Phone’s for you

Hey, I’m in Texas, driving with my knees.
Hmmm, that’s one hand for your gun. And one hand for your gun?

You’ve got mail

It’s Good Friday, but since I’m not Catholic, I will not be fasting today. But I will be eating really fast! Happy Easter!

Bumper stickers from out and about, submitted by Kevin

I’ve seen God … and she was black

The Ten Commandments are not multiple choice

Wanna have sex? Go to Church.
Sponsored by Pope’s Chicken

Read more Fallbrookisms…

Note: K-B is on vacation.

The Little Match-Seller

By Hans Christian Andersen
(1846)

It was terribly cold and nearly dark on the last evening of the old year, and the snow was falling fast. In the cold and the darkness, a poor little girl, with bare head and naked feet, roamed through the streets. It is true she had on a pair of slippers when she left home, but they were not of much use. They were very large, so large, indeed, that they had belonged to her mother, and the poor little creature had lost them in running across the street to avoid two carriages that were rolling along at a terrible rate. One of the slippers she could not find, and a boy seized upon the other and ran away with it, saying that he could use it as a cradle, when he had children of his own. So the little girl went on with her little naked feet, which were quite red and blue with the cold. In an old apron she carried a number of matches, and had a bundle of them in her hands. No one had bought anything of her the whole day, nor had anyone given her even a penny. Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along; poor little child, she looked the picture of misery. The snowflakes fell on her long, fair hair, which hung in curls on her shoulders, but she regarded them not.

Lights were shining from every window, and there was a savory smell of roast goose, for it was New-year’s eve — yes, she remembered that. In a corner, between two houses, one of which projected beyond the other, she sank down and huddled herself together. She had drawn her little feet under her, but she could not keep off the cold; and she dared not go home, for she had sold no matches, and could not take home even a penny of money. Her father would certainly beat her; besides, it was almost as cold at home as here, for they had only the roof to cover them, through which the wind howled, although the largest holes had been stopped up with straw and rags. Her little hands were almost frozen with the cold. Ah! perhaps a burning match might be some good, if she could draw it from the bundle and strike it against the wall, just to warm her fingers. She drew one out—“scratch!” how it sputtered as it burnt! It gave a warm, bright light, like a little candle, as she held her hand over it. It was really a wonderful light. It seemed to the little girl that she was sitting by a large iron stove, with polished brass feet and a brass ornament. How the fire burned! and seemed so beautifully warm that the child stretched out her feet as if to warm them, when, lo! the flame of the match went out, the stove vanished, and she had only the remains of the half-burnt match in her hand.’

She rubbed another match on the wall. It burst into a flame, and where its light fell upon the wall it became as transparent as a veil, and she could see into the room. The table was covered with a snowy white table-cloth, on which stood a splendid dinner service, and a steaming roast goose, stuffed with apples and dried plums. And what was still more wonderful, the goose jumped down from the dish and waddled across the floor, with a knife and fork in its breast, to the little girl. Then the match went out, and there remained nothing but the thick, damp, cold wall before her.

She lighted another match, and then she found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas-tree. It was larger and more beautifully decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door at the rich merchant’s. Thousands of tapers were burning upon the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen in the show-windows, looked down upon it all. The little one stretched out her hand towards them, and the match went out.

The Christmas lights rose higher and higher, till they looked to her like the stars in the sky. Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. “Someone is dying,” thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now dead, had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.

She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance. “Grandmother,” cried the little one, “O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree.” And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.

In the dawn of morning there lay the poor little one, with pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall; she had been frozen to death on the last evening of the year; and the New-year’s sun rose and shone upon a little corpse! The child still sat, in the stiffness of death, holding the matches in her hand, one bundle of which was burnt. “She tried to warm herself,” said some. No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, nor into what glory she had entered with her grandmother, on New-year’s day.

(Image of Christmas at Windsor Castle via Library of Congress.)

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

A pretty woman still, she brushed a wisp of silver hair from the translucent skin of her brow and passed her hand over local Fallbrook tangerines, Asian pears, seeming to wait for the right fruit to reach out to her. In her cart, stuffed dates and unshelled nuts, eggnog and rum, were already in the company of the multitude of other delicacies offered only at the holidays. She looked like someone’s grandma, warm and loving, stocking the larder for visiting progeny.

