KERSPLAT!

As you may or may not have guessed from my lack of posting, inability to continue serial posts, and general word invisibility, I’ve been busy with kids, work, life, calls, visits, editing, meds-withdrawing, and wordsing* in places not my own.

SO, I feel it’s only right that today’s prompt be about BALANCE.

Let that word inspire you to write whatever comes to mind, No censoring or editing this time.

Also, if you could include the answer to: Balance? HOW THE HELL DO YOU ACHIEVE IT? I’d be forever grateful.

Post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

*I did not write the captions to the stories that appeared in the Reader. It’s important to me that you know I wouldn’t mix up pronouns. Because I’m super grammatically annoying that way.

SO, since I can’t let this go, I’m issuing a similar-to-last-week writing prompt: What song evokes intense memories for you? Give us the song title and write your memories below it in poetic pieces or full-on prose. It’s a pretty powerful exercise.

Post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

Love Will Keep Us Together/Captain and Tennille

I’d just turned eight, and lived south of San Francisco in a then-small town named Foster City. We’d only lived in our brown and white shuttered home for six months, but I knew I should stay there forever. Kids my age peppered and salted the street, and after-dark Ghosts in the Graveyard and Red Rover marked the early summer turning into autumn. I held on to this time with both hands, refusing to vacate this settled place I’d found, but we moved each year, so my blooming intuition told me we wouldn’t be in my beloved-and-newly-adopted city long. Still, I fantasized about always staying in Northern California, even writing my dad a heartfelt and tearful card when the inevitable we’re-relocating-once-again talk came as it always did, alerting us all we’d be in Chicago within three months; telling him in angry crayon that I wouldn’t live next to a “muddy lake.” I lamented the move by oft wandering our ivy-covered front yard, haunting the backyard koi pond bridged by the wooden slats that clomped so satisfyingly, and trudging through our neighbor’s rock garden, singing, Love Will Keep Us Together. We lived in a cul-de-sac across the street from the bay where everyone would boat to the Safeway. A marina bustled behind our fence and that going-somewhere-else restlessness captured in sailor shouts heading to sea still pumps in my heart today. It was 1976 and I recall very clearly the bubbly feeling that the whole world was something I didn’t know yet. In spite of my impending-move sadness, it was the hoping happiness I remember. Even so, Stephanie Saito threw me a going-away party and the pictures I see now show something of my always-bittersweet poking behind my newly procured gold-rimmed owl-eye glasses. I saw the party in “Fly Like An Eagle” lyrics, another song I sang religiously, and so asked my mom if I could be a singer and she said, “If you do something all the time, it could be your life.” It’s funny the things you remember your parents telling you. Some is true, and some…a fabrication to gird hearts and souls from untimely demise by unfortunate reality. Our Midwestern move turned out to be the last of my childhood (we’d make one more after I graduated from high school, back to California, this time Southern, and I didn’t love it near as much as in 1976). I never became a singer, mostly because I couldn’t sing worth a damn.

Other songs permeated my soul during this time, ones I grew to love and still do, even if they’re passe and maudlin. I absorbed whole Neil Diamond’s “Beautiful Noise,” Helen Reddy’s “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady,” and “Sara Smile.” I see pink ballet shoes and a neon travel agency with that Hall and Oates. Always will, funny how images stick to your bones, super-glued there by lost melodies…

It’s been too long since I’ve posted a PROMPTuesday. I swear, it took me all last week to put myself back together after a bout of 12-hour days that stretched into oblivion. It’s as if I suffered from a work hangover, and it was sublime lovely but you know when your body tells you to slow down? You need to hear it loud and clear, because things will happen if you don’t, like: yelling, crying, hurting, sighing, angsting, overeating, unexercising, blanding, and bloating. So after a few days of ignoring the call to chill, my body exploded in a splendid fireworks display of OUT OF BALANCE, which stopped me in my tracks. I needed a reset button, and in between saying no when I needed to, and asking for help, I began to eat more healthfully and breathe. It’s working.

Yet, in the midst of this EPIC and forced biophysical decompression, I realized I hadn’t PROMPTuesdayed in awhile and that this little writing exercise is tantamount to my soul building, and that’s when I began a draft post I knew would have to show up here at one time or another.

And here it is, sort of. I’m going to publish the prompt and begin my response, but the full prose will follow later this week so as not to overwhelm. This is a long one, and too much at one time, is too much.

