Inspiration 7.0

[Motorboat Cruiser]

EH1812, that was a great story. It's funny, I was looking at the picture last night (after I had finished my story) and, for the first time, noticed that it was two left hands. This little factoid makes my whole story impossible. But, then I reminded myself that these stories do not have to line up entirely with the photo; It can merely be the catalyst. That made me feel better.

It's so cool that you capitalized on that detail though. And I so love a good tale of revenge.

[Morrigoon]

Okay, here's one on that photo I posted the other day:

The problem was, Celia was always pulling crap like this.

My grandma always insisted we call her by her first name. She thought it more democratic that way, like somehow taking note of her seniority over us made us inferior citizens or something. Of course, just because we called her Celia didn’t mean we were her equals, it just meant that we satisfied her desire to pretend that she treated us as equals.

My grandmother the activist. Wooo.

Most kids have fond memories of their grandmothers baking them cookies or taking them to Disney World. The only reason Celia would ever be caught dead in that part of Orlando would be to protest “the man”. But there was plenty of that to be had right here in Miami.

As a teenager I used to dread my parents going away on business trips because it meant Celia coming over to watch us. So instead of chilling on the couch with a bowl of chips and several hours of MTV after school, we were subjected to hours of television news and Celia shouting at the top of her voice about how it was all lies, and how they never reported anything that was actually significant in the world. You know, in retrospect, I have to agree with her there, but it doesn’t change the fact that as a teenager I just did not care or want to hear it.

Weekends were the worst though. Inevitably there was some protest going on somewhere, and we had to be a part of it. How many pamphlets did I hand out to unwilling strangers; how many rallies did I attend, bored out of my gourd while Celia got her political freak on? I swear, attending protests were like church to her. I started to appreciate her more as I got older, and came to understand what she was fighting for.

Well… until she started up with the performance art. She wasn’t doing it for art’s sake, of course. This was just a new and creative form of drawing attention to herself- oops, I mean “rallying for the cause”. She read some article in one of those liberal newsletters she subscribed to, talking about PETA and the crazy forms of protest they used to get publicity for their cause. Not that she ever got involved with that group, luckily (Celia liked a good steak as much as the next person, preferably free-range and from a small co-op of ranchers, served in a mom-and-pop steakhouse). But she loved the idea of artistic protest.

She went through a lot of body paint and feathers in the ensuing decade. Anyone who didn’t know her might have thought her one kinky old broad. You could say she was an activism fetishist. Wow, hearing myself say that, it’s really a perfect description of who she was. Protest for protest’s sake. Okay, so they were good causes, but really I think she liked the romance of fighting the man. She hungered for the validation of belonging to one beleaguered group after another, always for cause good enough to justify stepping outside the bounds of acceptable human behavior. Only this wasn’t a one-off, doing-it-for-the-cause thing for Celia, she lived the lifestyle.
I guess that’s why nobody was surprised to see her laying on the sidewalk in front of the Sheraton, clad in a teal shower curtain and tennis shoes. To anyone that knew her, she was probably trying to bring attention to the homeless in protest of some program that failed to be funded by congress or something. If she was, well, it worked. Her photo made the main page of the Herald’s website the next day, with the tagline, “Homeless woman lies dead on sidewalk as hundreds pass by, uncaring.” She had passed in the night.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Wait-- we have not moved on yet, right? We usually wait two weeks in between Inspiration topics so that people who take longer can get their work completed.

[Morrigoon]

Ah, sorry. Still new at this.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Greasepaint was originally made from tallow. Yes, tallow. That means my predecessors had a slick glob of a beef fat mask melting down their faces thanks to the heat from the burning-candle footlights and from the sardined bodies of a drunken mob of an audience, and from whatever walking-against-the-wind kinetic antics worked up a sweat. I flipped burgers in a fast food restaurant when I was younger. Just the steam evaporating from the Grade-Z meat patties caused my pores to clog and ooze. I can't even imagine what it would be like to smear a cow facial directly on to my skin daily. Back then, they didn't even have Noxema.

These days, the greasy stuff is made primarily from petroleum. Your friends might make jokes about killing mimes (or not killing them—terrible thing to waste, and all) and by now they're trite. But seriously, if you killed us, I think you'd find that the terrible mime-based dependency on oil would be reduced significantly. Why, I'd imagine that the combined petroleum wasted by all of the mimes in this country probably stacks up to a week's fuel for an automotive-sexual-organ-enhancement-type vehicle. A whole tank full.

Generally, I'd much rather use Mehron's pressed white powder. Or none at all. The silent movie mimes, the greats—Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd—never relied on so much makeup to delineate their clowning from reality. George makes a good point, though—that they had the distance of the silver screen to separate the clowns in the audience from the artists on-screen. And if we robbed our imaginary bank in the park bare-faced, I have no doubt that some people would get pretty freaked out. They might even call the cops. So George insists on makeup. And not just any makeup… greasepaint. Clown White. And so I scoop it out of the extra-large Ben Nye tub and slather it on.

I know—I know. If I don't want to wear grease on my face, then I ought to do whatever the hell I want to do. George wouldn't like it, though. He grows disinterested in women who disregard his point of view. Mentors-In-Demand get to do that kind of thing. Particuarly to the mimes they're ****ing. And what can I say? I get off on the mentor-protégé sexual dynamic just as much as he does. I enjoy being told what to do. Or shown. I don't have to have fantasies, I have memories—of his muscular arms wrapping around me from behind, steering my body through the imaginary bank vault, for one. Of him reaching up to caress my face with one hand, the other drawing my hand to caress his. Playfully guiding my hands to the invisible box around his **** until we find the hidden key. Greasepaint can be more of an asset than a liability in some contexts.