She glanced up. I smiled.

“You must be in the same boat — last minute shopping,” she said with an unhappy sigh. “Everyone just expects me to do it, to just be there for them. Every year. I hate Christmas! I hate it!”

Startled by the transformation of her grandmotherly countenance to that of a screaming banshee, I nonetheless concurred that sometimes it was damn hard work to have fun. I suggested she give herself a day off; tell the kiddos they’re taking her out for Christmas dinner.

But she just rolled away, growling through frothy anger, and I was reminded of the Christmas I thought I hated.

Alone for the holidays in Southern California, no money to fly home to family and in too much of a snit to accept any, I was house-sitting in the midst of an El Monte barrio, fondling the scars of a dyspeptic relationship and some hard-won divorce papers. Still, I counted myself lucky to have escaped it — and to have regained the job I’d abandoned for ill-fated love. Or the job I tried to do: preparing the chronically mentally ill for the independent lives they would achieve only by walking out the facility doors for good or with the assistance of a pharmaceutical miracle.

As I silently fumed at the ridiculous turn my life had taken, the day of Christmas Eve arrived at Blackburn’s Board and Care, where powdered eggs and Thorazine were breakfast staples. My motley crew and I tried to sing carols with our clients, to infuse them with the love and hope of the season, or some semblance thereof. But many cowered in their beds, hiding from brutal ghosts of Christmas past. Others floated over the untuned piano, fancying themselves Santa’s gifted reindeer or the great giver of gifts himself. We struggled through “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” feeling foolish for our paltry efforts, and I realized I had no Christmas spirit to give anyone, having spurned it myself. So, when the day turned to dark, I headed home for an eve of self-indulgent misery.

As I walked from the bus, one of the local boys stopped me. The neighborhood gang had been suspicious of me at first, but slowly they’d accepted my presence, and lately they’d taken to escorting me home at night — they said it wasn’t a safe neighborhood for a white girl.

“Hey, lady, you want a tree?” the boy asked. “We don’t see no tree in your house. You can have it for five bucks, lady.”

“From where did you pilfer it, Manny?”

“¿Que? Hey, don’t ask stupid questions, lady. You want the tree or no? I sell it for more — to someone who don’t give me no shit.”

I bought it, wished him Feliz Navidad and took the naked tree to the unfurnished house where my mattress occupied the floor with the cockroaches; the house from which I called home collect on Sundays and gaily reported on life in Southern California; the house where, in my free time, I stormed the undecked halls, chastising myself for my stupidity.

But before I was settled into my self-flagellant routine, the doorbell rang me from my wallowing. I feared the rightful owners of the tree had somehow tracked me down and my lousy holiday would be spent behind cold bars, commiserating with prostitutes and forlorn mothers caught stealing gifts for their malnourished children.

Instead, it was folks from work: the Puerto Rican lesbian whose sons would not forgive her; the 60-year-old virgin who showered her love on bodily adornments in lieu of children; the maintenance man who taught me how to swing a bat and drank his way through the games; and our favorite client who was really just profoundly sad. They came bearing gifts, choice and tender morsels, lights to string around my illicit tree. Together, we sang songs of the holiday, in each our own key. We dined on chocolate and the sweet succor of camaraderie. We tippled more than we might have on another night and soared into good spirits with unfettered celebration. Together, we shared a damn — a damn — good Christmas.

Years later, my daughter once asked me what angels look like. I don’t know about others’ angels, but mine are distinct. I told her they look like an over-worked Puerto Rican with a wandering eye and Coke-bottle-bottom glasses; a worn-out maiden lady, lonely, bitter and kind; a wisecracking janitor with a sweeping heart; and a sweetly sorrowful gal with the twitch of one who’s been on psychotropics a wee bit too long. Beautiful, all — and why I love Christmas.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo by Kodakhrome courtesy of a Creative Commons license.)

Writers

Want to submit your work to Excuse Me, I’m Writing for the sheer joy of having an audience? Email your original fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry — 2,500 words maximum — in an MS Word document or in RTF to kb@kbgressitt.com. If we publish your work, you keep all rights, including bragging.

Note: Read no further if foul language gives you the vapors.

A holiday shopping parking-lot encounter

Small car passenger to the competitive parker in the obscenely large SUV:
Fuck you. … I mean Merry Christmas.

