[An older Creative Coven composition]
"You like the idea of being able to dismiss him as just garbage,
unworthy of life, don't you?"
"I'm just being realistic. You're the one romanticizing him as
some kind of wonderful guy who was deprived of the opportunity
to make the world such a better place, when he was just another
thug."
"He was nineteen years old and neither you nor I have any idea
what he might have done with his life. You're just trying to
make excuses for the fact that you don't want to stick a crowbar
in your heart and care that a human being was killed without any
good reason. How can you care so little that a human life was
snuffed out so carelessly by the people who are supposed to
prevent that sort of thing?"
"How can you care so much? What is this guy to you? You never
met him, he's not your damn cousin or something."
"Yeah, I think that's what's really at the root of this whole
disagreement between you and me. You just don't care about
people outside of a narrow circle, and you think I'm either
pretending to care or actually crazy when I look further."
"That's not true. I care about people. I volunteer. I donate.
But you do get kind of weird over people sometimes, and I don't
get it."
"That pretty much describes how I see you. When you talk about a
human being like he's a bug to be stepped on, that strikes me as
weird, and I don't get you."
"So what would you want for this guy?"
"I'd want for him and everybody who meets a cop in an ordinary
encounter to live, just to live. Is that asking so much?
The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Evidently."
There Are No Creatures You Cannot Love
“Aaaaah! A spider!”
“Oh,” I said calmly. “Be careful not to hurt her.”
“I hate spiders! I wish every spider in the world were destroyed!”
I remembered saying almost exactly the same thing when I’d been about his age. My father had said, “Think of how many flies there’d be if there were no spiders.” It was an especially pointed thought just now, because the shed was teeming with flies.
I said, “Calm down, hon. If there were no spiders, we’d have to eat all of these flies ourselves.”
That got his attention. Ru gave a start, then laughed.
“Okay, you’re right. I know I have arachnophobia.”
That was typical of all of my kids. I talked to them as though they were adults, and they used adult vocabulary. It wasn’t even especially noteworthy for a five-year-old to use a six-syllable word that way.
“You do know that there are only three or four kinds of spider in the whole world that can even bite humans, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I remember Vicky told me that when I got that sliver in my hand.”
Poor guy. He’d been so afraid of a spider running over his arm while he was pulling a toy out of a crevice in the wall that he’d yanked it back abruptly, catching a long splinter and also barking his elbow.
I lifted a heavy piece of electronics we were saving to give to Harai when she visited next and found the source of the smell, which was also the source of the flies.
“You might find this interesting, Ru.”
“Wow, what is it?”
“It’s a possum that died back here. It’s all rotted away except for the bones and the skin. We could probably save the skull, and maybe the skin, for a craft project. I’ll get a dustpan for it, and we can take it into the kitchen and see. The rest can go in the compost.”
As I was scooping it up, Ru asked, “What happened to the rest of the possum?”
“Probably the flies ate it. When they were baby maggots, that is. Ate all the meat and left the skin and bones. And the stink.”
He laughed.
“I guess even flies are helpful, aren’t they?”
“They’ve all got a place in the world. It’s not like they were put here by an evil spirit to annoy us.”
The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Beelzebub, 'Lord of the Flies', was a typo. He was actually Beelzebul, 'Lord of the Temple'."
I'm a member of an online writing group, which gives its members a one-line prompt to star from to write, and then we all write furiously for twenty minutes before hearing the source of the line, usually a poem. I think this is one of the first:
Something About What You Carry Or Have Carried
“My brain hurts.”
“Aww, sweetie. Did you take your pills?”
“The usual ones: the blue one and the two aspirin. And I took the allegedly prophylactic pills at six, as prescribed.”
“Well, come here. Yes, really. Come rest your head on my shoulder. I’ll stroke your hair. Mmm, it’s getting so long, like it was when we were first together. Have some more water.”
“Headache shall be always with us. With me, anyway. Sometimes it’s like a thing of its own, dropping in to visit. Or maybe it’s always there, riding on my shoulder, maybe, and only brings itself to my attention from time to time.”
“Like a little guy with stubble on his chin whacking you with a hammer?”
“Heh. There’s the secret of our success again: I’m not old enough to have seen those ads for whatever that medication was, but I know about them anyway. I’ve seen him in old magazines, and parodied in Mad magazine reprint books. So I’m honorary old.
“Hold on a sec, let me get my water bottle. Yeah, now go back to stroking my hair. Feels so good.”
“Are you feeling better?”
“Starting to. Wow, it’s amazing how different I feel while you’re touching me. It hurts so much less.
“But I do wonder if there’s something else I could do about these headaches. Or this headache. The headache.”
“The great granddaddy of all headaches. I’m so sorry. I know it’s a burden on you. Mmm, I do like your hair like this.”
“It’s not all that much trouble. I could keep it this way if you want.
“I do like it when you stroke my head like that. Well, when you did stroke it. I sure do miss you. Everything reminds me of you, even my headache. It knew you, too.”
Source: Sharon Olds Late Poem To My Fatherhttps://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2005%252F11%252F17.html
The Magic Eight-Ball says, Write every day.