George is such an expert at what he does. I once watched him trick a woman into believing that there was a real bird in his hands. She even went and bought birdseed from one of the park vendors, and brought it back to feed it. By then he'd moved on to another bit, a little-old-lady act that had the passersby in stitches. He is such a singularly gifted artist that he can con you into believing you're tucked away inside some thrilling location, safe within the confines of heavy walls and mechanized locks and stacks of money to be whisked away—if a mime policeman plant isn't there to lock you up, that is—when, in fact, you're in a back alley. And his training session has neatly segued into heavy petting and what the policeman—not a mime plant, unfortunately—refers to as "lewd conduct" as he frisks the two of you, your gummy left hands against the wall.

Maybe more than being told what to do, I like to bitch about how I'd have done it differently, if I were in charge. I don't have to take responsibility for my actions when someone else is in control.

Goddamned Clown White.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Some really great imagery in there, Heidi. Loved the make-up history woven into the story. And, you really do need to read Clown Girl. A similar dynamic that exists between your narrator and George exists in that story.

[Morrigoon]

Whoa. Loved that.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

This piece is so full of tactile imagery I feel like washing my hands. Nice work!

[Ponine]

I could work on it for anotehr week and not be pleased.... I'm just impressed I finally wrote something.




The last box.
It’s not a large box, not really a small box, just large enough maybe to hold the cat comfortably. Providing of course she wasn’t already packed in her carrier safe at the motel.
I keep wandering though the house. My home. I found one of Annie’s stuffed toys we missed on the top shelf of the closet. A package of batteries in the bathroom, a penny for good luck on the kitchen floor.
When James and I moved in twleve years ago, we thought this would be our forever home. At the very least, our home till we could afford a real house. We could do without the yard; all we needed was each other. We could do without a porch, what would we use it for in this neighborhood anyway?

The walls were pristine and white, and the carpet new when we moved in. Now the walls are the yellowish color of dust and age, the carpet worn in places with an occasional glimpse of its old glamour.

I remember that first week in “our” place. No furniture, no bed. James and I decided that the living room carpet, with its soft pile, and new carpet smell was as good as anywhere else to sleep. We had Chinese food on a cardboard box in the corner, lit by one candle, and enjoyed the sounds of silence, and each other.
Annie came here from the hospital; to this, her first home.
She spent her birthday evenings in the kitchen nook where I kept my mothers breakfast table.
On her 8th birthday she squealed when her gift contained her very first kitten.
I bandaged her knee on this kitchen counter.
The same counter where we made cookies for Christmas.

That seems like so long ago now. Annie is still the same little girl she always was. There’s a chip in the tile from the day she climbed the counter by herself to get a cookie. I remember running into the kitchen after hearing the most awful sounds; coming in to see my angel on the counter clutching a cookie in each hand, all around her pieces of cookie jar, more cookies, and hundreds of pieces of china, never to be used again. I was never so thankful for that thrift store china as I was that day.
Today, Annie is about to slip out of her cocoon and become a young woman before my eyes. But for now, stuffed toys are still her best friends, her sparkling silver Mary Jane’s her must have fashion accessory.

I can almost feel the pulse of the memories in the wood of our home. Right here, where I marked Annie’s height, I was standing in this doorway the day James told me he had moved in with someone else. Kids were never in his life plan he said. Come to think of it, I was standing right here the day the doctor called to say I was pregnant.

Sweep it under the carpet. Annie and I have to find our path. I thought we could stay here and let Annie find her way through school, through life. I didn’t predict the building getting condemned. How could I? This was my home.
Sure, there are cracks in the walls; the stairs are cracked and missing pieces. It was still home. Throw my keys in the box, I won’t need them anymore. There’s nothing else left in our home to lock up.

I’m the last one to leave the building. Annie spent the night with a friend last night. She said the house felt ‘funny’ without our things in it. I can’t argue with that.
My last time down the stairs, step over the 15th step that’s been missing ever since the Williams dropped their refrigerator on it. They moved out last week, Mrs. Gonzalez the week before. Her kids sent a moving truck. I hope they’ll take care of her. Keep walking down the stairs, all the way down to the lobby. The last box tucked under my arm.

Out the door to the street. I reach up; place my hand on the handprints that have been on the building since the day we moved in. James used to say that some jerk rested while he should have been working. That never sat well with me. Then one day at the ripe old age of seven, Annie said, “Those are angel handprints. That’s why they’re white. They protect all of us here.”

At the time, I thought nothing more of it than a childs fancy. Now I think, maybe she was right. Then again, maybe I just believed my daughters wish because I wanted to. There are worse things to believe in after all.


*************************

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Ahh, yes-- I could work on everything I do for "another week" and still find it unsatisfactory. I'm on just learning to deflect the voice in my head and actually post stuff before it crumbles under the weight of my fear-ridden perfectionism. (Bleah!)

But I'm so glad you posted yours, Ponine, because I thought it was lovely and sad. Depiction of a home and its journey crystal-clear.

Also, Morrigoon, I'm really sorry to have implied kibosh on creativity. The more pieces contributed, the better, of course! I will look into writing one this weekend (as I'm trying to balance my "creativity exercise" writing with writing the piece I've been working on, on my own.) I really liked your description of "activism fetishism" - and the way you wove your story around it.