At the pub

Gal 1: We’re both fucking broke, so we agreed not to give each other gifts.
Gal 2: She’s in nursing school; maybe she could at least give you a pelvic?

Robert: Fuck you — in the best sense of the term
Meredith: Fuck you — with all the love I can muster.

At the Café des Artistes

Daughter: I hate her!
Mother: Come on, be of good cheer and kind heart.
Daughter: Fuck that.

There is nothing quote-worthy in here because everyone is depressing and lame. I hate the fucking holidays.

Read more Fallbrookisms…

On the Anniversary

October 12

By Kate Harding

A Wyoming twilight. Nine years ago.
A cyclist saw a scarecrow tied to a wooden
split rail fence. Not a scarecrow. Matthew Shepard.
Bruised. Beaten. His skull crushed. Left to die.
His blood-caked face washed by tears.

On this anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death,
I try to read, sip tea, count my valley’s few stars.
No sleep. My son Danny’s would be killers
could be prowling San Francisco streets tonight.

Broad shouldered football players. Thick jackets.
Tourists from the Midwest. Careful to walk
a few feet from each other. They have been drinking.
Later tonight they will have to share a hotel room
in this expensive city. A bump of an elbow,
a brush of a hand, could be misunderstood.
Mist blows in from the bay.
They tell each other it is girls they like. Girls.

They are nothing like my son,
with his pretty face and long hair.
Humming to himself, Danny is coming home
late from teaching, He wears the pink shirt
and tie we bought him. His light footsteps quicken.
Their footsteps echo his. Their beery breaths burn
the back of his neck.

©2007 Kate Harding poetmother@gmail.com

MAMMA (Middle-Aged Women for Marriage Equality) suggests sharing this poem with the people who oppose same-sex marriage, as a way to start a conversation; share it and ask them what they think about it.

And here’s another same-sex marriage conversation starter we just found:

The California Council of Churches’ Congregational Study Guide, Living Lovingly: Talking About Marriage Equality From a Faith Perspective, by Rev. Dr. Linda Pickens-Jones, has very helpful talking points, including discussion of civil rights compared to sacramental rights. MAMMA highly recommends this downloadable guide for those who want to take a loving and rational approach to a faith-based discussion. The introduction is a little dated, but the primary content makes the whole thing well worth downloading.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Today is the day we honor mothers, and in this great country of ours, marketing geeks nationwide have provided us myriad ways in which to do so.

For those with unlimited resources and abundant aversion to their mothers, there are some very nice travel deals that put the old lady and her European houseboy well out of sight and sound for an extended stay — the perfect gift for sucking up in abstentia while securing one’s inheritance.

For those who’ve learned to stop blaming their mothers for whom they’ve become — moneyed or not — there are plenty of less extravagant options, in keeping with our doddering economy, for letting her know of your undying gratitude.

Most facile, perhaps, is to send her flowers. And to make sure the token is deeply felt, the price of those precious carbon dioxide absorbers typically leaps skyward the week leading up to Mother’s Day. You want to honor the loins that bore you with a fragrant tchotchke? Be prepared to pay more than you would the rest of the year when Mom is just the babysitter.

If you actually want to be with your mother on her special day, and get a little more bang for your buck with some face time, you could take the old gal out for brunch.

And what an unfortunate drag that is.

Despite Google’s producing 1.08 million options, every adult with plastic and a mobile mother within commuting distance shows up at your local elder-friendly eatery at the same time. The pubescent hostess, who has yet to connect the dots from her backseat activities to motherhood, herds you to a table. The bedraggled waitress, a mother who at the moment has a deep and dangerous loathing of Mother’s Day, fills you up. And then you pay the bill and you’re herded out again, with a wilted red carnation pinned to your mother’s sagging bosom, next to the dribble of egg yolk, and her cheeks aflush from the supposedly free glass of cheap champagne that came with her meal — no substitutions, please.

Instead of the Mother’s Day special, you might try a nice book about bird watching or a World’s Best Mom mug or slippers to compensate for her poor circulation. Although devoid of originality, they do provide some tangible reminder that you are her progeny and though she might have forgotten, you haven’t. Even one of the plethora of banal greeting cards might do: It will last a lot longer than flowers and there’s significantly more room to write a poignantly appreciative message to her than on that teensy card some florist fills out for you in the handwriting of a troglodyte. Sadly, though, the greeting card industry has yet to produce a reasonable rhyme for “mother,” which leads to insipidity and egregious grammar. (Of course, there’s “brother,” but that’s a relative distraction, and “smother,” which too strongly suggests a dysfunctional maternal bond).

