on a trip to rural China after eating chicken beaks for a week.

READ the rest of Ife's story, Developmental Milestones. 

Balls

By Denise DeSio, author of Rose's Will.

For some people, sports are like soap operas. They watch one or two games and the next thing you know, their brains turn to mush and all they can think about is the next episode. Unfortunately, my wife has become one of them. The few pennies we have go to Mercury tickets and when she's not at a game, she pulls up a chair 18 inches from our 52" TV set and acts like she's in the first row.

It's a progressive disease. First it was just women's basketball. Now it doesn't matter who's playing or what game it is. If it has "ball" at the end of it, she's interested.  I stood at the stove, preparing rice pilaf and asparagus tips for friends who were on their way to our house with steaks to cook on the grill, when the phone rang.

"Hello! This is Angela from One Community. Congratulations! You've won two tickets to the Mercury Playoff game."

"This is a joke, right?" It's a well-known fact that I have as much interest in sports as a centipede has in shoes.

"No joke," said Angela. "We just pulled your card out of our fishbowl."

"Really?" I vaguely remembered dropping cards around town to advertise the publication of my novel, Rose's Will. "Thank you," I said, trying to sound as grateful as a sports-o-phobe could be when she's told that she's won the equivalent of a coffee enema. "Do I have to pick them up, or will you mail them?"

"Well, it's tonight," she said in a tone that clearly indicated the answer should have been obvious. "The tickets will be at the window."

"Oh, no!" I said, this time sounding genuinely excited instead of sadly disappointed. "Not tonight! We're expecting company for dinner any minute. Can we exchange them for another night (a night when Carol can go with somebody else, I thought)?" 

She paused. "Um, this is the playoff. If the Mercury don't win, there might not BE another night.

"Oh boy," I said, "this is the worst good news my partner is ever going to hear."

Carol was standing in front of me listening to my side of the conversation and doing what she normally gets mad at me for doing: "What? Who is it? What news?"

I asked Angela to hold on for a second. "We won two tickets to the Mercury game," I paused for effect, "tonight". Her face turned from happy clown into a horror mask. I knew that she knew that we couldn't leave our friends standing in the doorway with four enormous T-bones while we scampered off to the game.

"I'm sorry Angela (I really wasn't sorry), but we just can't." Carol groaned loudly in the background.

I was right in the middle of saying "thanks anyway" when Angela said the dreaded thing:

"We could give you FOUR tickets instead of two if your friends want to go with you."

"I don't know about that," I said. "I'd have to ask them."

Carol stopped groaning. "What? Ask who? What did she say?" I ignored her.

"Listen, take my number," Angela said. "Ask your friends and call me back." Our friends were avid sports fans and as I wrote down the number, I realized that our plans were about to shift drastically. 

So, yes it's true. That was me on the JumboTron, sitting in the 3rd row eating peanuts while four perfectly delicious steaks sat in fridge.

Sometimes you just have to give in.

READ MORE from Denise DeSio at her website. If you're a writer, an aspiring author, you'll enjoy reading about her own journey publishing her debut novel, Rose's Will. There's an excerpt on her website and book review. And lots of entertaining stories from her own (embellished?) life!

Buy ROSE'S WILL for Kindle 
Buy ROSE'S WILL for Nook 
Buy ROSE'S WILL to read on your PC or laptop (use PDF file) 
But ROSE'S WILL for all other devices (PDF, MOBI, EPUB)

Inspired by Denise? Want to share your own story about taking one for the team? Details for how to submit to My Embellished Life are here.

Road Sharks

By Peggy Strack, from her blog Kick Back Moments

I have a 30-mile commute to work on a congested highway. The distance isn't the biggest problem, nor is the traffic. It's the other drivers that are maddening. If I leave home by 6:45, it's okay, but by 7:00 the trouble starts. It's as if cruising dolphins suddenly turn into vicious sharks prepared to attack anyone who gets in their way.  

On Thursday of this week I was running late. I left my house at 7:10. The first twenty miles were uneventful. The sun was hovering on the horizon and excellent tunes were popping up on my I-Pod. Then it happened.  I veered into the left lane to make room for the hordes of vehicles that merge onto to the highway at Exit 8. As Coldplay entertained me with Viva la Vida, I peeked into my rear view mirror and saw her--a road shark. Lead Foot Lucy was charging toward me and within seconds was right on my tail. Maybe you've seen her before--bulging eyes, one hand flailing, the other hand gripping the steering wheel like it's the safety bar on a roller coaster. She looks a little like this:

I looked to my right. No room to switch to the middle lane. Lead Foot Lucy was going to devour me. Several yards separated me from the car ahead and I thought about accelerating, but decided not to. I like being a dolphin and didn't want to catch the shark virus. I refused to be intimidated into causing an accident or getting a speeding ticket. Lead Foot Lucy didn't like my decision and inched closer. Why was she in such a rush anyway? Was she on her way to save the global economy? And if she was, maybe she should have left home earlier. She was really starting to annoy me so I took a kick back moment. Relax and enjoy the show. I cruised along a touch above the speed limit. After all, I was in the passing lane. (Sidebar question: Does the speed limit increase to whatever you want it to be in the passing lane, or is the speed limit the speed limit?) 