So meanwhile, for this PROMPTuesday, I want you to tell your life in song. Which songs defined significant moments in your life? I’d love to see a backwards evolution if you will…starting with the first song you remember hearing/loving and progressing through your life (grade school, junior high, high school, college, first job, etc.). I plan to post a paragraph or two below each song title that describes where that song brings me to, what I was doing, and with who. However, for now…this is how I’m doing it.

First song I remember loving:

Love Will Keep Us Together

Song that defined my grade school experience:

Morning has Broken

Song that defined my high school experience:

U2′s Bad. And everything by Yaz.

And so on…

I’m fleshing this out quite a bit in the next few days because it’s amazing what comes to mind when you hear these landmark-to-you songs again — the memories and pictures they evoke, so if that happens to you too, go with it. For instance, the entire REO Speedwagon “You Can Tune a Piano but You Can’t Tuna Fish” album? Makes me think of my friend Lori’s basement, where we’d sit in the dark and listen to each song over and over, picking up the needle and scratching it back down to the beginning. Lori matured much faster than I did, and I recall feeling she was moving ahead of me. It seemed like group sex was happening in a room nearby and I wouldn’t, couldn’t join because it wasn’t me.

So for you. You can tell your life in song titles or pick a song and a moment and describe it fully, or do that for several songs. Up to you. Just…:

Post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

Hi! Just back from Los Angeles, where I’ve been three weeks out of this month alone. The first four episodes of BlogThis! have wrapped and now I’m sitting here in San Diego in a “What now?” tizz that will last all of three minutes until my next project hits me in the face with alarming force. Anyway, as I ponder a few hours of doing nothingness, I thought of this post below because it was the AFTER of a big thing and perfectly describes how I feel right now. Like if you cared. Also! I quit Zoloft cold turkey. More on that wise and ridiculous decision soon…

Toots’s cure for the flu. It’s important that the green cylinder be placed ONLY on the left foot, second piggy from the big toe. Also, the plastic eyeball MUST be affixed firmly to the left shin. Not the knee. The shin. Furthermore, be sure to use only pink and orange Bendaroos for the criss-cross. Needs to be positioned exactly one-and-a-half inch above the eyeball. The eggshell? Doesn’t have to be purple. That was for display purposes only. But must be filled with pixie dust and stay between the legs for at least five minutes.

Today I’m that rare combination of tired, over stimulated, restless, and greasy. The girls have been sick nearly all week and it was a roller coaster, especially with Toots. Yesterday, after a brief recovery period, she took a scary turn for the worse, and I silently panicked as I watched her wan face grow more pale, the eye circles darken, and her spirit weaken. I’d never seen her so quiet and worn out. And I’m even counting the days when she was a newborn.

I’ve no idea if she actually had swine flu, but she certainly showed the symptoms, capping the spectacular flu extravaganza with a voluminous display of vomit and diarrhea last night. My biologist friend told me that the virus worked its way out her body, starting with one end and exiting the other, and I liked that. It certainly seemed to be true. Even so, my fingers are crossed that it’s all over and done.

Booger hasn’t suffered the same intensity of symptoms, thank heavens. I couldn’t bear to see her three-year-old body buckle under the weight of such sickness. Toots’ state nearly undid me. To the point where the ever stable Rock begged me to stop saying “I’m so worried…,” while looking off into the middle distance and visualizing the great flu epidemic of 1918, because I was thrusting him into a panic state, and nobody wants a hysterical Rock.

At the same time, he and I succumbed to stress, him adopting a dictatorial tone (Can you get me that barf bag? NOW????!!!!) and me getting all hurt and pissy. I even told him that I don’t want him around in a crisis or be my partner in the Amazing Race because all he’d do is yell at me. So I’m sorry about that. Really. I’ve always been too sensitive.

…Which is probably why I’m on edge now. Yesterday, I ran out of shampoo because I haven’t left the house in three days to shop, so I washed my hair with Irish Spring, an act not nearly as refreshing as it sounds. Also, we’ve all eaten untold amounts of pizza and Jimmy Dean sausage, giving rise to unpleasant feelings of increased body oil production. Then there’s the Disney Princess movies. Playing in the background. Playing in the background. Playing in the background. I’m one bird tweet or mermaid splash away from dunking my head in the unwashed, poo-riddled laundry.