Whether by default or natural inclination, some of us do reject the commercial crappola and go for the direct approach we’ve been lucky to inherit from the powerful women who bore us, the smarm-be-gone style of honoring our mothers.

Yo, Dear Mother of Pearl, we say, looking deep into her wise and witty eyes, thanks for birthing us and bearing the seemingly endless pain we have caused you with such extraordinarily unconditional love and delightfully profane humor, targeting whichever offspring isn’t present at the moment.

Thanks for agreeing that most men are swine and not worthy of the many fine pearls we shouldn’t bother tossing before them. Thanks also for strategically ignoring that thought and pointing out to us when we found the right ones — just in case we weren’t recognizing them.

Thanks for taking our unrepentant children during the summers so we could recover from their daily discourse on what terrible mothers we are. Thanks for comforting us, while we wallow in the latest abject failure, with the prediction that one day we will pee in our pants laughing about it. Thanks for reminding us how exceptional we are when we feel like utterly mundane caca.

And thanks for teaching us both the heartening and horrifying aspects of motherhood, but holding back just enough of the truly sucky stuff to assure we would perpetuate the species.

Love,
Your adoring daughter

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Note: This column is cross-posted at iVoryTowerz.com.

(Photo of Venus by Dequella Manera 1993, via a Creative Commons Attribution License.)

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Recently deluged with the contrivances of marketed romance — faux velvet cards blaring fuzzy renditions of maudlin love songs, sugar and flower hearts with machine-pressed demands for intimacy — my persnickety reaction was to hate everyone. Or, at least, consider that option for a delicious moment or two — until I was dutifully grounded in guilt with the thought of my dear, darling Mother of Pearl’s oft-repeated words, “Love the unlovely.”

I used to think she was referring to physically unattractive people, which meant hatred of my younger-but-cuter sister was not a violation of Mother’s nurturing-but-lofty rule.

This worked until I encountered acne. Its superficial devastation caused me to reconsider Mother’s guidance: Perhaps she intended greater depth in its applications. While I contemplated that, inner beauty — or the lack thereof — gained compelling importance as my criterion for love began its awkward ascent from the pockmarks of adolescence.

Next came an attempt at communal living. The proper thing to do was to forsake discernment and freely love everyone, regardless of inner or outer accoutrements. This did have its moments, but the communers kept leaving my perfectly seasoned cast iron skillets rusting in the kitchen sink. I’d come home from a hard night of “being here now” and exploring my innate tribalism to the rhythms of the local jukebox, and find strangers building their communities in my bed. Instead of loving my brothers and sisters, I came to despise them all and their crummy collective ways. I opted to pursue love on a more solitary path.

In my subsequent post-adolescent phase, I tried loving a tormented artist of deep and constant inner affliction. He lived quite alone in a blustery garret with very public plumbing. Alas, my hope to serve as his muse, to dazzle him with inspiration, went as dull as my enthusiasm for moving my bowels without benefit of four walls. He was so unlovely, so devastatingly impaired by his inward and outward malaise — as were his teeth — that I realized I’d gone a wee bit too far afield. A more thoughtful consideration of Mother’s advice seemed quite in order.

Just what was it she had meant the countless times she had wrapped me in her comforting bosom as I wept at childish cruelties and imbecilic adults who plagued my early years and evoked my youthful loathing?

What had been her intent as I floundered my way into the world, railing at Nixonian deception and arrogance, false prophets true only to their homicidal cocktails, caustic corporations drowning third-world villages in deadly fog?

And as my path became more sure, what was it Mother meant for me to see as I blindly raged at the brutal parents who beat my students into inhumanity, at the perpetrators of social injustices that beleaguered my mental health clients’ already devastated existence, at the prideful politicians who let it all happen with utter disregard?

Ye gods, are we suppose to love all those unlovelies? Are we to love the likes of family planning clinic stalkers who advocate for life with deadly aim, the saintly souls who solicit prayerful contributions on cable TV while entertaining under their desks, the leaders who dump our nation at the edge of moral abyss and skate off to sing their own praises, the chosen ungodly few who dine on caviar and our bailout dollars, the dogmatically debating politicians who’ve no inkling of life in the real lane or the price of veggies?

