Huzzah. Short Folk #30: Brand New Even the Molecules

Note: Wow, Finally. Last one. Its been interesting, at first these were impossible to write. I couldn't find ideas and I'd spend hours scheming. Then about day 10 I got into a rhythm and the ideas were pretty easy to come by then. I just learned to trust single line ideas more, and not having to have something fully worked out in my head really freed up some interesting pieces. But these last few days have been a real trial, mostly because I have ideas for other stuff to work on and don't really feel like I'm in the market for a bunch of new ideas like I was a month ago. So finally it wasn't 30 in 30 days, but 30 in 32 days. Close. Here's the last one. Thanks for reading. Drop by Bottomless lakes (link below and to the left) as James finishes up his 30 in 30 poems project. I couldn't have done this without his urging.

Short Folk #30: Brand New Even the Molecules

Made man sits alone in a low slung chair. The art of his successful friends hangs on the walls of his successful apartment. Like I said, he's a made man, comfortable. Has what he wants. Late 30's. And he's worked hard to get it too, worked really hard. Has a family, generally well behaved kids and a generally loving wife. And now he is comfortable in the low slung chair in his fashionable apartment.

He looks around the room. Its a quiet Sunday night and he's alone for the evening. His eyes roll over all the things he's accumulated. He gets up and goes over to a storage place under the stairs. He's remembered something just now in the quiet of rolling his eyes over everything. He opens the storage space and there's a bike inside. A nice bike he bought when he first moved to NYC. Ten years ago, when it was brand new, he covered the entire frame of the bike first in saran wrap and then in tightly wound black electric tape. NYC when you're single and starting out is all about making expensive things look cheap and cheap things look adequate. The black tape hid all the brand markings. The made man imagines that underneath the tape everything must be new, brand new, even the molecules, he thinks, must be shining with the newness of the day he wrapped it up in tape. He looks at the bike, the rest of it beat to hell and almost unusable. He wonders if there's any air in there from 10 years ago, anything under that black tape that remembers what it was like when he was not a made man, hungry, struggling, doing amazing things. Doing a whole bunch of hard work and some really amazing things.

The next thing he does is gets a razor blade out of the tool drawer in the kitchen. He goes back to the bike and slices a thin line in the tape of the top part of the frame. He leaves the bottom frame untouched. Then he so very carefully peels off the black electrical tape, the saran wrap shining underneath and the bright red Raleigh logo and dark green paint underneath it. All of it a different color than the rest of the bike. As if an old man had dipped his foot in a stream and it had come out like a baby's foot. He puts his nose right up to the bike and breathes in. breathes in deeply as he takes the saran wrap off. Then he just sits there, made man on the hardwood floor of his comfortable apartment, the top frame brand new again and the other frame waiting under the last of the black electrical tape. And under the last tape everything still new like the day, 10 years ago when he wrapped it up.

Short Folk #29 Millionaires

Note: Still running out of steam and now on a juice cleanse, so I'm grumpy and running out of steam. One more day after today! Haven't written it yet, but I'm semi-excited for this idea.

Short Folk #29: Millionaires

When I was a kid I spent most of my time at my friend John's house. It was about a mile away from my house and there were patches of white flowers, dandelions I think, along the road all the way to his house. I'm the type of person who is always picking things up and absentmindedly taking them apart. Not out of any malice, but still. I would take apart dandelions the whole way to his house. First the white petals, methodically, never more than one at a time. I don't know, that's just the way I would do it. Then the yellow center. You can pick that off like a bottle-cap and get to the real inside of the flower around the stem. There's this fuzziness there on the real inside, you'd know what I was talking about if you ever saw it. Little tendrils of white fuzz that feel to your fingertips like the softest thing on earth. I was fascinated by this stuff. I thought it was the most secret substance. I think I've probably taken apart a thousand dandelions just to feel it between my fingers

I thought too, that I could make millions off of it. Back when I was a kid. I thought about all the geese that die to make down pillows, and how much people in this world value softness. And here I was, a curious boy who had found the softest substance on earth in the heart of a dandelion. I wondered if anyone else out there knew about what you could find when you took off the yellow bottle-cap of a dandelion. I decided to trust John with my secret. We were at his house playing home run derby with tennis balls, hitting the balls high into his neighbors yard. He hit a home run and it landed next to a random dandelion in the neighbor's grass. I picked it and brought it to him with the ball. "Timeout" I said, and then I showed him the dandelion. I peeled off the petals. I twisted off the piece above the fuzz. I showed it to him and made him feel the softness between his fingers, on his face.

In my child's mind I imagined fields and fields of dandelions and I was there too, in overalls, rubbing sweat off my face with a forearm. My imagined self, grown all the way to 6'4, muscular, shining, perfect. John was there, looking confident like he always looked, some beauty queen on his arm. It was a boy's dream of the perfect life. I looked at John holding the dandelion in his hand and it all seemed possible. "We can do this John. You and me, millionaires".

Short Folk #28: Bluff, Utah

Note: I'm running out of steam. I'm running completely out of steam. The best thing about this project is that it has created a ton of new ideas. Problem is now I really want to work on some longer length ideas I have. I'm currently doing a lot of revising older stuff for possible publication and that is making extra writing time for these very scarce. Two more days after today though. So we're on the home stretch. Here is the beginning of one of those longer pieces. Again, not a short, but a taste.

Short Folk #28: Bluff, Utah

I started because I read somewhere about lost Mormon gold. And because I have driven through the deserts out there a bunch and frankly the thought of so much wide open space really gets to me. I imagine there are ridges and bluffs out there that haven't even seen a human footprint. Or maybe just one or two. An Indian on a quest or a lost conquistador searching for El Dorado or something. I swear when you go over a piece of ground that hasn't even seen a footprint you feel a little chill through you, even out there in the desert. That's happened to me a couple times.

I keep at it because I like the heat and the way the headphones when they're on and pinging kind of mute the whole world out. It's like putting a seashell to your ear except the sound is always there. I like to feel the wind whip across my back but not be able to hear it in my ears. And I like how untethered I am out there, a rattlesnake or a twisted ankle and i could disappear forever. That's really happened to people. In 1934 a guy named Everett Ruess went out in the bluffs and desert and no one ever saw him again. They found his mules and stuff but he was gone. Its still a mystery and frankly I like the mystery. You could be swallowed up in a place with no water. Seems like a better way to go than in a hospital room smelling like old blood. At least if you go in the desert people come out and look for you. If Everett Ruess had made it where he was going no one would remember him now. But he's been gone 80 years and people still go out looking for him.