Still. Right now, the girls are camped out on top of the coffee table, playing War, and yelling Uncle. A sight quite unlike the last few days. So I’m just going to open the blinds and air things out.

After all, it’s a beautiful day out there.

But here’s a bathing suit picture to shame me into never re-posting the old shizz ever again.}}

I have this friend.

And she is lovely. She really is.

Very fit, exercise-y, trim. That kind of crap.

Also, very motivational.

Offering to train me, help me eat right, be my health “sponsor.”

Which is awesome.

But really, she’s like the blondie, feather-haired cheerleader sister you have, where never in six million years will you perform at the awesome over-achiever level she deems acceptable.

Also, she LOVES to work out.

Loves.

Like gets excited about it.

So right there we have nothing in common.

But I want to give myself to her just the same.

Hand my body over and say, “Go to town. Do what you need to do. I don’t need my legs to work today.”

Just to put it in context, this is the email she sent me yesterday:

(Paraphrased): Come to the gym with me! I want to do Power Pump first, then Cardio KickBox, then Spin class! Afterwards, let’s do six weeks of weight training and a yoga cool down!”

Whereas in response, I’m thinking (paraphrased): FUCK NO. But is there a smoothie bar?

See, I do like to not be enormous. I do prefer to not be a cotton ball of little to no muscle. It’s just that it seems so complicated. You know, getting in the car. Driving to a gym. Opening a locker. Getting on a treadmill.

I don’t think I’m genetically programmed to break a sweat. I know there’s a good reason for it. Probably something evolutionary, like I hail from a long line of Norwegian acid sweat-ers.

Still and yet. I promised to join my lithe, supple-muscled freak friend for a workout next week after the kids go back to school. I’m going to her gym for a week, during which time she hopes to transform me into someone who isn’t a human marshmallow.

Also! And funnily! She thinks maybe I might learn to like breaking a sweat!

Poor thing. She’s gonna be real sorry when all my skin burns off because of that Norwegian acid sweat thing.

I’m just saying: You do NOT mess with evolution.

Tonight I leave for Los Angeles to begin production on BlogThis! The road (the metaphorical one) wound long because Jess and I have been writing these scripts in one form or another for 18 months and are now seeing the vision cast in 3D (not the Titanic kind). It’s exciting but also scary because there is SO MUCH to manage. I for one have not been on a set for any length of time and so it’s all newish to me, but I can’t wait to see our words projected out of people’s mouths.

I could have put that better.

But you know, late nights and jazz.

And also, seems one of my essays (a metaphorical one) was posted on Aiming Low TWO MONTHS AGO! I did not have knowledge of such, but I’m happy because many writers I admire and read have been featured on the site.

I submitted the post, so it’s not like they *picked* me out of the writer’s heap or anything. You know, you make your own destiny.

I could have put that better.

Oh! And also (here’s where I bring this full circle!), if anyone lives in the Agoura Hills/Calabasas/Ventura/Thousand Oaks/etc. area and is interested in appearing as an extra in BlogThis! for a scene shot in Newbury Park next weekend, please let me know. We need couples, so if you got a guy to bring, all the better. There will be wine.

Because guys and wine go together like destiny and the Titanic.

I could have put that better.

Like in a way that made some sort of sense.

Can someone drive me to LA tonight?

I don’t think my brain should be behind the wheel of a car.

Me and Carolyn on the brink of a brush with celebrity.

When I first lived in Los Angeles during the early ’90s, my colleague Carolyn and I often met after work for a drink. We usually convened at a bistro-type joint on Ventura Blvd. in Woodland Hills, a mecca it turned out for celebs looking for a casual, anonymous dinner. As such, the two of us sat at the bar for the five-o’clock happy hour, talking shop and boys directly across some pretty recognizable SoCal folk. Fresh out of a midwestern college, I initially flustered at the sight of famous people, until Carolyn told me enough times that in L.A.? Homey don’t play that. You pretend celebrities are like regular people and barely cast a glance their way.