Well, according to Mother, yes. We are supposed to do the wise and high-minded thing: love them all, find the human in the most reprehensible beasts, toss tender tokens to the last folks on Earth you would want to wrap your arms around and rock into sweet dreams.

The thing is, I’m just not as good as Mother. My preference would be to throttle the living daylights out of every one of those buggers. Seriously! In lieu of prison, however, I suppose I could muster a modicum of effort, for Mother’s sake. So here goes: To all you unlovely ones, a belated Happy Valentine’s Day — with buckets-o-love.

OK, it’s commercial, trite, superficial, on a par with the heart- and glitter-riddled swill over at Hallmark; but, nonetheless, it is a start. Maybe next year, we’ll go for some hugs, you dirty rotten bastards.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Prang’s Valentine Cards courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress.)

“This is not what Christmas is all about,” a faithful man lamented over a cup of spiked eggnog, surrounded by holiday-inspired revelers. “It’s not about Santa Claus and gaudy trees and Ultimate Wall-Es. It’s about God’s son, his precious baby boy and the joy he brought into the world.” And the man absolutely knows this to be true.

Interesting, though, there is nowhere in the Bible — certainly nothing attributed to the Christ child, nothing offered up secondhand or even thirdhand — that indicates Jesus said, “Yo, folks, in years to come I think it appropriate that you celebrate my birthday. December of the forthcoming Gregorian calendar feels like a good month; 25 was always one of my favorite numbers. So, so be it — and have at it. Just don’t forget why you’re getting all those swell gifts; they’re to remind you of me. That little lace number from the paramour? Think of my dear virginal mother who bore me. Those CDs? Don’t forget the heavenly host singing ‘Glory to God in the highest’ that Luke will report after my passing. Keys to a shiny new car with a big bow around it? Remember the three magi hiking a beeline for Bethlehem.”

Nope, it didn’t happen that way. Indeed, as far as reportedly divine inspiration indicates, Jesus Christ never said a word about recognizing his DOB. What messiah would? Surely they have bigger and better messages to purvey and more humble concerns — the hungry and persecuted for instance — than to be proposing future celebrity roasts for themselves.

In fact, Christmas’ roots are entangled more in a bureaucratic reaction of the medieval Christian church to those nasty pagan celebrations of the winter solstice than in any Judaic tradition. And, before Charles Dickens did his bit to promote the concept of giving at Christmas, such celebrations were actually shunned by the pre-industrial age Christian elite.

It took Dickens’ social justice novella, “A Christmas Carol” — a treatise that remains one of the best bits of political propaganda in recorded history — to rock the egocentric foundations of burgeoning capitalism in the mid-19th century to the point that its movers and shakers tripped over each other in the slums of London to find recipients of their newly invigorated sense of benevolent generosity.

In an interesting 21^st century spin on the joy of giving, the Bush administration is now wrapping up a $17.4 billion gift for the derelict U.S. auto industry, and President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team has a bright red sack filled with $850 billion worth of packages for other needy and ailing institutions.

Well, it is the season of generosity and those tax dollars are surely given with a great deal of faith in their being put to good use. But it doesn’t take an economic disaster or a revolutionary fairytale or a born-again epiphany to awaken that giving spirit. Indeed, even nonbelievers enjoy the pleasures of sharing the goodies they have, for it is the warmth of tokens of tender affection, it is giving to people with less, pausing to remember those you adore that lend Christmas its poignance for many who witness the celebration, regardless of faith. This holiday now belongs to anyone who would claim it. And, were Christ still walking the earth, I imagine he’d be giving and receiving right along with the rest of us heathens, although it’s unlikely Ultimate Wall-E would be on his gift list.

So, as is my wont on Christmas, I will sit before the fireplace, sipping something surely of the Devil, and I’ll shed a tear for those no longer in reach of my embrace; I will revel in the joy of my lovely daughter and husband, my precious family and the intimates who grant such unexpected pleasures to my existence; and I will thank the Goddess that, despite the god-awful economy, I still have a few bucks left to put in the Salvation Army pot and buy those I love some heartfelt baubles.

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress.)