Locked out

One week ago

Dynamite

In my rearview mirror she is lolling, mouth open, against her seat. Frumpy curled hair and SNL parody sunglasses. My grandmother would have said that she was catching flies.

Back

This week took me the length of the Eastern seaboard. From snow and ice to sun and wind, it was a shock to the system and a fundamental wardrobe challenge.

Now back at my monitor, my eyes are thick and protesting. Sitting for so long is again a readjustment.

Bright

Against the sun everything is stark silhouettes. Above the street, abandoned rows of holiday lights are strings of tracer fire, leapfrogging into the glare.

Devour

I consume the words, sucking them like strands of spaghetti off the page, off the screen. But I am never full.

Violins

It was a very strange dream. It was prompted no doubt by a number of half-conversations I've had in the past week and old vampire movies I've watched.

Grown, I was back in high school gym class. The game, as always, was dodgeball. But my school had recently cut its music program, and instead of the usual rubber pile of salmon-colored gym balls, we were presented with string instruments. Violins, cellos, violas, basses, awaiting us in the gymnasium.

"It's easy," the gym teacher said. She wore the same royal blue velour tracksuit she wore in every memory I have of high school. "You smash the violin over someone's head, and then you use the broken neck to stab them in the chest."

I wondered what would happen to the strings; once the violin was broken, would its body dangle from the strings as I attempted to maneuver the neck? I imagined high school students lurching around the gym, broken music pouring from their bodies.

"This is a waste." I explained the obvious to the gym teacher. "Can't we donate these instruments to another school and go back to using dodgeballs?"

As I was waking, I organized a gym walkout. The instruments were saved.

Villain

For the past two days my right eyelid has been twitching. Small spasms, probably invisible to an onlooker. No reason that I can think of; my eye muscles must simply have something to express.

But my imagination insists on conjuring a squinting, salty seadog in a yellow slicker - the one who starred as a villain in my childhood tales. He was the type who would most definitely have a twitchy eye.

New Year's Eve

Winter walk

Shoulders hunched to keep water from creeping down my neck, dodging dripping awnings, sloshing through lakes of slush. But the huge fistfuls of snow plunging from the sky are beautiful in their own right.

Dream

It's a sunny home, a farmhouse without a farm, and in the backyard I have a twisted apple tree for baking pies.

The floors are old - wooden and polished - and I walk through the house barefoot carrying loads of laundry to dry on the line. I wear a t-shirt and faded jeans and my hair is a mess, but he looks up from repairing the worn dining room table and smiles at me as I wander past. He finds me most attractive in my simplicity and disarray.

We have two happy dogs and a weekend life all week. When the weather grows cold we drink mulled cider and read books in front of the fire. When the bread browning in the oven is done, we will sit on the floor and eat it with herbed butter, sharp cheese and ham.

This is my stock footage fantasy.