So on we’d sit, Carolyn with her Chardonnay, and me with my Milwaukee-brewed beer, ignoring the likes of Steve Perry, Eddie Murphy, the police captain from 21 Jump Street, and Chad Lowe. Although, I will admit to once being openly agog at Eddie’s gold silk track suit and bevy of bodyguards. Also, Jim Carrey looked really lonely once and Carolyn physically restrained me from giving him a comforting hug. Every now and then, I broke her L.A. rules and gushed at the 21 Jump Street guy (who later appeared in my beloved X-Files) or asked Alicia Silverstone for a cigarette, but all in all, I attempted to be a vacant citizen face of non-impressedness.

My L.A.-ification didn’t take long and soon enough, celebrity sightings became de rigueur. That guy from Talk Soup? Big whip. Courtney Cox? So what. Of course, my skin also thickened at the number of people, men usually, who claimed to be celebrities when they weren’t. High-heeled, red-lipsticked women often accompanied these caddy men in the hopes that they weren’t lying. And did I tell you about how once I rode in the back of a famous movie producer’s car after the L.A. Open? I totally thought he was full of it, until I saw the stack of marked-up screenplays in the back seat of his Mercedes.

Ah L.A. There’s nothing like you in the world.

Meanwhile, after a break-up with a decided non-celebrity, and in the jarring aftermath of putting my heart back together, I frequented my little bistro more often. A few years passed since I first began to visit the place, and so when two men came up to us for conversation, I sneered at their VIP posturing.

Despite the self-importance of the guys who approached Carolyn and I, the tallest looked like a hobo. Long curly hair twisted and fell into his decidedly past-40 eyes, sandals encased his feet, and a rumpled t-shirt and baggy shorts completed the shabby shab look. His pal looked just like Teller, and stood back to let Mop Top take the lead. I rolled my eyes at Carolyn, because as nubile below-30s, we’d grown used to approachment by the opposite sex, and this particular pick-up wasn’t looking promising. Despite our obvious apathy, the men took seats next us and spent the next hour regaling us with tales of Hollywood and of the celebrities I’d grown up watching.

Of course, we heard the “regular” stories everyone’s heard at one time or another: Apparently, Sharon Stone slept her way to the top, John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Richard Gere formed a formidable circle of man love, and Robin Williams was cah-razy and addicted. Allegedly. Although this news was nothing fresh, the way the men told it made it seem like they knew stuff. Important stuff. Real scoop kind of stuff. By the end of the juiciest of these stories, I liked these guys. They seemed real, you know? Although sure in their coolness, they were confident in that way where you knew they probably moved and shook importantly at one time. They just needed to dress better.

We spent long hours talking shop. Where “shop” was Carolyn and I rapt and wide-eyed at the stories as the tale-tellers tried to get under our white-washed Gap miniskirts. I don’t know. Maybe they just enjoyed our curiosity. Either way, the subject of what these men did for a living came up. Truly, I don’t recall at all what Teller did, but Moppy McHobo confided that he appeared in and wrote DC Cab, and founded Comic Relief and…

But wait! DC Cab? OH MY GOD. That was my favorite stupid weekend movie that I watched over and over again on HBO, second in inanity only to Teen Witch AND WAS AWESOMELY HORRIBLE. Plus, Mr. T was in it. AND ALSO: BEST DUMB MOVIE EVER! I couldn’t wait to tell my siblings, who often sprawled with me on the tweed couch in our shag-carpeted den watching this REALLY DUMB ASS MOVIE over and over again, that I’d maybe met someone who wrote DC Cab. Maybe.

Wait. Who WAS this guy?

Solemnly, he continued.

He’d been Andy Kaufman’s best friend.

I gasped. I’d heard the stories about Andy. Bizarre stint as a professional wrestler, rumors that he’d faked his death, and so on.

Of course, I didn’t know the real scoop, which the man, Bob, told me in vivid and delicious detail.

The milk and cookies concert, the lounge singer act, the lung cancer diagnosis. This all happened plenty before Wikipedia, so afterward I couldn’t research the authenticity of the details, but now that I can…WOW. But back then, in the early ’90s? He spent hours, literally, telling us about his best friend Andy.

And one of my favorite parts?

He told me that he and Andy were good friends before Andy made it big, and that Andy told him that if he ever reached success, he’d have Bob write for him.
Well, they lose touch, Bob starts living on the streets, a homeless man, and eventually makes his way to Ocean Beach, CA to become a short-order cook. By this time, Bob hadn’t spoken with Andy in years. Then, one day, the manager of the restaurant where Bob worked, handed him a telegram. It was from Andy, and it instructed Bob to quit his job and move to L.A., where he would become Andy’s comedy writer. So Bob went from making $100/week to $5,000/week in the course of a day. The rest is history: He makes it big as Andy’s writer and best friend, and tells grand tales about this ride to girls in bars.

