Tuesday, March 15, 2011
My Eulogy for Bob Dey
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Prompt Tuesday #97 (Talk to Me)
Tell a story using only dialog. Instructions for this Prompt Tuesday found at:
http://sandiegomomma.com/2010/03/09/promptuesday-97-talk-to-me/#respond
-------------
"Hello, sir. M-May I . . ."
"Yes, yes. Hello, there! Can you hang my umbrella somewhere . . . and tell me a bit more about this piece . . . back here?"
"On top of the . . ."
"No below. Inside it."
"The one here in the front of..."
"No, no. Behind it. The small . . . uh, how shall we say . . .? The small coffer."
"Coffer. I see no . . . Well, let me . . . let me unlock this . . . and . . . Okay. Here. Hmmm. I guess I didn't realize that my Uncle even had this in his store. Perhaps I should clean it first. Let me get a dustrag. You know this would fall under our everything-must-go sale, correct?"
"I'm aware of that, my dear . . . But I'm not concerned about the . . . Well, let me just take a look at it."
"All dusted. Here. You can probably guess this is not an imitation. Do you want me to look for the key, sir? My uncle has a keyring down here . . . somewhere . . ."
"Not to worry, my dear. I have the . . . I have no need to further examine it. I can see it is a piece of my property that I have been . . . well, . . . without possession for quite some time."
"Sir."
"Yes."
"Are you saying that . . ."
"I am proposing nothing of the sort, young lady. You are in no way implicated in . . . But I tarry. Name your price."
"Well, let's look on the bottom to see if . . ."
"No need to turn it topsy turvy, my dear. Under . . . under here. Fifteen pounds. Is that right. Fifteen?"
"Well my uncle . . . if that is what he wrote. Plus the discount of course, which would mean that . . . that . . . Did you hear that just now, sir?"
"No need for discounts young lady. You . . ."
"Did you hear that, sir? That sound. Just now. That . . ."
"My dear, there is no need to . . ."
"That sound from . . . The noise from . . . The box. That noise from inside the box. My god, sir. Do you hear that?"
"I have no interest in noises, my dear. Fifteen pounds square. No need for discounts. In fact, take this."
"Uh, sir. This is . . . This is, my god, one hundred pounds. Uh, well that is . . . You must . . . Do you want a receipt?"
"I need no paperwork, my dear. Thank you."
"Sir. Thank you, sir."
"Tell me, my dear. Your uncle. Mr., uh . . ."
"McCourt, sir?"
"Yes, Mr. McCourt. Did he . . . Do they know . . . uh, how . . ."
"How . . .?"
"Yes. How he . . .?"
"How he died sir?"
"Yes. I understand he was found."
"Found just here, sir. Laying on the floor, he was. Just below the counter. Key ring in his hand. Had just locked up for the night and . . ."
"And, the . . . the injuries."
"They aren't certain. A misfortune. A creature. Perhaps a rabid . . . small . . . Well, the inspectors still aren't . . . They aren't quite . . ."
"Yes. Uh. Well. My best to your family . . . and for the expeditious closing of the shop, my dear. I have enjoyed frequenting it since the day it opened."
"Since the day it opened, my dear sir."
"Yes. Since the very day."
"Since . . . since 1858, sir? Indeed."
"Indeed, madam. Indeed. My umbrella?"
"Uh . . . Yes. Here it . . . is. And the door. My best to you, sir. And would you like a wrapping for your box? Your coffer?"
"My dear. We don't need to protect this box, young lady! My goodness, no, no! I merely wish to protect . . . uh . . . protect YOU . . . protect YOU ALL . . . FROM this box. Good day to you my dear!"
-------------
Please indulge me By Answering These Questions:
1) Briefly describe the shop you see in your mind's eye?
2) What does the purchaser look like in your mind?
3) What does the shopkeeper look like in your mind?
4) Describe the box. What do you see inside of the box?
Thank you so much for answering these questions! :)
-- Wade Nash
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Prompt Tuesday (2/2/10)
Today, when emailing a friend with a writing critique, I ran across this article, which I enjoyed:
http://users.wirefire.com/tritt/tip1.html
I'll summarize with a short "crumping" poem:
Don't Tell! Show!
Stupid mofo!
(repeat)
(Sung to the tune of "Pants on the Ground.")
And here is a haiku that I wrote to immortalize this concept:
Quill dips . . .
