Day 6 at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts

Spring is unfurling here in Virginia and so is my ability to concentrate and work. 

Now that the notebook project is finished (see previous two posts,) 

I have been dividing my time three ways: working on a short story, polishing my memoir manuscript, and sending out sample pages and/or a proposal—or at least a query letter for my memoir. My A list submissions are ready to go.

In a couple of months, I will move onto the B list if need be. There will be plenty of time while I’m here for digging into my next manuscript, too--the divorce manuscript. Working titles: His Big Fat Indian Wedding, The Geography of a Divorce, Flying Blind (since I flew around to be with family and friends because after 32 years in L.A. with Mr. Ex, I could not tolerate being there.) Suggestions? Feel free. I also like The Marriage Museum or the Marriage Mausoleum because he’s living in “our house” with the Little Missus and raising his new family there where we raised our girls. A little creeeepy. There’s something wrong about sleeping in the same bedroom, occupying the same space with the Little Missus that he occupied with me. Even the same bed—though at some point, they got a new one, I heard. There’s only one wall in that bedroom that will accommodate a queen size bed—so the two of them are right there where he and I used to be. The only way to change it up would be for him to sleep on my side of the bed…..which is even creeeeepier. 

Naked and Shoe-less

I am in my old house--the house where Mr. Ex and the Little Missus now live. I've come to get something, but I forget what. They're going on a trip, and I thought they would have left by now. But they're still here, flinging things into suitcases and shouting instructions to one another from room to room. "Raj, can you get the ice chest?" Mr. Ex calls to his brother-in-law. They're going on a car trip, I surmise as I dash around the corner just out of Mr. Ex's sightline. Now I'm crouching behind the couch. What have I done with my flip-flops? I have to get out of here. This place is a wreck, piles of clothes and junk everywhere. The blinds are drawn and it's hard to see what's what. Shoes. I see shoes. But not mine. Green brocade sling backs with kitten heels. I can't wear those. I root through the two-foot-high pile of sweatshirts behind the couch still looking for flip-flops--the bronze colored ones I really like. My daughter C. comes into the house from the back hallway. "Hey-hey," she calls. She's there to say good-bye to her little brother, but she practically steps on me on her way around the couch. "WTF???" she mouths when she sees me. I shrug. Now I've lost my clothes, too, and it's only because of the pile of sweatshirts that I'm not trapped on the family room floor stark naked. The coast is clear, and I dash for the coat closet by the garage door just as the Little Missus clip-clops down the  back stairs, cursing under her breath. Uh-oh. She bangs the closet door open, and there I am, panting behind the coats, my heart pounding so raucously it's a wonder she can't hear it. "God damn it," she says. She's looking for something too, I guess. She bangs the door shut and heads for the kitchen. Now's my chance. I slip into the garage and out the pedestrian door into the dog yard.
I'm wearing a stolen coat and it barely covers my ass.
My favorite flip-flops lost forever in the rubble.

When I wake I'm floating in a pool of sweat, my throat full of needles.

Art Installation #1

Everything is Connected is the title I've chosen for the artwork I've padlocked to Mr. Ex's front door.  Because everything pretty much is.
This is the first in a series.

You will see this house again.

Note: No property damage will occur. No threatening imagery or words will be used. I do, however, intend to get my message across. In this particular piece, while it is true that a large chain with artifacts connected to it is padlocked to the door of his house, if Mr Ex. takes the time to actually look at what is tied, pinned, sewn and stapled to the chain, he will see that I have indeed attached the key.

What I Will Tack to Mr. Ex's Front Door This Weekend.

Dear Mr. Ex,

On this weekend of Labor Day it is fitting, I think, to remind you that I labored to bring our daughters into the world. And once they joined us on this earth, I continued to labor. Hearth. Heart. Home. Strawberry fields--or at least a small rectangle of sweet red fruit in our front yard. Every day for weeks a mixing bowl full I served to us, and to family, friends, and the attorneys you occasionally brought home and propped at our dining room table. Then came grapefruits and oranges. Plums and pomegranates. Loquats and guavas. But you'd tired of our eden by then. Still--I marinated chickens, squeezed lemonade, and with the same hope, I pressed the juice from our our lives. Let it be sweet, I prayed. Not saccharine. For us--only the real.
I planted roses. I planted trees. I planted hope, and I watered it. Kept it alive--in drought years, with carefully rationed tears.  Kept us alive as long as I could.
But you've let so many things die.
My pension was in those plums. My retirement in roses.  My 401-K wrapped round and round a sun that, at present, shines only on the bright planet of you.
What I ask of you is this: Divide what bounty remains.  As the sun tires of its labors this holiday weekend, promise me half of the fools' gold that glitters in the night sky of our lives.