Because in the end, I found the stories fascinating while unsuccessfully trying to fight the scent of skeeze that’d descended over everything. It seemed a little like Bob was too with Andy still, who’d passed away years and years before. Also, I wondered…what is Bob doing now? I hoped to see less coattail-riding. And then…

Bob asks me out on a date.

Whoop, there it is!

We’re to see “Sleepless in Seattle,” and I’m to pick him up in North Hollywood because he didn’t have a car.

Right.

No vehicular assets, curly mop of random crazytude, toe-revealing man sandals, sense of self-importance.

And….

scene.

Still, I’ll always remember that night as one where I received a behind-the-scene glimpse into creative genius. Because no matter who tells the stories, Andy Kaufman was certainly that.

(Impressed by all the FAMOUS people I’ve met? Here’s another! Dusty from As The World Turns is even better looking in real life! I got a million of ‘em!)

I know someone whom I loathe engaging in conversation because this person only talks about himself. He’s super creative and takes great pleasure in his skill, which he should, but that’s all that exists, all we talk about, all he wants to discuss at length. Truth is, I can’t recall even one time when he asked how I was doing, yet I know if I inquire how things are going for him, it will be an hour-long HIM-fest that will only end when I stop listening.

Someone I don’t know other than online. For years, I’ve observed her tweet or Facebook her posts and disappear. No interaction, no engagement, no nothing. And she’s a brilliant writer; I could read her all day (and have), yet this broadcasting of her, her, her and zero “hey I’m glad you like what I wrote!” or “thanks for the comment!” or “I’m sorry I haven’t followed you back on Twitter even though you support me unconditionally!” has grown old. And so I’m bothered. And so I wrote the below as if I were her. Because bitching about stuff sometimes makes me feel better.

Look, I think it’s time we had a talk, wherein I do all the talking and you just sit there and nod occasionally when I’ve said something insightful, perceptive, and well structured. See, I’ve tried to convey to you again and again that you and I will not be friends, nor talk casually, nor even look at each other if we were to pass on the street. Because come on, I’m brilliant. I don’t need you clogging my fiery synapses with small talk and silly banter. I’m brainstorming every second and turning my malcontent into verbiage gold. I mean, I do talk to people, sure. But they are carefully selected to expand my influence and bestow genius by association. Can I just say what I’m thinking? I don’t have to ask. You’re an enabler. You allow me to rack up comments and stoke my ego, but beyond that you’re nothing to me.

Yes, yes, I know I post links to my work and give nothing in return, but Hemingway would do the same, as would any wildly amazing writer who has better things to do than talk to plebes. My links are gifts to you. They require no explanation and so I give none, however I trust you will visit my blog because you think you’ll absorb some of my talent glitter. And please leave your thoughts in the comment box, where thoughts are tell me how nimble-fingered and publishable I am. I really need you to follow those guidelines because I can’t go around actually responding to people. I only have bandwidth for one-sided admiration. Did you nod here? Please do. The gap between your blind acquiescences are widening and I won’t have it. If you insist upon continuing with not humbly subjecting to my epic skill, I’ll have to write another controversial post to re-establish my dominance. Let’s avoid that eminently-re-tweetable ploy. I just want to write my words and have you worship at the feet of my metaphoric proseacea.

See what I did there?

I made up a fucking awesome word.

But I beg you, don’t try that at home. Because then I’ll call you out for improper use of the English language. Real writers don’t abuse the craft.

Unless you’re a real writer.

It’s confusing. I don’t expect you to understand.

So instead, here’s a flow chart:

Do you know who I am?

Yes.

RT everything I say and write.

No.

Everyone knows who I am.

Now stop having an opinion and go back to your self-flagellation for not writing as well as I.

This is what makes me strong, minion.

All this is to say creativity is porous. It’s not a cement block. Go ahead and write, and be brilliant and all-day-readable, but if you’re promoting your posts online, envision the people on the other side every now and then.

Photo courtesy of Google Images.

P.S. This post is not about anyone I know personally, bloggily, or Twitterey.

Post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.