Exact descriptions inked onto parchment
The readers snooze.
My best to all . . .
-- Wade Nash
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Prompt Tuesday (6/16/09) -- Lie to Me
Pride
My upcoming "Rings of the Lord" trillogy. Arch-Angels (Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer) form a pact with each other and each don a power ring of Black Hills gold. But one of the angels falls from Grace, and his ring melts in the fires of Hell, allowing him to rise up and . . . Ah, well. Trust me. It's going to be great.
Envy
My awesome typing speed. 90+.
Gluttony
Two Black Bean Brownies. (Recipe on the WeightWatchers.com website. Yummy!!)
Lust
Really big, historic homes that are already fixed up and have perfect foundations. And big tits.
Anger
That my mother-in-law wouldn't plug in the power cord and hand it to me, so I had to walk all the way around the house to do it myself.
Greed
The bathroom key at the office.
Sloth
I once turned in a math paper by writing all the odd CORRECT answers from the back of the book -- and for all the even answers I put a Zero. My math teacher was so pissed, she ripped the answer appendice out of my pre-Algebra book! What WAS I thinking?
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Prompt Tuesday (6/9/09) -- "Decisions, Decisions"
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Prompt Tuesday, 5/5/09 -- My Favorite Toy
I would construct fortresses with blocks that I would roll marbles into. They marbles would cascade through the small tunnels through twists and turns -- and then roll out through a little exit tunnel at the end -- making a plinking noise as the marble cascaded down the ramps.
I was fixated on this game, Mouse Trap, at the time, but my parents didn't want to buy it for me ("The plastic parts will only get lost or break, honey,") and so, I continued with my blocks.
Later my dad built me a large HO train board with its own mountain and even a little HO-scaled Western town. However, my attention would soon run dry and I'd find myself, yet again, laying on my orange shag rug, laying down the blocks, and rolling marbles through them.
Watching my kids grow up with race car tracks and roller coaster "kinex" and Harry Potter Legos and robots and then Rios and now iPod Nanos and various computer games (Wow, Starcraft, etc) -- I wonder how much more fun that all is compared to constructing your very own marble factory.
Now where are my blocks? I'm beginning to feel that they are my "Rosebud."
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The Little Things that Make All the Difference
Whereas my arrangements had placed us with friends in New Orleans, my friend David's girlfriend Ray had arranged for our accommodations in New Jersey. It was on the Jersey shore with an old friend of Ray's mother, a woman named Pat, who met us graciously and took her into her home. She had hot pastrami sandwiches awaiting us -- and good spicy brown mustard. Her condo had rust-colored shag rug -- and 1980s furnishings -- but her view across the highway to the shore was stunning. She had prepared clean sheets on the fold-out bed for me in the living room. My friends stayed in the back room by themselves.
We were exhausted from our drive, but I had some difficulty falling asleep. Pat sat not far from me in the kitchen with the light on, smoking cigarettes and coughing, and doing a crossword puzzle. I remember thinking that she was coughing very hard. I popped half a Xanax, as was my custom to fall asleep in a strange locale, and drifted off.
That evening, I was awakened by my friends' crys to call 911. I thought I was dreaming, but it was a different kind of nightmare. Pat had coughed so hard during the night, she had burst a vein in a lung tumor. She was able to rouse my friends from the back bedroom, make the international sign of choking, before running into the bathroom and collapsing on the bathroom floor, where she bled out, entirely, through the mouth, covering the entire floor with the majority of her blood.
"Don't come in here," David yelled to me in the hallway. "You are not going to want to see this. Trust me." To this day, I owe David a debt of gratitude that I don't have that memory etched into my brain.
What I hadn't been told is that Pat was a New Jersey Police Detective who had recently retired after putting away some mobsters. When her fellow police officers arrived on the scene and saw Pat in a huge pool of blood on the bathroom floor, and three strangers in the house, it was a no- brainer to interrogate us.
We were separated by the police officers while forensic specialists examined the Pat's corpse. As the sun came up over the Jersey Shore, I was asked repeatedly about why I was in the house (just to crash, I said) and how I knew Pat (I didn't, I said), and what I did to Pat (I ate a sandwich with her and wished her good night, I said). Luckily, I was still slighly high on Xanax.