I looked in the rear view mirror again. Lead Foot Lucy's chin was almost touching the steering wheel and her teeth were clenched. I chuckled, but it really wasn't funny. She could have easily caused a multi-car pile-up and I'd be the first victim. Just then free space opened up in the middle lane. Within two notes of the song playing on my I-Pod, Lucy sped past, then darted in front of me.

The highway ended and I sat in my car waiting at a traffic light right behind Lead Foot Lucy. We ended up in the exact same spot at the exact same time. If I had succumbed to her pressure to speed up, we might have gotten through that traffic light a little sooner, maybe by three minutes, at the most. Is three minutes worth a blood pressure spike, heartbeat acceleration and an overall crazed feeling? When the green arrow appeared, Lead Foot Lucy zipped around the corner. I smiled and waved, but she didn't even notice.

So how do you drive when you're in a rush to get somewhere. Are you a cruising dolphin or a vicious shark?

READ MORE of Peggy's Kick Back Moments. Peggy says her blog is "a place where the art of relaxing, laughing and slowing down are explored." Each week she posts one original story, a song and a book recommendation. It's a fun blog with lots of great for kicking back photos.

Want to drive along with a real road shark?

As I was getting this post ready, the news was on. I only half-listen but the sound of a speeding car caught my attention. It was a story of a Japanese doctor who put a camera in his Ferrari, filmed himself driving at 140 km/hour (on the highway and in residential areas) and then... posted his video to YouTube. Guess what? He's been charged with dangerous driving.

And now it's your turn to share a story. Cruising dolphins and vicious sharks are welcome to contribute to My Embellished Life. Find out how here.

When I was a nun

By Donna Barker

When I was a kid I had a few different career aspirations. I remember two of them quite clearly:

As a teenager I had it in my head that I would become an RCMP officer. I loved the idea of upholding the law and riding horses and having a gun. I didn’t get far down that path, however. I did learn to shoot a rifle, but an astute career counselor and a battery of personality tests directed me away from any career that would require me to follow rules. Apparently, I believe in following the law, but boy do I despise rules!

The other career I recall wanting to follow was when I was much younger. Some age in elementary school. I wanted to be a nun. It didn’t worry me that I wasn’t being raised Catholic. Nor did it worry my grandmother, Nonny. 

Nonny came from a long line of Anglican ministers - starting back in 1845. Her brother was an Arch-Deacon and a good friend of the Reverend Billy Graham (the only TV evangelist she watched). My dad’s generation was the first in over 100 years that failed to provide the family with their Reverend... so I guess she thought that making up for that lapse with a wee little nun wouldn’t be a bad thing.

I’d forgotten all about that goal... And about the time I came home from Bible Camp and tried to secretly convert my 3-year-old brother to a born-again Christian life. (Oddly, my parents didn't send me back to that camp the following summer...).

But two weeks ago these old lives of mine came flooding back (I'm sure if I thought hard I could come up with a clever Biblical pun, but those really are old lives). What happened two weeks ago? I had a past life reading and guess what? Several hundred years, but only two lives ago, I was … a nun!

It’s true. I lived in Rome. I was very devout and I never sinned. But – and this is the information that has me convinced that the reading is accurate – I was a nun who challenged certain rules of my Church.

Apparently, I could not reconcile the fact that, as a woman of God, I could only show my devotion with my spirit. I wanted to use my body as well. I was one of those progressive nuns who believed that we should be able to serve God and be allowed to experience not just spiritual but bodily ecstasy as well.

It may have been several hundred years and two lifetimes ago, but I still hold that same belief… why have the ability to feel spiritual, emotional and physical pleasure (and pain, of course) and not explore all of these as fully as we can?

I think I’ll get a piercing or a tattoo tomorrow…

Have you ever had a past life reading? Or do you just have an innate sense of who you were in a past life? If so, share your story here at My Embellished Life. Guidelines - which I guess I'd have to excuse you for breaking - are here.

And if you enjoyed this post, please read some of the other wonderful writers who have contributed to this community blog. And leave a comment or a Google + on one you particularly enjoy. We all love a virtual high-five.