Within the hour, Pat's doctor was summoned. He told the detectives that Pat had terminal lung cancer. She knew that she could succumb to the disease at any time. She chose to take us in and give us a place to stay, taking a chance that she would be fine during the 12 hours of our stay. What she didn't know is that we would arrive just hours from her imminent death.
In many ways I'm glad I was there for Pat's death. Oddly enough, not only was it exciting to be interrogated for Murder, but I found out later that my friends were there at Pat's side, holding her hand, and easing her fear as she left this life into the great unknown.
We all had separate plane tickets, so I left David and Ray behind that morning and drove to Albany, as was our plan.
Ray naturally was depressed by all of this. When I next saw her, in Prague, she was clearly shaken by Pat's death. This, however, was my post-divorce, never-been-to-Europe trip, and so, perhaps selfishly, I resolved to leave the both of them. I arranged to meet them in Warsaw . . . and then reversed direction and instead journeyed southeast by myself through Hungary and Romania and Bulgaria into Turkey, traveling with whomever I would meet in the local pensions who were heading my direction. It turned out to be the trip of a lifetime and I met many friends from many far-flung places: Australians, Irish, Chileans, Kiwi's . . . and without Pat's death, I would never have made the decision to travel on my own. Traveling on my own became a liberating experience that has changed me profoundly to this day and given me a boost of self confidence in traveling, life in general, meeting new people, experiencing new things/places and personal relationships.
----
After a seven year break in our friendship, I recently met up again with my old travel companion David. David had just exited a rehab program for heroin users -- and became employed by the Seattle needle-exchange program. After an accident left him with a broken leg, he moved back to San Diego, and found me. We met up at a local museum for a special event, had a cocktail or two, and started talking about the old days . . . our college days at Pt. Loma College, old friends, and our Eastern European trip. Ray had never quite gotten over the death of Pat, he told me. She fell into a depression that trip that caused their relationship some problems, and once they returned to Seattle, she shortly left David for another man. She got pregnant, and had a little girl with the new boyfriend, which was enough closure for David to move on.
--------
"Ray is dead," David told me recently. His lips tremored. "Her boyfriend shot her."
He explained that both Ray and the little girl were shot in a murder-suicide by the depressed boyfriend one rainy Seattle day.
--------
I have a photo of us three that I put on my website back in 1996, shortly after returning from the trip. Here's a photo of us three on a roadside stop in Baton Rouge, LA. I'm kneeling in the middle. Ray is on the right.
http://www.paulwade.com/travel/new-orleans/images/no_three.jpg
Ray had such beautiful red hair and such a wonderful singing voice.
I look at this photo now, and think about the little decisions in life that can change a lifetime: The decision to crash at Pat's place, my choice to travel through Europe alone, Ray leaving David for another man.
Those little details of life, those "sliding doors," they always make all the difference.
-- Wade Nash
(San Diego, CA. 4/21/09)
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Prompt Tuesday (December 9, 2008) -- Baudy Writing
A black-habited Catholic sister
met a strapping young Father who kissed her
He said "do not mourn He,
cause you've never had me!"
So she said "Then de-veil me, Mister!"
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Prompt Tuesday -- October 14, 2008
I have a strangely haunting fear of not finishing a book. It is a sort of guilt and fear mixed together that causes me to keep the book and organize it on a shelf with other books I haven’t yet finished. As they pile up (sideways, that is), I have this fear that I will someday die without having finished them all. Weird, I know.
So, after having read and enjoyed many Jack Kerouac books, for example, I came across, yet again, that unfinished copy of Big Sur recently and I threw it away. I didn’t donate it to the Salvation Army. I didn’t put it up there on my “unfinished reading shelf.” I had the balls to just say: “You know what? This book sucks! I will NEVER have time set aside to waste on this particular book!” And I tossed it. And by ridding myself of it, I gained permission to actualize that I don’t have obsess my way to the end of something to know it’s not for me.
Now if I can just start learning how to walk out of movies, things will be even better! :)
Monday, August 18, 2008
Prompt Tuesday -- August 18, 2008
I have filled the freezer
with your splendid body parts
that I took from your charming yet lifeless body.
Forgive me -- but your hands were so lovely
and they had been upon me so passionately the night before.
I could not bear to part with them.
And your cute, natty dreads -- and soft lips.
Your head with the still surprised look on its brow.
I'll preserve my memories of our short time together.
You were so sweet -- and are now so cold.
-- Jeffrey Dahlmer Carlos Williams